<p>I'll start! We were on one college tour and the guide was earnestly telling us how secure their campus is. He was facing us talking. Over his shoulder we could all see someone climbing in the window of a first floor dorm room. Oh.</p>
<p>I’m not sure this counts as “funny ha-ha,” but when we were visiting Carleton, I asked whether there were opportunities for biology students to conduct independent research. The tour guide said no, because the biology professors recognize that the students don’t really know enough to do things on their own.</p>
<p>At Yale our tour guide apparently misjudged the timing and/or amount of his morning coffee, because half way through the tour he had to duck into a nearby dorm to pee. We all followed him into the dorm and got to see dorm rooms - something not normally part of the tour.</p>
<p>LOL, OP. Has that college been ruled out?</p>
<p>From the flip side of things: I give tours at my college and one weekend it happened to be our annual ConBust event. While talking to the group about academics, a guy (mind you, I go to a women’s college) dressed in a pink unicorn costume comes running THROUGH the group yelling things about Charlie and Candy Mountain ;). Took me a few seconds to come up with something to say after that…</p>
<p>we were touring a prison-like dorm at U of Illinois and there was a kid in the hall trying to scoop up vomit with a pizza box…</p>
<p>At the University of Denver, as our tour group was walking across the quad, a stray frisbee came seemingly out of nowhere, sailing toward our group, and a rather large (muscular) student came chasing after it. He collided with our tour guide, sending him to the ground. The student and his friends ran off laughing while our tour guide was laying there, expelling several, well-chosen curse words. In conclusion, they had to bring us a replacement tour guide, as the old one likely ended up on the disabled list.</p>
<p>On one tour, the tour guide pointed out to us a tall dorm that was actually quite slanted as the foundation was crumbling (it looked to me like the leaning tower of pizza). She thought it was an interesting thing to show us and told us that they were permanently closing it at the end of the year. Because of a concern for student safety of course! What she couldn’t explain, when asked, was why it was okay for students to be living there now!</p>
<p>My D is working admissions this summer at her LAC and gives 2 or 3 tours a day. She told me last week a mom asked why their weren’t bathtubs? Ewwww!</p>
<p>“…a tall dorm that was actually quite slanted as the foundation was crumbling (it looked to me like the leaning tower of pizza)”</p>
<p>Loving this description of a lopsided college dorm tower.</p>
<p>While we were touring Stanford a student drove by on a steamroller (he apparently rented it) and was calling to everyone to bring out stuff they wanted flattened by the roller. He went all over campus. We saw him run over an old typewriter, a folding chair, a skateboard, and a bunch of other random stuff.</p>
<p>I didn’t see this but read about it in the LA Times: A group of Caltech students planted a female friend into an admissions tour - pretending to be an interested high school student. Halfway through the tour the guys ran up and “kidnapped” the girl, shouting “We got one! We got one!” as they carried her away.</p>
<p>A student of mine once decided to pull a prank and pretend that his dorm was a crime scene. He put up police tape and drew bodies with chalk on the floor. Unfortunately, he chose a time to do this when a distinguished group of visitors from Japan were touring campus and came through the dorm - with the Chancellor!
Needless to say, the student, who did extremely well academically, was put on probation!</p>
<p>perhaps pulling pranks on tour groups is part of the Caltech tradition - on our tour of the houses, we came across 2 or 3 students sprawled on the floor with empty beer cans scattered around them, we had to step over both the students and the empty beer cans as we made our way through the hallway. As we gathered in the dining room of the house, I turned back to see the students get up, collect the empty beer cans from the floor and head back into their rooms laughing. My son nudged me and whispered “prank”. I’d forgotten all about it until I read this thread. (DS is now a Caltech grad.).</p>
<p>^^^CalTech definitely as its own brand of humor/pranking. Glad it worked well for your DS. :)</p>
<p>While we were standing in front of the registration desk waiting to sign in for a tour, a student tour guide came up to the desk and said to the student taking our names “I ain’t got no pencil - can I have one?” Seriously? And you are the tour guide? They did have delicous cookies though! 
That was the same trip where I learned to never rent a car in San Francisco without finding the defroster before driving away. I learned this lesson when I paid the toll to cross the Oakland bridge, and the traffic immediately sped up to 55MPH on each other’s BUMPER as we began crossing the frigid body of water. Told my nondriving teen “you have 10 seconds to find and turn on the defroster before we head over the side of the bridge.” She found it. Now THAT is motivated learning!</p>
<p>Oh dear that sounds like Caltech! 
On our Caltech tour our guide was showing us her room. A bunch of kids were sitting around in a lounge-y area of the hall that was filled with pretty decrepit looking sofas and eating pizzas. As we left her room, they said, “We hope she told you she has the best room in the dorm!” (She did say it was a little bigger than average BTW.)</p>
<p>Sort of a funny/sad incident happened at Bard in February which apparently thinks that keeping ice on the sidewalks is the environmentally friendly thing to do. A girl slipped and fell flat on her back and then hopped up and said, “It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m a student here.” I of course am thinking, no it’s not okay, not okay for visitors and probably even more not okay that students can’t get around without being in danger of serious injury.</p>
<p>“keeping ice on the sidewalks is the environmentally friendly thing to do”</p>
<p>What idiocy. If I were a nearby injury claims attorney, I’d hire someone to pass out flyers and business cards on campus.</p>
<p>At Rensalaer Polytechnic Institute our tour guide gave us a rapid-fire presenation, all while walking backwards during the ENTIRE TOUR!!! I guess he thought that eye contact with the group was the priority, but the kid was so darn fast that I was winded throughout the hour-long sprint, er…march. Tried to give him the hint to slow down a couple of times when the line of straglers stretched for about 50 yards. No luck, Speedy Gonzalez just kept on rollin.'</p>
<p>When we toured ECU, our tour guide was a very personable young man. A grad. student who had also attended for undergrad. there, he was very knowledgeable.<br>
The group is hanging on his every word, when he stops us in the student rec. center and asks “Guess what the highest paying student job here on campus is”. There are the usual guesses…TA, Office Assistant, Life Guard (we were standing by the pool), campus bus driver,etc.</p>
<p>Finally, with a big grin on his face, he says “You are all wrong. The best paying student job on the ECU campus is Live Nude Model. They make $17/hour!!!” It was no joke.
ECU is known in the state for it’s excellent art school and does indeed pay willing students to be models for art classes!</p>
<p>We didn’t tour this school ( but a friend did- east coast LAC), the tour guide when asked about drug use & availability responded, " you can find anything you want here!"</p>
<p>Probably not the answer the parent was looking for.
:o</p>
<p>We also had a tour led by a football player, in which he took great pains to point out all the eating places around campus , as well as the sports facilities, but little else.</p>