<p>MIT Associate Director of Admissions Matt McGann made a blog post where he reprinted an article about, shall we say, interesting admissions-related experiences from the perspectives of students, parents, and admissions officers. I thought some here might enjoy it.</p>
<p>Read</a> here</p>
<p>HA !!<br>
Question to Yale guide from parent: "How is the Study Abroad Program at Yale?"
Answer: "Why would anyone want to leave Yale?"
Question to guide from parent: "What is the alcohol policy on this campus?"
Answer from guide: "Zero tolerance." Followed by an offer of a jello shot by a passing student.</p>
<p>Two stories:</p>
<p>Family friends of ours had a son looking for colleges. The son was an amazing kid that almost anyone would want. It so happens that the kid is strongly considering Whitman because his multi-great grandfather founded the place.</p>
<p>So son take a full-day tour of Whitman. In one core class, students are doing their nails and acting otherwise bored. The teacher asks a "think" question about the morality of Roman soldiers prior to the Empire period. No one answers, so the high school kid, feeling sorry for the teacher, raises his hand and answers the question.</p>
<p>Then he goes to lunch arranged with frat boys. Said frat boys proceed to tell him how they never study, the school is a breeze, and the girls are easy. Friend comes over to talk and tells prospect that he has a class he never bothers to read the assignments for.</p>
<p>Then son goes on tour. Tour guide gets the school's history wrong and fails to even mention the founding father.</p>
<p>Son goes to different school. Family "forgets" to make donation that year and every year thereafter.</p>
<p>Story two:</p>
<p>Own kid. Does an overnight at Pomona College. Kid is 16. He is offered several types of drugs and alcohol by legal adults in an all-night party in the room/area where he is supposed to sleep. He leaves the dorm and manages to beg floor space from other students in a different dorm.</p>
<p>He goes to school somewhere else.</p>
<p>Another story:</p>
<p>Tour guide at Berkeley. In about 30 minutes time, she managed to tell us all about herself and how great she is. We enter a building and look down on a reconstruction of an obvious T-Rex.</p>
<p>"Now," she says in her most condescending voice, "can anyone tell me what THIS is?" After a moment of uneasy silence, I raise my hand and say in my most timid voice, "A dinosaur?" "Correct!" she beams at my piercing insight. "Now, can anyone tell me what KIND of dinosaur?" I raise my hand again. "Ahm, a Barney type of dinosaur?" "Correct again!!!!" By this time she is practically jumping up and down in excitement. "Now," she asks, "can anyone tell me the Latin-derived scientific name for this dinosaur?"</p>
<p>My son is about to burst. No one says anything. She tells us it's a T-Rex. We all look grateful for her generosity in imparting such arcane knowledge to us.</p>
<p>My son and I peel off and look the campus over by ourselves.</p>
<p>Claremont Mckenna...the tour guide said "CM is the best of any college in the country" about EVERYTHING at the school. Then she extolled the virtues of their Rice Krispie Treats which are served at Tea time everyday. She was right about those..but what a way to sell a school!</p>
<p>At an unnamed very selective school's information session, S raises his hand to ask whether it's a possibility to take classes in one division of the school, even if enrolled in another and a (young) admissions rep,says in a condescending tone of voice "I think I know where you're going with this, and we really look down on those who try that route to get into the XXXXX College. Everyone around was shocked because it was such a harsh response to a legitimate question. That was not S's intention at all, and there was no confusion about the question being asked but apparently this rep has a complex about this kind of thing. It was a major turnoff, but S still liked the school, attributed the incident to an isolated person and would have applied had he not gotten into ED school.</p>
<p>Oh I forgot this one...At Pepperdine...a parent asked what the kids did on the weekends. The perky guide said "well we go into L.A." Uh huh....we had just driven from LA on the Pacific Coast Highway. It took us almost an hour to get to Pepperdine from our hotel in LA...not something you would do to go to the movies or get a pizza. Well...maybe you WOULD do that if you're from CA!!</p>
<p>Oh...and at Drew University, the tour guide told us (parents and students) that the school had a policy re: use of alcohol for those under 21 "but that they didn't enforce it as long as you weren't making any trouble". Great for the students to hear. The parents all were wide eyed. It's probably true everywhere, but the tour guides don't exactly broadcast it on their tours.</p>
<p>At SUNY ESF the tour guide appeared to be either severely handicapped or (more likely) severely stoned. In addition to being all over the place and not answering any questions, she was totally negative (unintentionally) about the school and spent a lot of time talking about how the students at Syracuse look down on and make fun of the ESF kids.</p>
<p>Display-model dorm room at NYU: The strongest baked-in smell of stale marijuana smoke I have encountered since leaving college. My kid, far from innocent in such matters but living under at least some parental constraints, had no idea what the smell was; the parents all rolled their eyes and giggled nervously. Not that anyone was shocked at finding evidence of drug use at NYU, but it was an unoccupied room used exclusively by the Admissions Office for tours. What were they thinking? (What I was thinking: Maybe they couldn't find a better one.)</p>
<p>Things the tour guide should never say: At Wesleyan, kid asks tour guide about contact with professors outside of class. Tour guide: "I don't know. I have never talked to any of my professors." (Probable admissions yield from tour: 0. Points for honesty, though. I guess.)</p>
<p>that is awesome...i'll bet the kid who wrote about frogs did so because he knew that was their mascot.</p>
<p>We strolled off the train from NYC onto the gorgeous Princeton campus in springtime. We were awestruck walking through the center of campus surrounded by the stately Princeton buildings, imagining minds like that of the genius John Nash discovering mathematical solutions to complex problems. Then we took the tour. Tour guide was the ultimate "Valley Girl" who was purportedly a physics major from California and told us that we were her first ever tour. Every other word in the presentation was "like". When asked any question about anything (e.g., How's the social life? How are classes? etc), the answer was "It's nice." About halfway through the tour, a young man walking on campus joined the tour and stood first in the back, then more toward the middle of our fairly large group. Then 4 other students in white lab coats came bursting through the door of a building at which we stopped, grabbed the man in the middle of the group, threw him to the ground, pretended to inject and empty syringe of whatever (there was no needle) into his arm (to which he then pretended to be unconscious) and carried him off limp. About 10 minutes later, my daughter whispered to us that she wanted to leave the tour then and there and not come back to Princeton. She thought the whole show with the syringe was stupid and the tour guide was an idiot. Her comment? "If that's the kind of student that gets accepted to Princeton, I'm not interested." She didn't apply. It was a nice train ride to New Jersey, though.</p>
<p>Tarhunt - Did you really say "A Barney type dinosaur" ?? LOL! I would have fallen on the ground!</p>
<br>
<p>heard parents ask young admissions staffers why, having gotten a degree from such a prestigious university, they had not moved on with their lives. </p>
<br>
<p>I heard this asked of admissions officers several times when I was an info session guide. Parents also asked how much the admissions officers earned; when told "about $X,000 a year," one parent said, "Graduates from THIS school only make $X,000?"</p>
<p>One young woman I knew about ten years ago visited a highly competitive LAC during her senior fall. Her (female) host had a 3-hour chem lab and asked one of her (male) friends to show the high schooler around during that time. This portion of the tour turned out to include the campus arboretum and, ahem, the young woman's introductory lesson in college biology.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I heard this asked of admissions officers several times when I was an info session guide. Parents also asked how much the admissions officers earned; when told "about $X,000 a year," one parent said, "Graduates from THIS school only make $X,000?"
[/quote]
</p>
<p>These two enterprising young men (described in the article linked below) haven't graduated yet but their alternative unofficial tour guide service seems to be generating a much higher rate of pay than I would imagine the university pays the official tour guides. ("Suggested gratuities" for the unofficial tour are $10 a person--$5 for senior citizens and business is apparently thriving for this "unauthorized tour".)</p>
<p>The article describes a resourceful exploitation of an unfilled market niche (for some reason Harvard didn't start up their annual cycle of "official tours" until 6/24) as well as Harvard's attempts to shut them down (temporarily thwarted by a technicality in the Harvard student regulations.)</p>
<p><a href="http://hahvahdtour.com/%5B/url%5D">http://hahvahdtour.com/</a>
is the website created by the entrepreneurs promoting their tours.</p>
<p>NJRes</p>
<p>I did say the word "Barney," but no one laughed. I think they were worried that I really was that stupid. Luckily, my son knew what was going on.</p>
<p>We thought the official Hahvahd tour was so dry. Would have been worth $10 to feel more than bored by the "ivy-covered" speech.</p>
<p>When I was applying to college I really wanted to go to UNC-Chapel Hill. I went to the campus (from Mississippi) for an interview with the admissions couselor which was standard for out of state applicants at that time. I went into the office and before I could say anything the admission counselor said "we were so surprised someone from Mississippi could read and write we were only waiting for your appearance to verify you were real." I was so naive and stunned I just stood there - I think he was probably kidding but it forever has tainted my feelings about the school. I sat through the interview feeling like a complete idiot and it was very uncomfortable. I was accepted but there was no way I would ever go there. </p>
<p>And here is a funny one -
A friend of mine (military brat, stationed in Hawaii during high school) said that when she was applying to colleges she really wanted to go to Brown. It was her dream school. She eventually got her rejection letter from the admissions office. She was so mad that she wrote them a "*** you" (her words) letter with a sharpie on a coconut and she mailed it to them. She ended up graduating from Brown 4 years later!</p>
<p>Another story from a Drew tour - our group included a loud, obnoxious mother who was describing Drew and the tour to her prospective applicant daughter OVER HER CELL PHONE!! The daughter was not there and by the conversation (which you couldn't miss) the daughter did not want to be there! And the tour went downhill from that point. </p>
<p>Now my husband had worked at Drew when our daughter was born, so she kind of grew up there and was very familiar with the campus. We were sure that was where she was going to go to college, because she seemed to like it so much. (Husband was no longer working there when it was time for her to go to college, so no free tuition to be an advantage). Well, our tour guide sure put an end to that! He was extremely politically oriented and made sure to bring that out in all his discussions. The people we met along the way were not particularly friendly, and some were obnoxious. My then 12 year old son pulled me aside and commented on it and how he didn't care for this school anymore. I just told him I felt the same way, but not to let his sister know so she could make up her own mind. Well, she said the same thing and so did husband. It came off her list and she did not apply.</p>
<p>MagsMom: I can't believe the guy from UNC said that to you!!! What an idiot! If I wanted someone to attend my school, and by your acceptance it looks like they did, I would never say something like that. It may have been meant for a joke, but that's crossing the line.</p>
<p>Um let's see:</p>
<p>Tour of a university in Medford, MA: my younger brother came along on the tour, and as we were walking out of the parking garage, he hit a pole while running, started crying really loudly, and almost barfed on the pristine lawn. A preppy female student walked by and gave my mother a terrible glare as she was comforting my bro. Then, we finally made it to the admissions office, where we were told that we had missed the tour by an hour. While in the office we looked through a book containing short bios of every tour guide...we quickly noticed that almost every kid was a prep school grad, and the group wasn't very diverse. I am not applying.</p>