<p>I've done nine formal college visits in the last three weeks and here are some things that I'd like the admissions folks who plan these things to know:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>PLEASE tell us where to park. I scour your website and read everything to try to figure out where to park. A couple of times I've parked in the distant visitors garage, only to be told upon arrival: "Oh, you should have parked right in front, I would have given you a parking pass." Well, had your confirmation email or web site said that, I would have done that.</p></li>
<li><p>Related to #1 above, I know that summer is the time to do construction, but if your visitor lot is inaccessible due to contruction, please shoot us an email or post it on your web site and suggest an alternative.</p></li>
<li><p>Please send out any necessary materials (e.g. parking passes, express registration) cards), whether by email or regular mail, more than just a couple of days in advance. Many of use do not travel directly to your school from our homes but rather are on multi-day trips. </p></li>
<li><p>In the summer, offer water in some form - water bottles, a visible water cooler, etc.</p></li>
<li><p>Please tell your tour guides to stop the group to chat in shade whereever possible. These trips can be draining and it's irritating to be standing there listening in the sun, when there is shade a few steps away.</p></li>
<li><p>Go on your own website frequently. There can be glitches, broken links, causing information you think is available to not be available.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Show us a dorm room. It may be inconvenient, you may worry about what we’ll see, they may not all look the same – that’s ok. But we’re considering spending a lot of money having our child live in one of those buildings, and we deserve a visual example of at least one.</p>
<p>Make sure you train your Guides (especially those with accents) in how to speak clearly, understandably, and audibly to
moving groups of people.</p>
<p>To the extent that you can, tailor the visit to the interests of the group. If nobody plans to major in engineering, and the engineering building is way out of the way, skip that part.</p>
<p>Train your tour guides to be respectful. While crude jokes may be acceptable among your friends, consider your tour attendees as prospective employers and tailor your language accordingly.</p>
<p>Please put an address for the admissions building - something that my GPS can get me to. It seems I’ve spent hours on various college websites looking for an address!</p>
<p>Wonderful suggestions - do you think any admissions people will actually see it? I second the shade - seems so obvious - bit I’ve spent my fair share of time standing in the sun. I’d also like to add that the tour guides need to have real info to convey - not just here is the X building and there is the Y building. Don’t just tell us you are having a good time - elaborate on what it is that you do on the weekends in particular.</p>
<p>Great suggestions. It is disappointing to travel across the country for a campus tour and then to be told the dorm rooms are not available for viewing. Gaaaaaahhhh!<br>
Hats off to the campuses that offer iced bottled water on a warm day. Hats off to those campus admissions officers at smaller colleges who personally make you feel welcome, having taken the time to know in advance who you are and where you are from.</p>
<p>Information sessions work best when run by a professional. It’s nice to hear what students or recent grads have to say about life on campus, but the pros do a better job of getting details out there.</p>
<p>Make your information sessions informational. Don’t tell us about stuff we can read on the web site. And tell us about the norm, not all the special programs.</p>
<p>(Two weeks ago we sat through 50 minutes of monotone monologue given by a recent grad in training-- 40 of which were dedicated to special programs. There were only a dozen people in the info session. We could have asked if we wanted to know if we had been allowed to get a word in edgewise!)</p>
<p>Please help your student tour guides to anticipate questions regarding safety, underage drinking on campus, anything that may seem unfavorable that has been in the news recently, etc. Prepare them to answer basic questions. Beyond a respectful answer ask your guides to kindly tell the parents (or students) raising the issue that there would be someone in the office of admissions who would have more in depth knowledge and they would be happy to introduce them when the tour is over.</p>
<p>These people are either genuinely concerned and probably do need and answer an tour guide can not give, OR they are trying to rattle the tour guide. Either way, the continuation of this line of questioning serves to make the rest of the people on the tour uncomfortable.</p>
<p>Having said this, please make sure there IS someone available to answer these questions upon the return of a tour.</p>
<p>IJustDrive - YES!! We drove 12hrs to a top engineering school to hear ‘um, like, i’m not the one who usually does this so…’ She didn’t know how to work the power point. Urrgghh!! Luckily the general info session had been outstanding and the tour quite good so we didn’t feel quite so let down. It was laughable that the school is known for engineering and that’s where they failed miserably. You would think they would have more than one person qualified to give the presentation.
The Q&A was meaningless. She knew less than we did, having just come from the general info session.</p>
<p>Hummm, I do wonder who listens on these boards. I do know a few schools that a very plugged in.</p>
<p>I also suggest, if you are going to have department meetings, make sure someone is there who actually knows something about the department. THis weekend we visited a college and the dept. meeting was conducted by someone from another dept. (because the head of the dept. was not well–understandable). But the person holding the meeting simply read to us from a powerpoint and the whole meeting lasted @12 minutes because the speaker had to leave to make a doctor’s appointment before the flight. </p>
<p>I agree with tour guides who project their voice.</p>
<p>On another positive note, we visited one college this past weekend that had coolers set up all around campus with water and juice for their open house since it was so hot. NIce touch.</p>
<p>An example of a truly excellent tour was the physical sciences (and math and computer science) tour at Brown. There were two very peppy young women who were on campus for the summer working in professor’s labs or projects. They were very excited about what they were studying, and very excited to show us all their favorite places. We happened to be there on a Friday, which was fortuitous because they had a C.S. undergrad give a demo of her research project for the summer (from the graphics lab – it was a great demo). Apparently the CS demo is only on Fridays. DD came out of there feeling like Brown is the best place in the world for girls who are into math, science, and computer science.</p>
<p>In contrast, the general info session was a waste of time, giving no info that wasn’t found on their web site.</p>
<p>My guess is that any Admissions Officer worth his salt is on this forum, at least occasionally, checking topics related to his area of interest and job performance – like this one. :)</p>
<p>An offshoot of this topic is a suggestion that colleges provide a printable self-guided tour on their website. While we try to fit as many college visits as we can while on the road, it is not always possible to be on their campus when a tour is offered. </p>
<p>Some schools make this easily accessible on their website, but not enough do.</p>
<p>DO make a kid feel welcome and individual. Several schools had “Welcome ----------” in the lobby of admissions. One even had a sign in the parking lot “Reserved for ------.” Big schools or any school during spring break won’t be able to do this, but even they can have an individualized packet with a welcome note on the front. And a handwritten postcard followup goes a long way!</p>
<p>DON’T tell a student (especially a rising junior) that their gpa is lower than your average, but since the student has shown interest you’re might take a chance on them. Even if you go on to say that you consider the classes taken, school profile, trends by semester, ecs, recs, etc more important than a single overall gpa number, it’s too late - you turned the kid off at “you’re a loser, but we might take a chance on you.” And this from a school known for taking B and C students!</p>
<p>DO really listen and react to what the kid says. After the awful experience above (and 5 other visits in the previous 5 days), d was completely fed up. Driving to the final school of our trip I was barraged with snarky comments - “oh look, more corn. I’m going to hate this place. Why do we have to go. I told you I didn’t want to be in the middle of nowhere, I already found a school I like, why do we have to look at any others…” The admissions person was so genuinely warm and friendly. When d said she was interested in pre-med, the woman actually grabbed the phone and called the receptionist to arrange for a pre-med student workier to do the tour. They managed to completely turn around a kid who was determined to hate the place. As we left, d said “I didn’t think I wanted to be somewhere so rural, but the town looks kinda cute…”</p>
<p>Kudos to the schools that give several tourguides/group. This allows extra parent and student questions that are too specific for the whole group. Also I liked it when tourguides handed out business cards (with email addresses) and follow-up postcards.</p>
<p>Amen! And at least with my GPS, “the corner of __ and __” doesn’t work. </p>
<p>A couple of weeks ago I posted a comment about one particular campus not being very pretty. An admissions officer from that school saw it and has since pm’d me, copying a string of emails about beefing up the landscaping, replanting grass, etc. Some tuned in folks are really reading our posts!</p>