<p>i understand that relationships can break apart and whatnot - but i think it should be your choice to live with whoever you want. nobodys stopping four gay men that are dating from having an apartment on campus together.. or from being roommates. to me it's the same thing as a girl wanting to room with her boyfriend. in my case, my boyfriend doesn't even go to my school, but i'd perfer to live with my guy friends - people i'm not dating. a few of them have came and stayed for a few days at my apartment. i have an empty bed in my room and they crash there. I don't think there is anything wrong with that (and neither does my boyfriend, whom i've been dating for the past five years).. and i just don't see why we can't "live" together. They can live in the apartment right next door, (or a dorm on another floor if i was in the dorms).. but not in the same apartment/room. That's all I'm saying.</p>
<p>and as far as drinking, the whole weight thing is a big thing. the weights of the girls in my apartment are anywhere from 92-150 (i think). you could give 2 drinks to the 92 lb and she'd be drunk. give them to the 150 lb girl and she'd barely feel it.</p>
<p>We had a funny moment at Duke when the student tour guide took us through the Student Union. She described the goings on, saying that, among other things, they showed movies. "We have new movies, and we show a lot of the old classic movies too, like . . . the Princess Bride"</p>
<p>I've already mentioned this one elsewhere but I'll mention it again.We asked a tour guide how much time he spent on school work on a typical day. He paused, thinking the question over. "Well, I'm a senior in a very tough major so I probably do more work than most kids on campus," he said seriously. "I must spend about an hour, hour and a half a night on school stuff!" </p>
<p>Ironically, we'd ended up on this tour with a boy my daughter knew from her "AP Euro" class from hell last year and they both looked at each other and started cracking up. Her friend said, in a rather loud voice, "That would be like a VACATION for us!"</p>
<p>We had a funny drinking story at Amherst, too. (Heard this one secondhand from mini XX, as I wasn't there.) D. and Mini XX had noticed a very large number of complaints and arrests for "drunk and disorderly" or some such in the Amherst paper (following the Thursday drinking binges). So my wife asked the tour guide what did the school do if students got into trouble (healthwise) from drinking too much?
The tour guide replied proudly, "Oh, the College doesn't do anything! We are all adults here."</p>
<p>Not a story, but a commentary. The adcom giving the info talk should be good at public speaking. At Northwestern, we skipped the tour because we were bored and falling asleep. (Probably missed a lot of info because we tuned out so much). My D's comment - If the person representing the school can't be excited about it, how will I feel? Yes, adcoms need to present the facts, but can't they have apersonality, too? We heard so many talks by so many people at so many schools, that the info needs to be presented in an informative, but interesting manner. At William and Mary, there were 8 or 10 tour leaders (they divided up the huge room into tour groups). All of them were Greek. After learning that our leader was proud of the fact that the Greek system started there, and about a third of the kids participated, he quickly added, but you don't have to be Greek to fit in. Everyone finds their niche. He even had some friends who weren't in a frat. (BTW, he was a very personable young man, heading for med school) Perhaps it would have been better if some of the tour guides were not part of the Greek system. That certainly would have given those of us who can't afford or choose not to join frats/srties an idea of inclusion. Then, there was the sweet ill at ease dorm guide at Chicago who could barely speak, she was so nervous, (kept saying, "I don't know what else to tell you...)(jammed the key into the lock of the training room and had to report it when none of the dads could remove it again) and with her lack of poise, posture, social grace, uncertainty, etc., that dorm was no longer on anyone's list (we compared notes at the end of he tour)(perhaps the use of battleship grey paint on all the wood also had something to do with it, at that!) I know we want honesty, not prepared speeches from the tour guides, but the colleges should choose their guides perhaps a bit more judiciously. At Chicago last summer, we had bubbly, happy guides who kept regaling us with personal experience stories. Those say more than any canned talk possibly could, and we came back wanting more. At Trinity, our guide told us of calling her environmental science prof at 9 pm about what to pack for her very first ever backpacking trip the next morning which was going to one of the most rugged National Parks in the US, Big Bend. Within 10 minutes, he was at her door, tthrowing out half the stuff she had packed, saying, you don't care how you look - you need more water - food, emergency supplies, and he proceeded to pack everything for her. Rather than hear how the profs are accessible, those stories made lasting impressions on us to this day (and it's been almost a year since we heard them.) Perhaps a good tour guide could have overcome the rattlesnake incident!</p>
<p>We were touring a campus in a location right at sea level, or perhaps just below. The tour guide was pointing out the student union, and explaining the restaurants..."there's the Starbucks, just inside is a Burger King, etc., etc., and, you can't see it from here but Subway is right around the corner from that Pizza Hut...."</p>
<p>An otherwise erudite northeastern parent asked "oh - great - there's a subway - perhaps no need for a car on campus then? - where exactly can you go on the subway"?</p>
<p>The funny part was when it slithered back in to the bushes around the dorm the janitor just left and said "Oh well." He said most of the time they go back in to the brush leading to the ocean (in other words the opposite way).</p>
<p>My son, the ultimate surfer, said "well, I won't be walking through that path to get to the ocean, thats foresure."</p>
<p>at a Georgetown info session I went to, the speaker, a graduate of the school, kept saying "contension" (not a word), when he clearly meant contingent (or possibly convention - he was talking about many members of the audience from the same place).</p>
<p>At Yale:
Our tour guide must have tanked up on coffee, because in the middle of the tour he had to excuse himself and dash into a nearby dorm because he had to pee so bad. All of us on the tour took advantage of the situation and followed him into the dorm (which was not scheduled to be part of the tour), so we got an unauthorized and unsupervised look inside that dorm while our guide was in the restroom.</p>
<p>At Princeton:
The tour guide was African American, which was fine. But he had no sense of tailoring his presentation to his audience, which happened to be entirely white and Asian. He kept taking us around to see things like the Black Student Union, the Black Christian Club, etc. I guess it was a case of tell 'em what you know.</p>
<p>He also said how proud he was that Princeton was the only Ivy that didn't kick out the students from Confederate states at the outbreak of the Civil War. He said that meant a lot to him since he was from North Carolina. I thought how odd, doesn't he realize he is, in effect, congratulating Princeton on its support of the Confederacy and hence slavery? </p>
<p>At Berkeley:
A group of our guide's friends kept following us around and clowing around, signing songs, chanting, etc trying to make the guide forget his lines or break out laughing.</p>
<p>At Stanford:
Some student had gone to a heavy equipment company and rented a steamroller for the day. He was driving it around campus and urging kids to bring out stuff that they wanted to see flattened. We saw him crush a chair, a shopping cart, a bicycle, an old computer, etc.</p>
<p>All these stories about tour guides reminded me about a visit we had to Illinois Wesleyan early on in the process on a very cold winter day. We were in an info session, and it was actually conducted by the Dean of Admissions. It was, in fact, one of the better info sessions we attended. At one point, he mentioned that admissions people have done a number of studies on what it is that makes a school attractive to a prospective student and his/her family. He mentioned that the results of these studies have been pretty consistent. </p>
<p>And the number 1 reason whether a prospective student likes a school or not:-- The weather on the day of the visit.</p>
<p>Number 2 reason:-- Did they like their tour guide or not?</p>
<p>Since hearing this, I've asked a number of friends what they thought about various schools they visited. Interestingly, more often than not, they visited the "out of favor" schools in bad weather and/or they did not like their tour guide. I think that just knowing this helped us get past these two inconsequential factors to see what is really important.</p>
<p>For the most part being a tour guide was a great experience. I like to think that a few parents who took my tour got a good story out of it: "Our tour guide was a high-school flunkout with a GED!"</p>
<p>A year before that happened, though, when my best friend at Bryn Mawr and I were applying to transfer, she took a trip up to Harvard to check it out. It turned out the tour guide went to my high school. After the tour, she had the following exchange with the guide.</p>
<p>Best friend: "Hey, you went to XYZ School? Did you know this girl Hanna?"</p>
<p>Guide: "Hanna? Oh, EVERYBODY knew Hanna. What ever happened to her?"</p>
<p>BF: "She's my best friend -- she goes to Bryn Mawr."</p>
<p>Guide: "HANNA goes to BRYN MAWR??"</p>
<p>BF: "Yeah, we're both applying here for next year."</p>
<p>Guide (dripping with fake sweetness): "Really? SHE'S applying here? Well, that's lovely. Best of luck to the both of you."</p>
<p>BF: "Uh...yeah...thanks, I guess...well, I guess Hanna was pretty certifiable in high school, huh."</p>
<p>Guide: "Oh, DEFINITELY certifiable."</p>
<p>Heh heh heh. I admit to taking special pains to say hello to that guide when I saw her around campus the next year. ;)</p>
<p>Most fun in our visits was watching the tour guides coping with walking backwards while wearing flip-flops. They were great kids, and fortunately not easily flustered. Still, there ought to be a special tour guide training session on the proper technique.</p>
<p>I just was telling my neighbor about this funny posting about tours. She said that at UCSB the path outside admissions is FILLED with bike riders (thats the only way to cross campus on time).
She said during her tour 2 years ago someone "crashed and burned" right outside the admission's office right in front of the kids waiting for their tour guide. The tour guide came, took one look at the girl on the ground and said "oh, this happens all the time - you need to be bicycle friendly if you go here." Foruntately, the girl was NOT injured..</p>
<p>The entire crowd laughed as they helped this girl up.</p>
<p>My neighbor said that she had never liked bike riding, so she decided that UCSB wasn't for her and ended up at SLO.</p>
<p>She said she never forgot the embarrassed look on that girls face!</p>
<p>
[quote]
And the number 1 reason whether a prospective student likes a school or not:-- The weather on the day of the visit.</p>
<p>Number 2 reason:-- Did they like their tour guide or not?
[/quote]
So I see our GC was right in her advice not to visit any schools on our Feb. vacation unless they were in the sunbelt (advice we followed), and to choose info sessions over tours because too many kids decide about a school based on how much they liked/disliked the guide (advice we didn't follow, but at least we were forewarned; and, by chance, we had neither any really bad ones nor any so stupendous as to influence the decision)).</p>
<p>btw, will never forget our JHU tour guide who was the master (mistress?) of backward walking in flip-flops (with heels). Never missed a beat!</p>
<p>This isn't about a tour guide, but I thought it was funny. My D was going to be interviewed in the admissions office of an LAC, and as we were driving there, she was telling me a story (she likes to talk a lot) and using the phrase "and blah, blah, blah" like a lot of girls do to mean "etc.". And I sternly warned her, "Whatever you do, do NOT say 'blah, blah, blah' to the inteviewer!!!" I didn't realize that the college had senior students, not adults, as interviewers, and my D really hit it off with the young woman who interviewed her. When they came out to speak to me after the interview, they were like long-lost best friends together (she was talkative like my D), and, wouldn't you know, when the very nice senior interviewer asked me if I had any questions and began to tell me about herself, out of her mouth came the phrase "Blah, blah, blah" :) I sort of jumped and almost laughed, and I saw my D smirk. My D later received a complimentary letter on the interview, so I guess the "Blah, Blah, Blah...ing" must have worked in her favor after all.</p>
<p>Skidmore - I was with my daughter and her friend. The tour guide came up - a young woman, dressed in goth clothes, tattooed, and pierced. OK, I can live with that, but she had a really bored attitude and I think giving a tour was the last thing she really wanted to do. I sat out this tour and enjoyed a good book. However, daughter and friend had a marvelous time on the tour. Why? A cute boy was on the tour with them and all three pretty much ignored the tour guide.</p>
<p>My D and I went with family for the relative to see Ithaca. When we got there, we were all bundled in coats and scarves. It was a sunny, clear day, but the temperature was still in the high 40's. The tour guide, and the few students we saw around, were all in short sleeves. One student even went by in shorts and flip flops. Someone asked the guide about the weather, and he said it was usually pretty cold, except for "nice warm spring days like this". One of the people in the tour asked him how much snow Ithaca got, and he answered "15". The person said, "15 inches isn't so bad". The guide said, "oh, no. I meant 15 feet." </p>
<p>I was ready to run screaming from the campus when - still in the high 40's - we passed someone lying out on a deck chair, sun bathing.</p>