<p>8-|… I am shocked, SHOCKED that an undergraduate tour guide forgot/didn’t learn part of his patter about Yale that he was supposed to regurgitate. So… have you kid apply to Stanford, Harvard, or Princeton instead. If they can get accepted… this kid may not know what this building is on campus, but he may be more qualified for admission (he got in) than your own kid. And… starting the college search with an HYPS college isn’t a great idea anyway. Get a copy of Fiske, make a list of criteria that matter, and plan visits around schools that are matches, reaches, and safeties. Don’t get hung up by one faux pas (that probably only you noticed) by one tour guide. Today’s college admissions process is a marathon, not a sprint, and strategy, planning, and not getting thrown off by one silly incident is pretty important.</p>
<p>I have been on college tours for each of my daughters over the past 10 years or so in which the majority of the people on the tour knew more about the college than did the tour guide (University of Delaware). I went on one tour where guide told us she had no idea why she attended the college other than location and frat parties but she had changed major 4x and it seemed to be working out okay(Northwestern) one tour where the guide told us the main reason for applying to that school was no essay was required for admission (several years ago University of Hartford and no daughter did not apply there). At American University large group for accepted students day the guide chose to stop and talk to group in front of lawn sprinklers and grounds crew so not only was it hard to hear anything, everyone got soaked… oops. </p>
<p>On the other side the best tours and tour guides we ever experienced were at the University of Rochester with older d (he gave her a personal business card for follow-up questions) and Cornell (daughter and one international student, new to campus) with one student under umbrella in driving rainstorm. Tour guide couldn’t have been nicer despite having to talk to two totally different situations. </p>
<p>You can’t be too judgmental. For some schools it is quite difficult to be accepted as a tour guide - you do have to study for a test to be accepted and go through training process. For other schools it is simply another work-study job. Schools do try to have tour guides from a variety of majors, ethnic groups, male/female and so on… so sometimes it is a matter of luck of the draw. </p>
<p>OP, good thing you took a tour of Yale early and scratched below its “glistening surface” and figured out that it’s filled with dumb students. Now you know your kid shouldn’t apply and you and your kid can work on finding a school that’s a better fit. Good luck!</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I live in a college town, but not New Haven. When my kids were babies, I was part of a “mother’s” group that was split - half “university” women and half “townies.” The term, as used here, simply distinguishes a person as not being related to the university - nobody in my group used it in a mean spirited way. This group was started in the 1930s for women who have kids kindergarten age or younger. Of course, back in the 30s a “university” woman was someone married to a professor, not someone who could be professor herself. So some terms change, I guess, while others remain the same. But my point is that “townie” doesn’t have to be derogatory, or meant in a derogatory way.</p>
<p>As a townie, I can attest that the situation is a bit better than this (from the Harvard Crimson, 1952, sticking the needle in):</p>
<p><a href=“Gory Battles, Open Hostility, Resentment Set Tone of Yale Town-Gown Relationships | News | The Harvard Crimson”>Gory Battles, Open Hostility, Resentment Set Tone of Yale Town-Gown Relationships | News | The Harvard Crimson;
<p>“When, in 1864, a student stabbed a New Haven man to death. Yalies gathered firearms of every sort, congregated in two buildings, and dug in for a sizable siege. Furious townspeople rolled three cannon onto the Green, facing the buildings. President Wooley told frustrated students not to shoot until fired upon, but then to shoot accurately. However, police managed to quash the oncoming slaughter.”</p>
<p>Here’s a town-gown timeline of events from the Yale Alumni Magazine, which has this tidbit from 1806:</p>
<p><a href=“Yale Alumni Magazine: Highs & Lows of Town & Gown (March 2001)”>http://archives.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/01_03/town_gown.html</a></p>
<p>“A full-scale riot, the first of many fought with fists, clubs, and knives, breaks out between off-duty sailors and Yale students. Townspeople refer to the leader of the Yale mob, Guy Richards, as the ‘College bully’. Soon thereafter, students turn the title into an elected undergraduate position until it is outlawed by the faculty in 1840.”</p>
<p>Today, there is no rioting, but townspeople have a kind of love-hate relationship. For generations, Yale was a large but not dominant presence in town. Private businesses–New Haven was the Detroit of buggy manufacture–was a bigger economic factor, but today Yale and the hospital are the largest employers. The city also struggles with all that untaxed property and has to go hat in hand to Yale. “Tax Yale,” is on the lips of many. On the other hand, we acknowledge that Yale is a great cultural and recreational enhancer–the restaurants, the museums, the concerts (although we have noticed that the Philharmonia has decided to charge for the first time this year). The city, for those who can afford a house, thanks to Yale, was relatively immune from the real estate bubble.</p>
<p>I’m the one who first used the term “townie” in post #2 and then deleted it when I edited the post. I did not intend for so much of this thread to be devoted to the term. FWIW: I was using “townie” to describe local students that live in New Haven. That’s because when the OP toured Yale in mid-August, the vast majority of undergrads (maybe 95% to 99% of them) have gone home or are on vacation because campus housing shuts down after the summer term ends, but before students move back in for the fall term. I did not mean it in a derogatory way.</p>
<p>Lolzz the OP thinks it’s important that people memorize the names of WWI battles and learn the history of the buildings where they eat breakfast. </p>
<p>Honestly, who gives a darn?</p>
<p>@clandarkfire … I give one. My father is a baby boomer from The Great War, he raised me singing marching songs that his father taught him. My father was an aviator in the 8th army air corps. The aftermath of WWI planted the seeds of WWII. I teach my son the battles that shaped my father’s and grandfather’s life. This shaped mine. Mine shaped his. So, most definitely I give one. The battles listed on the building’s face made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It choked me up to see that the sacrifices were remembered. Who gives a darn? That question gets my hackles up.</p>
<p>Edited for language
ED
Moderator</p>
<p>OP, I agree, that sounds disappointing. We toured Yale last summer. Tour guide was one of the very best we have had – and between D and S, we have been to 20 + schools. She did explain the memorial, altho perhaps not to the extent you would have liked. ^ ElMimino, I am sorry to hear your reaction. </p>
<p>Point is, at a few schools we had tour guides who showed that spark of wit / intelligence / deep affinity with the school which is hard to describe, but not to recognize. Did not find it in all tour guides at big name schools…not everyone who is brilliant makes a good tour guide. And some kids can be great tour guides at schools which are not big name, either (one extremely engaging theater major comes to mind).</p>
<p>I don’t think you should dismiss Yale because of one inexperienced student. </p>
<p>Isn’t it a little subjective though? I mean, if not knowing enough about WWI and/or the connections it has with a building on campus is enough evidence to dismiss a student’s intelligence and even the whole student body’s of the university, can any of our kids be up to a test like this since individuals may have different perceptions as for what knowledge is fundamental and critical to know? And despite the distributional requirements, Yale students do have different majors, interests and strengths. While I agree WWI should be something everyone should know about regardless one’s background and interest, it could be a “lesser sin” to an engineering student than to a history major. I say have some faith in the educators at Yale in their ability in selecting an overall high quality student body as what the current k-12 system or society can produce, and cut some slack for our kids who have a long way ahead of them to learn and to grow. </p>
<p>I wonder, though, whether a student at an elite (or non-elite) school with a big core requirement, such as Chicago or Columbia would be more conversant with historical detail than at a school with more free-form requirements. </p>
<p>An educational philosophy consideration. </p>
<p>The term townie is also used at Cornell. Read that in their school paper that lists all the commonly used terminologies/acronyms. </p>
<p>@gibby </p>
<p>I think what bothered me most was that you equated inferior tour guide with “townie”. Couldn’t the tour guide have been an undergrad student who hung around NHV to take a few summer classes? It’s bad enough that NHV folks get such a bad rap. Now we are too inferior to be tour guides. 
</p>
<p>Sure the tour wasn’t given by Harvard students?</p>
<p><a href=“Harvard Tours Yale: The Game 2013 - YouTube”>Harvard Tours Yale: The Game 2013 - YouTube;
<p>It’s flat-out embarrassing that a student who had been at Yale for a year, and who had been selected to give tours, hadn’t figured out that Commons and Woolsey Hall are war memorials, and that the names on the facade of Commons are famous battle sites in France and Belgium. It’s also ridiculous to suggest that’s typical in any way of Yale students. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I somehow doubt that most Yale students could tell you much about Jonathan Edwards, Timothy Dwight, Abraham Pierson, John Davenport, Ezra Stiles . . . . Any more than most Harvard students know lots about John Leverett or Cotton Mather.</p>
<p>My daughter wrote off Brown because the otherwise perfectly pleasant and informative tour guide knew absolutely nothing about the monumental sculptures that dot the campus. My daughter thought that was anti-intellectual, and she was probably right. So what? </p>
<p>@latichever , that was not our experience. Our two most boring, uninformative tours were at Columbia and Harvard. Granted, we weren’t making application decisions based on the entertainment or information value of the guides, but our tours of those two schools did not enhance our opinions of either school nor produce a sense of awe for their core requirements. ;)</p>
<p>There was also another Ivy where the admissions officer struck up a conversation with my son and told us that we wouldn’t be missing much if we missed the tour and talked to him instead. We had a lovely chat with the AO but, in the end, DS chose not to apply to that school. I doubt the tour would have changed his mind.</p>
<p>I think that the moral of this story is that student guides have different interests and ideas of what is most important about their school. At most schools, guides are briefly introduced and prospective students are encouraged to go with a tour guide who shares their interests, potential majors, etc. If you want to learn about the art and architecture, choose a guide in Art History; campus history, choose a History major. Etc. DS was a prospective STEM major. Clearly, our interest was in the academic programs and not in the art and architecture, and we chose our guides accordingly. </p>
<p>Kinda surprised that people write off schools because a student tour guide doesn’t know every detail about the campus. Though, to be fair, DS wrote off a popular West Coast school because he didn’t like the architecture. Soooo…</p>
<p>The last time I talked to my daugter (a junior), I asked her if she know what Commons was a memorial to. She did, and she knew that those names were battles. It was her opinion that most Yale students would know, because most of them have had AP Euro History or the equivalent. I’m not so sure about that, but it’s probably true of many of them. She did say that there are some students there who know a great deal about a few things, but little about anything else. I question whether such a person would become a tour guide, but I guess it’s possible.</p>
<p>“I note that the memorial in the Woolsey Hall rotunda doesn’t only honor Yale alumni who died defending this country. It also honors those who fought against it on behalf of the Confederate States of America.”</p>
<p>Fascinating…the alumni who gave Memorial Hall in honor of Civil War dead pointedly did NOT include Harvard’s Confederate dead, though there were a few. When Memorial Church was built to honor WWI dead (and, later, casualties in all wars to come), the alumni made a different decision and included the names of the 4 Harvard graduates who died fighting for the Germans. However, there’s a parenthetical saying (enemy casualty) after each of those 4 names. In 1945, FDR was inscribed among the casualties of WWII, because alumni felt that the stress of the war led to his early death.</p>
<p>-- former non-sucky Harvard tour guide, if I may be forgiven for saying so</p>
<p>There is this controversy from 2001:</p>
<p><a href=“Yale slavery report questioned by experts - Yale Daily News”>http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2001/12/12/yale-slavery-report-questioned-by-experts/</a></p>
<p>A report written by three Yale doctoral candidates and published this summer, entitled “Yale, Slavery and Abolition,” alleged that nine of Yale’s 12 residential colleges were named for slave owners. And, according to the report, Yale alumni halted plans for what would have been the country’s first black college.</p>
<p>OTOH, Yale awarded the first doctoral degree in the US to an African American.</p>
<p>And Yale is not alone. Harvard has its own slave owning history. Apparently, their first endowed chair at the Law School was funded by profits from the slave trade.</p>
<p><a href=“http://articles.courant.com/2001-08-17/news/0108170289_1_slave-trade-yale-slavery-case-slaveholders”>http://articles.courant.com/2001-08-17/news/0108170289_1_slave-trade-yale-slavery-case-slaveholders</a></p>