<p>After a couple of weeks being a tour person, I noticed most of the visitors dont take advantage of their campus visits. They usually ask what is on the web site. They usually ask knowing the answer like showing up before the rest. They dont ask to see beyond what is shown. They dont see at all!
I wanted to tell you what every group has in common and their mistakes.
1- Every time I show a room, they go inside in a quickly and shy mode; when we walk out of the building I ask if they like the red toilet seats, and then realized they didnt even look to see if the bathrooms have toilets or they are like in Pleasantville. They didnt even see if there was a window or two; they dont know about the furniture because they dont recall saw it at all.
2- Going to the cafeteria is another story. Everything is fantastic! There was no food on the trays because it was too early. Just a few are willing to eat on campus after that how can they know how tasteful is the food?
3- Classes. We always show the same ones depending the professors, quick peek and is everybody out. Last time I ask if they agree to have classes in Chinese for math like the one they just saw, and everybody says they didnt listen to the professor; they just looked at the classroom itself. The class is in English.</p>
<p>The list is long and Im wondering if you parents have too much money to waste in colleges tour if you dont take advantage of it.
My advices are:
1- Ask to see another room, preferably cheaper and older to compare
2- Never leave campus without trying the food
3- Seat in any class, observe how is given
4- Talk to random students on the way
5- Visit the health facilities and ask about the health insurance plan
6- Walk around by yourself, dont get limited to the tour
7- Read the brochures and what its on the web page before coming to campus
8- Dont be afraid to ask, and please, dont ask about the tour guide feelings because she/he must be the opposite to your child
9- If you have an International tour guide like myself, and you are also international, dont be afraid to ask everything you need to know, maybe we could help you.</p>
<p>These are excellent suggestions! I’d like to add one more that we found very helpful: sit outside in the quad and observe as students are walking between classes. Are they walking in pairs or groups and talking to each other? Or is everyone on a cell phone completely engrossed in his or her own little world? How are the students dressed? While you’re in the cafeteria notice how the students cluster at tables - Are there visible ethnic separations? These are some things that helped my kids decide if they would fit in to a given school. The differences among campuses were incredible.</p>
<p>How many in your tour group actually believed that class was in Chinese? After your tour, some may have been commenting on the weird tour guide they had. You have to realize how much of an impact you, as a tour guide, have on prospective students. One of the schools I liked the most, my son didn’t like. He commented on the tour guide being a geek! I thnk that influenced him on the school.</p>
<p>From our prospective, we may have seen several campuses. There may be certain things we are looking at that aren’t known to you. Sometimes we want the guide to reinforce what the web site said. Most of our tours didn’t involve any bathrooms and that may not be important to people.</p>
<p>The suggestions you gave are very good, but few of them could be accomplished on the tour. We always stay around afterwards and do many of the things you mentioned, but you wouldn’t know about it.</p>
<p>Why are you surprised that people don’t look at the bathrooms? Guess what - toilets are a given. So are showers (although once in a while I looked to see how many showers there were for how many kids). After the fourth or fifth tour, all the dorm rooms seem to look the same. And you’d be surprised how much we can take in during the “shy” look at the dorm room - size, light, general feel of the furnishings. We try to get in and out quickly because it’s someone else’s home!</p>
<p>You say, “Ask to see another room.” You haven’t been told which rooms to show? You just barge into anyone’s room on a tour? I asked once to see a room in a particular dorm: “I’m sorry, we haven’t asked anyone in that dorm if we could show their room.”</p>
<p>Cafeteria food? My d didn’t want to try it. “Mom, I’m not making my decision based on food. I assume they have some. I assume that they’re all equally terrible. If the one I go to isn’t, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.”</p>
<p>Visiting the health facilities & asking about insurance is saved for Accepted Student’s Day. It’s not a factor in deciding where to apply.</p>
<p>Most schools require notice before allowing you to sit in on classes. Again, we left that for Accepted Student’s Day.</p>
<p>Remember that we have limited time at each school. We look at what is important to us, not what is important to you.</p>
<p>I’ve been touring campuses for more than ten years, and I found every type of visitors and tour guides.
I had recently a tour guide like Trapper and I think he was the best of all because he got our attention and made us to focus in things we didn’t realize how important would be for our children once they will be living on their own.
I don’t think a tour guide could change our opinion of the campus, like a bad realtor won’t change your opinion on the house you really like, but it could make a difference in the borderline spectrum.
Many parents try to get as many colleges as they can on the same route in one weekend, they go on a tour and rush to the other school as soon the tour finishes to take the next one; I did that and it wasn’t productive at all, at least for me.
Grabbing a newspaper is a good idea, also looking at the career center bulletin board; check the athletic center and health facilities; check the lighting and emergency phone booths.
Chedva, you can leave questions an places to see during accepted days if you are applying RD but if you D wants to apply early, it is better to check everything at once.</p>
<p>Some school let you to inspect more rooms, there are many students ambassadors willing to help you, some don’t and some don’t even show you the rooms.</p>
<p>We’ve been on 10 tours and only Marquette showed us the bathroom. I believe we only saw one “real” dorm room and that was at U of Miami and the rest were staged dorm rooms (BTW Miami shouldn’t show their awful dorms.) Wisconsin hauled us all the way to their gym and it was locked. Gotta love those tours!</p>
<p>At my D’s ED school, we had arranged with a student on CC who had posted on that college’s thread to meet her on campus–I had sent her a PM to arrange it. She showed us her room and her neighbors’ and took us on an informal tour. My D has kept in touch with her now that she has matriculated at that school. We also took the official tour on two different occasions because we wanted to be sure about the ED commitment.</p>