<p>It’s ironic but whatdidyou was posting as I was typing my “review” so I didn’t see the comment about picking a school based on a tour guide until after I posted. In my opinion a tour guide is supposed to represent the school. While he or she doesn’t need to be your best friend, I believe school’s select guides based on who will best represent their school. They are the “marketers.” If a selective, competitive school thinks that a student who cannot come up with a better description for their science program than “it’s awesome” or for their political science program than “it’s cool” than they either don’t care about the perception people have of their school because they get so many applications anyway or they just don’t sufficiently train their guides. Either way, if I am making the effort (and spending the money) to visit rather than just reading the info on the Internet, I would appreciate a thoughtful tour that teaches something about the school so we can make an informed decision about where to apply and potentially, attend.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s true. And it also is true if a student gets a great feeling from a visit or two (or more). That does not mean the college is perfect for them. That happened to us. S chose a college that we thought would be great for him, but after moving in discovered problems that were not visible on the many visits we made. He was working on transferring within the week.</p>
<p>There is not one way to choose a college. Different methods work for different families.</p>
<p>At the better schools, it’s clearly a seller’s market. Put yourself in the shoes of the admissions dept. or administration for a minute. You’ve got thousands of people clamoring to get accepted by your school. We students and parents think we should be treated with respect and get high quality guides.</p>
<p>But to those who work for the colleges we’re just part of this year’s crop of naive, obnoxious, and demanding applicants, most of whom won’t attend even if they are accepted. They don’t have the budget to train, supervise, or pay good tour guides, so they take whoever happens to volunteer to do it (which is probably mostly self-selected show-offy or big-mouthed students) and don’t give it a second thought.</p>
<p>Volunteer tour guides are sort of like high school substitute teachers: they do a job not many people will do, and as long as long as nobody under their care gets killed, the administration is happy.</p>
<p>I wonder if less-selective colleges are as cavalier about whom they allow to be tour guides.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>While I agree that I’ve observed and feel it doesn’t make sense when someone dismisses a school based on a tour guide when the school might be a very good fit, I find it ironic that you stated this, Schmaltz, because the types of visits you did with your family and the feedback from those visits, was also very superficial and discussed the buildings and settings only, which are not great indicators of best fit and a kid could dismiss a school that might otherwise be a good fit, because of the look of buildings or how hilly the campus is. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>These statements are ill informed when it comes to highly selective colleges. In fact, being selected to be a tour guide at most of these schools is VERY coveted and highly selective in itself. My D was a tour guide at Brown. These jobs are hard to get and are unpaid as well. They indeed do train and supervise the tour guides and the selection process is very competitive. And no, they are not mouthy show off types. I have to laugh as my kid is nothing like that description and I have also been on many college tours where the student was not of that type, but was well informed and sociable. You say they do a job that many people will not do and this is not true at selective colleges. These are sought after positions that are hard to get. The administration really cares about who is selected and the selection process is quite involved. This is true at many schools, and not just at Brown.</p>
<p>PS…how is it that you are commenting about tour guides when your family didn’t take a single tour but just looked at the buildings in quick drive throughs?</p>
<p>
I agree visits are a far from perfect indicator of the experience a student would have at the school. But the alternative is to not visit at all and have no direct contact with the school or the students; and that makes the prospective student better informed than a student that visited? I can’t see how not visiting is an advantange.</p>
<p>One example, for my kids visits. We spent a 1/2 day at a LAC … info session, tour, hanging on campus, lunch at cafeteria central campus. In all that time I do not think we saw one current or prospective student wearing any athetic gear (not one Red Sox or Yankee hat or t-shirt … and no one wear school gear either) … for my jock son definately not his tribe. Could we tell this from the web? I do not think so … descriptions such as artsy, preppie, jock school, intellectual come to life in very different ways in person.</p>
<p>I’ve been through two searches (very much resembling Schmaltz’s trips) and in both cases half way through a tour I called Mom3ToGo and told here this would be the place our chid would want to attend … it was that obvious when on-site … and in one case was an quite expected outcome. For my third, I can not imagine him picky a school without visits … I’m at a loss why if affortable and convenient why my kids would rather pick a school with less information rather than more.</p>
<p>3togo’s point about the clothes is semi-valid. Kids can get real information from standing still and looking at how the people who walk by are dressed. But that’s really true only to the extent that you are certain you understand the general culture of the college to begin with. My kids could get completely accurate information at New England LACs or other colleges that essentially belong to their community, but I think – especially in high school – they would have made mistakes in California. They could have looked at what kids were wearing at Stanford, Berkeley, Pomona, and decided “There’s no one like me here,” without realizing that the people like them there were dressed slightly differently than the people like them at home, or in Massachusetts.</p>
<p>If these schools are picking these tour guides so carefully and are supervising them, how do you explain the endless tales of horrible tour guides…the ones spouting their political beliefs, the ones using annoying slang, the ones whose voices are barely audible, etc.?</p>
<p>“the types of visits you did with your family and the feedback from those visits, was also very superficial and discussed the buildings and settings only, which are not great indicators of best fit and a kid could dismiss a school that might otherwise be a good fit,”</p>
<p>The trip we took was an initial tour just to familiarize ourselves with the variety of options out there…and while some schools might have been eliminated due to what we saw (bad neighborhood, ridiculous hills, isolated location, ugly architecture), none of those things were temporary insignificant features like the shoes of a tour guide or the mood of an admissions counselor. Lehigh is always going to be unbelievably hilly, Colgate is always going to be in a tiny town, etc. </p>
<p>Also, when searching for “fit,” some variables like number of students, weather, majors, and proximity to large cities can be explored by doing research on the internet. We didn’t focus on these while we were on campuses because they could be explored just as easily from home. We wanted to focus on the inexplicable vibe that one gets only from being there physically. Granted, it would be best to do that for a longer period of time at each campus while school was in session, but we simply don’t have the time to do such a trip during a school year. There are some things in life that if you wait for the perfect opportunity, you will be waiting forever.</p>
<p>
this was supposed to say … and in one case was a quite UNexpected outcome</p>
<p>“Lehigh is always going to be unbelievably hilly, Colgate is always going to be in a tiny town, etc.”</p>
<p>I should have added that in addition to such features being permanent, they are also the type of features that are significant and which a student would have to deal with on a daily basis. So, there are at least 3 aspects that differentiate the “I didn’t like the tour guide’s shoes” type of superficiality from the “we walked around for 20 minutes and found the place unbelievably hilly” superficiality:</p>
<ol>
<li>one is permanent, the other is temporary.</li>
<li>one is something you’d have to deal with every day, not just occasionally.</li>
<li>one is something that significantly impacts your life, one is just a minor irritant.</li>
</ol>
<p>Schmaltz … I’m with you about 100%. Probably 25 LACs in the northeast/mid-atlantic are described as being in small towns and descriptions and pictures on web-sites would sound/look pretty similar … however in a very small amount of time on site the differences between the locations of Colgate vs Bowdoin vs Colby, for example, is readlily apparent … although initial descriptions of all 3 would sound pretty similar.</p>
<p>Going to school in a hilly place doesn’t “significantly impact your life”. If you come from the midwest, it forces you to adjust to something unfamiliar. That takes a couple of weeks. It’s not really a big deal, except in the very short term. (Last year, my wife went out for a 4-mile run with some college athletes from Chicago. The kids almost didn’t make it, because they were so unused to the hills in our neighborhood.) Human beings thrive perfectly well in flat areas and in hilly areas.</p>
<p>This is barely less random than not liking the tour guide’s attitude.</p>
<p>^ Have you been to Lehigh? … it’s is built into the side of a major hill. This certainly might be an issue for someone with mobility issues … and for anyone who prefers a classic campus quad type set-up. Personally I really liked Lehigh’s campus (not the stuff on the other side of the hill so much) but it is another example of a campus I think visiting is a very good idea because it is a pretty unique layout and I can easily see students having strong reactions (pro or con) to it.</p>
<p>Yeah, there’s hilly and there’s HILLY. I went to Boston College, which is on 3 levels of a gradual hill, and even there most people needed a good reason to go from one level to another. Lehigh is so steep that a bicycle would be useless. It would be difficult to just go out for a leisurely stroll…in warm weather it would turn into a sweaty hike; in the winter you’d need crampons. If you were playing catch with a football or baseball, and somebody didn’t catch it, the ball might bounce a half mile down hill before it stopped.</p>
<p>I never thought people in California look that different. Maybe less black clothing. We felt right at home in Caltech where half the kids were wearing nerd t-shirts, but I don’t recall the kids at Stanford or Berkeley looking terribly different. My younger son did look at the William and Mary site and decided that it didn’t look like a good fit from what the kids on the site looked ike. (This was after he’d gotten into U of Chicago, mind you, otherwise he’d have applied and visited if he’d gotten in, but just from the photos UC looked like a better fit.) If I had thought that he was missing some wonderful program at W&M I might have said something, but he had plenty of good colleges to apply to, sometimes you need to find reasons to cross them off. It might as well be too many polo shirts.</p>
<p>This was a long time ago, but my H was a tour guide for potential students interested in science at Yale. They started giving the special “science tours” after the chair of the chemistry dept. took the tour with his kid and was dismayed at how little knowledge about the science programs the tour guide had.</p>
<p>I believe that visiting is everything in decision making, but visiting 20-25 colleges is a definite overload. Why? Seems to be such a waste of very precious time. Especially, that looking back after they graduate from college, you will realize that going to any place that fit kid’s personality and wide range of interests would be just fine. It so much more depend on a kid, than place. You can tell probably, that my D. has just graduated from college, we all were very happy with her choice. However, opportunites there were presented to many, my D. took advantage while many others just passed by (her comment, not mine). This is the only thing that makes the difference…and the pretty campus in D’s case, she loves nice views.</p>
<p>One of the advantages of Carnegie Mellon’s different schools was that each of the schools give tours on top of the regular tour. (At least at Accepted Students weekend.) We went to both the Science School and the Comp Sci school’s presentations (they actually had two - an extra one covered Robotics) they were quite different and informative. </p>
<p>We never had any terrible tours, but we did have a lot of tours by students who’s interests and experiences were not that similar to my kids. (Even at schools where they had several tour guides and you could pick them based on their majors.)</p>
<p>
And how is the student supposed to know which school best fits their personality and interests without visiting? (and how about checking out … large/small … city/suburb/college town … LAC/Research U … etc). My oldest went on a one week school tour the spring vacation week of her junior year and I think we hit 21 schools. Sound absurd but it wasn’t … the first day we did info sessions and tours and Amherst and UMass-Amherst and were headed to New Haven that evening … however after finishing the UMass tour my daughter was ready to leave (no desire to see more of UMass) so we took about one extra hour to do quick drive-by/walk arounds at Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Hampshire all of which are within about 5 miles of UMass. From my perspective to not at least check these 3 schools out would have been silly since they were so close. Similarily in Philly we saw Bryn Mawr, HAverford, Villanova, Drexel, and Penn in about a 5 mile stretch of the same road (all on the way to the Penn tour).</p>
<p>Everyone has to do things their own way.</p>
<p>For each of my daughters, when we visited schools, we always did a tour, always did an information session, usually tried for a meal in the dining hall, generally had time for them to ask questions of the tour guides and/or admissions officers, my daughter had an interview (if offered) and sometimes had time to attend a class. One daughter was applying to engineering schools, so this meant 2 tours and two information sessions in many cases.</p>
<p>This meant 1 visit a day, or 2 maximum (if the schools were very close, and the scheduling worked out). My D’s each did their part, and took notes on each school. At the end of a visit, they felt that they knew something about the feel of the school. I don’t see how you get that if you’re doing 3 or 4 schools in a day.</p>
<p>BTW – if you do see this many schools, do you at least stop by the admissions office at each so they know you were there. A number of schools use “demonstrated interest” (e.g…, did you visit the school) as one of the admissions criteria, so I think letting them know you were there is essential.</p>
<p>We each have to do this in our own way though.</p>
<p>A few important things I’d like to note as a student.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>It really depends on the kids how successful the trip will be. I’ve always loved to “take a look” at colleges. Granted, when I was in sixth grade and had to sit through my sister’s tours, I didn’t really look at the schools carefully, but by the time sophomore year rolled around, I found college tours ~fun. Pretty architecture, interesting dynamics, etc. When I went to Penn Previews, I visited Swarthmore just for fun because we were in the area. It was charming, and I’d always been curious. Obviously wasn’t going there at that point, but I wanted to see what it was like.</p></li>
<li><p>Honestly, college tours can be a huge motivator. WashU was the first school I ever visited for myself; my mother cleverly took me there in the spring of my sophomore year, and I was obsessed with it. It was the reason I worked my ass off Junior year, bc I realized that good schools were just ~nicer.</p></li>
<li><p>The “no way, keep driving” is flawed. I was determined that Penn was NOT for me because my sister, who was a Yalie, had been waitlisted and there was no way I would be accepted. Furthermore, it was just “a crazy party school”. Completely naive obviously, but visiting for a few hours made me fall in love with Penn and it became my number 1. My sister didn’t even want to visit Yale because she felt it was too pretentious. Lo and behold, four years later, she just graduated this spring and is going to Michigan for her MD/PhD, another school she had written off as junior looking at schools.</p></li>
<li><p>Take your daughters separately, unless they’re very close in age. My sister and I looked at many of the same schools, but it was a completely different experience. When you’re that young, you’re looking at the bells and whistles—“WIFI EVERYWHERE COOL!!!”, while when you’re old, you’re really thinking “could I see myself there”. It’s just a maturity thing.</p></li>
</ol>