<p>Add another vote for UPittsburgh. They gave a great campus tour and they have given quick responses to everything I have sent them. It also doesnt hurt that they gave me a big poster of their basketball team and a calendar since I got accepted.</p>
<p>The people from MIT have been wonderful. Informative, but not overpowering me with spam and junk and things.</p>
<p>murmur,
I would suggest having a list of questions for both the tour guide and whoever does the question answer session. if you are lucky, you will get a guide that truly loves their school and if they can’t answer your questions, will direct you to who can.
even luckier if you can arrange someone who majors in what your son has interest in.
Good luck !</p>
<p>**The worst EVER were Wellesley and Smith! **It is a complicated story, but I applied and was then told that I was INELIGIBLE to apply. They didn’t even make any sense. They said that I had too many community college credits (3 years vs. 2 years), but it wouldn’t have even mattered because I needed two years to graduate anyway since I only had a two year degree. Smith was like “oh, well you could transfer to a state school and graduate in a year.” NO I COULDN’T! I had 100 and 200 level classes ONLY. They don’t even take most credits within the major anyway, so I would NEED to take two years, making me no different from any other transfer. </p>
<p>Smith was also rude as hell about it. They acted like I was a horrible person for just taking extra credits (i.e., educating myself). They were like, “it is inherently unfair to students who graduate from Smith in four years.” What? HOW? How is it unfair to other students that my circumstance sucked and I tried to make the best of it by educating myself however I could? Smith and Wellesley both act like they like diversity, but when a person doesn’t fit into their perfect mold then that person is unwanted. It is elitist and ridiculous and they lost a motivated student with stats above their averages because of it. </p>
<p>/rant.</p>
<p>Berkeley..gosh I wanted to punch that lady. I would think, in general, privates have better ‘service.’ (paid more?)</p>
<p>^^ Disagree. Best info session ever was at Michigan. And when I say good, I mean good-- informative, professional, didn’t dwell on “we’re so competitive and wonderful blah blah blah.”</p>
<p>USC was great, great tour and friendly staff for such a large school.</p>
<p>Bowdoin was by FAR the best. Everything was so well-located, the people in the admissions office/waiting room were soooo friendly and they gave us bookmarks, course catalogs, etc. The tour guide was enthusiastic, informative, and clearly loved the school. They gave both my mom and I free food tickets and the food was delicious! The info session was interesting with some well-timed humor. It was given by a senior admissions person and then a current student, so they gave us different but equally helpful information. The admissions officers I talked to were incredibly friendly!! I was so surprised! And my interviewer sent me a note with the standard response but also a hand-written part thanking me for interviewing with him! Basically, Bowdoin rocked the tour, info session and everything else!!</p>
<p>Amherst was decent. The tour guide was polite but a little distant and the info session was led by current students/a recent grad and I didn’t find it that helpful. The tour guide was enthusiastic and really friendly but didn’t give very many facts or much concrete information; however, Amherst redeemed itself by having gazillions of copies of the New Yorker in their waiting room 
And the Dean who came to my school was incredibly friendly! Best admissions person I’ve talked to yet! He was informative and encouraging! </p>
<p>Brown would have been great if only the tour groups hadn’t been so huge! The waiting room was absolutely packed and we were put in large groups so it was hard to hear what people were saying. The tour guide was great! Relaxed, told us lots of fun facts about Brown and clearly loved it. The information session was ok but a bit impersonal. That could just be because I had visited Bowdoin the day before though… </p>
<p>Was anyone else astonished by how hard people try to place themselves at the front of the group when you’re on the tour??? I mean, sheesh people, walking in the front and telling the tour guide your SAT scores is not going to help you get in…</p>
<p>It can be interesting to ask your student tour guide about his/her job: is it paid or voluntary? What’s the time commitment? This doesn’t have to be a major question…you might ask it during a lull, or casually at the very end of the tour. Policies differ school to school, so while answers won’t say anything definite about the guide, it can still be nice to know these details. I remember an incredible tour after which we found out that guiding at this particular school was both voluntary and competitive (i.e. many more students interested in doing it than were needed!), which just helped confirm the enthusiasm I’d been feeling throughout campus.</p>
<p>Again, not necessary at all, just interesting. If a private tour is better than a public, don’t assume it’s b/c the guides are paid more. I was at a private and did this job for free.</p>
<p>Best: Univ. of Pittsburgh – the guide was very informative and enthusiastic. We were impressed at how CLEAN the campus was! The school really knows how to woo you (free lunch, free tour of city, free t-shirts, magnet, pens, camera). It kept my younger child busy (the freebies) as he HAS to come with us on all the college tours (even VA Tech gave t-shirts to all the sleepy siblings at their open house)!</p>
<p>Worst: Univ. of Virginia – couldn’t see what the dorms looked like and way too many people for the 3 guides they had. As my hubby remarked, they have plenty of applicants so they don’t have to put much effort in their tours!</p>
<p>Another best vote for U of Pittsburgh. Not only was their admission dept tour great, but their engineering tour was outstanding. The guides gave out their cards with their email addresses written on them for future questions. After the student guide tour, staff meet with us in case we had even more questions. </p>
<p>2nd best admission tour was at Ohio State, although somewhat scripted, but the tour guide was very informative- even drawing their schedule on the whiteboard for us. But worst engineering info session and engineering tour was Ohio State. They were abysmal. OSU went to the bottom of the list and S didn’t apply there. There’s a big chasm between the enthusiasm of their admissions dept and the lack of effort put forth by their engineering dept.</p>
<p>I’m going to go with stevens.</p>
<p>They just e-mailed me a mass email… addressed to each email!! That is to say, they released a huge list of emails to a huge number of people. That’s just unprofessional.</p>
<p>I thought Bowdoin was fantastic. Not only did I have a good tour guide, but I also adored the Director of Admissions, Bill Shain. Mr. Shain came to speak at my school twice, and I thought he was just fantastic. He had a warmth and character that I thought was very representative of Bowdoin. He gave, by far, the best counselor visit I attended.</p>
<p>I was also very impressed with the Colgate admissions staff. The day I went on the tour, I was in a terrible mood, and not at all into looking at yet another college (the last on our ten day tour). I expect I would have hated most other colleges. But Colgate completely won me over with their tour- the school was gorgeous, of course, but the guides were fantastic, and the ice cream sandwiches were much appreciated. I left feeling pretty obsessed with the school. But I was also pleased by the many e-mails and fantastic brochures Colgate sent out in the months following. That admissions team was excellent at showcasing the school and making students feel welcome.</p>
<p>As for worst, I hate to say it, but Middlebury (where I was accepted ED). Obviously, it didn’t turn me off the school too much, but I was wholly unimpressed by the admissions team. My tour guide was pretty good, but it was what the college followed up with that didn’t thrill me. They were the last school to send me a brochure by over a month, and the last school to send a counselor to visit my high school by several weeks. There were no e-mails or anything. It isn’t all that big of a deal, but the admissions team felt very distant.</p>
<p>Stonehill college was one of the best tour i’ve taken. They had not one but 3 tour guides for the same group and allowed people interested in certain areas to take a tour of that area, for example i plan on playing baseball their so they allowed me and a few others to tour their sports facilities in more detail. They were very nice and courteous</p>
<p>wesleyan had to be the worst. the tour guides took us to the cemetery and when asked why it was in the middle of campus, they made a joke about how that’s where they bury the students that commit suicide. needless to say, no one found the joke funny and everyone was completely put off by it.</p>
<p>That cemetery is nearly 200 years old and the Wesleyan campus simply grew around it. What the tour guide should have said, was that it served as the inspiration for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” when a young Joss Whedon observed a shapely female student walking through it on a foggy school night.</p>
<p>KittyLow: Johnwesley is right. I was a Wes tour guide last year, and I always a) explained that the campus was built around it, but the bodies had been moved, and b) told the Joss Whedon story (because how cool is that?!). And I was just a volenteer guide! I’m really suprised that these guides (who are now selected, hired, and given more training than I was) said that.</p>
<p>Duke had the worst tour ever. I thought we’d been on some bad tours, but really. Here’s what they did <em>not</em> show us: a dorm room, a cafeteria, inside a library, a classroom (well, we did get to glance at one corner of an auditorium as we trotted by), inside the chapel, the entire East campus where all freshman live and mostly eat and study… Wait, what <em>did</em> they show us, you ask? One corner of a student union, one corner of an engineering building (no engineering major types on the tour) and some building exteriors.</p>
<p>My attitude wasn’t helped by the extremely pushy mother-of-a-junior who thought she could get her son into Duke by selling him to the tour guide… ugh!</p>
<p>I think this was the standard tour and was the fault of whoever planned it. I’ve got to say the tour guide was very nice and loved Duke, which hasn’t been true at every school we toured.</p>
<p>We thought we’d stop over at the cafeteria to try the food and then they wanted $12.95 each to eat there - a bit rich for my blood. I wonder if these colleges who are trying to be more welcoming to the financially-challenged would realize how expensive it is to visit their campus and at least pony up a few sandwiches :-)</p>
<p>Careful, Weskid - that really is Willbur Fisk underneath that headstone (he died in 1839, shortly after founding Wesleyan.) :p</p>
<p>MIT’s San Jose info session every year in September-ish is not one to be missed. Not only do they rent out this huge ballroom in a hotel, they have a bunch of freebies – drinks, cookies, posters, pens, etc, as well as great speakers who present a pretty impressive “first glance” of the school.</p>
<p>Obviously, I’m biased, as I attend MIT – but it’s important to realize that going to this info session twice, one in 11th and one in 12th grade, was a major selling point for me.</p>