Hey,
I was wondering what other parents thought about college tours, and how you get the most value out of them. In my personal experience, my family and I have either flown or driven a considerable distance to visit a college, only to be disappointed by the same walking tour ever school offers. Honestly, I don’t care about the faculty/student ratio, but they always mentions it! C’mon! Does anyone else feel this way? How did you make the most of your tour?
Thanks and curious if others feel this way!
We visited local colleges first. We then visited different types of colleges, Big State U, remote LAC, city campus, college town.
After that, it was all up in the air. A lot of it was the luck of the draw as to how the tour went.
You know…you are allowed to ask questions on the tours. My kid was a tour guide and she welcomed questions from the potential students, and says seldom were any asked. And if you want additional information, you can attend an info session where you can also ask questions. And you can also read the websites. You can also, at some colleges, request an interview.
If you really feel these are a waste of time and money…wait until you get your acceptances…and then go visit the top three colleges.
My kids, like you, were fortunate that we were able to visit colleges before applications were sent. It helped our kids vet their lists before submitting applications. I guess YMMV on this.
ETA…some colleges also have self guided tours. You pick up a sheet and head out on your own.
What exactly do you want to know that you aren’t finding out between the info sessions and the tours? And have you tried asking questions?
Well it can’t be “the same walking tour every school offers”. They may provide information about that same topics but the information should be different for each school right? And there are some things most parents and students want to hear about. College tours are not Broadway plays. Naturally you’d be disappointed if you thought you were seeing a new play and it turned out to be one you saw before. But what if you went to a school tour and all they discussed was the meal plan (perhaps going into detail about the recipes and where they get the ingredients)? Most on the tour would be irate. They want to know about the factors most likely to impact on their experiences there. The factors impacting quality of life are the same factors for each school but the specifics differ.
Do your college home work before the visit/tour and ask lots of good questions that can’t be found online. My D also took down the email/cell of many of the tour guides she has had so far so that she can contact them again with additional questions or to help when applying to the college in the fall. One needs to be proactive to get the most out of college visits.
or just duck out when the tour rounds a corner.
This is coming from a current college student, so do with it what you want, but I can vividly remember the vibe on campus from a college tour. Sure you get the same “resource opportunities” “student-faculty ratio” and our plethora of libraries and study spaces, but I think there’s a lot of value from tours. Especially once you’ve gotten in, I can’t imagine not having toured a college before I committed. I especially valued my parents’ and siblings’ opinions too since they’ve been thru the process before and know how things kinda work. Not to push the student one way or the other but almost more in an approval kind of way, like “yes I support you and my checks going here”. I also just think you get a very good sense of the vibe of campus by doing a tour. Whether that be seeing how many people are actually outside on campus (I visited one school on a 75 degree sunny day in April and there was not a student to be found and that was a huge turnoff for me – something I wouldn’t have been able to detect without having visited and toured. I also think tours try to eliminate some of the angst and unknown with colleges. By touring, I can get a small glimpse what it’s like being a student… where do they study, where do they live, what’s fun? And whether or not you ask the student guide any questions is irrelevant to just seeing how they interact with the university. I am currently a tour guide and yes, everything is rainbow and sunshines for my tour groups, but I also try to emulate what life is actually like… So to make a long rant even longer, I just think there’s an intangible aspect to tours that are beneficial for the student and the parent and if the college has to throw in a couple of “weird flex” stats out there to brag then so be it. Hope this helped!
We just toured St. Lawrence University on Monday. Our tour guide encouraged questions because he said it made the tours more interesting. I’m one of those parents who has to restrain themselves from asking too many questions, so I can’t say I’ve been on a bad tour. Well, the tour at my alma mater was blah. But all the rest were very informative/helpful.
Oh, and lots of people want to know the faculty to student ratio. I’m kind of curious as to why you don’t care about that.
A simple college tour with a student tour guide is only a piece of the big picture, but I feel that it is a helpful starting point. If your student wants to learn more, have them pair the tour with an info session, read the school’s web pages, and read what outside sources say about the college. Also talk to students, maybe meet with a professor or sit in on a class, have a meal in the cafeteria, walk through the bookstore, etc.
Any school that couldn’t ensure guides gave decent tours dropped a notch in my eyes. On a couple, an admissions person (the guide’s boss) walked part of the way with us. I liked schools where students we encountered interacted with us.
But after one Info Session, we did no more. Trapped, boring, same.
A common complaint from college tour guides is the number of parents and students who have no idea what the college is all about. They haven’t done any prep before travelling to the school. Some are surprised and upset that Georgetown is Catholic, that NYU doesn’t have a real campus, that people actually speak French in Montreal (that from my son when he was a tour guide at McGill), that Penn is not a state school etc. etc.
I love college tours and I especially consider a student-lead tour to be very informative and useful. I did far too many with my first child and just the right number with my second. We took time to see interesting sights along the way whenever possible. I strongly suggest encourage college tours on weekdays when colleges are in session. Nothing beats seeing students on campus.
Both of kids only ever flew once to visit a campus and that was after acceptance. I personally would not spend the money unless the college was under serious consideration.
@TomSrOfBoston very funny examples.
@collegecrazy2017 Thanks for the reply! Out of curiosity, do families ever ask you for a personal tour guide after you give the official one? Maybe one where you get to see an actual dorm, or eat at a cafeteria? I realize that may be overwhelming to have the entire family there, but maybe something similar but just with their prospective student?
@birkygg A one-on-one tour would be very unlikely. Some tours include limited dorm tours and a dining option for the group. But realize that having strangers walking through a dorm and peeking in rooms would be invasive.
Also thank you everyone for sharing their stories. I didn’t mean to have such a negative outlook on college tours in the original post. I just was curious if people felt the same way I have after 4-5 tours. Each tour is unique and does offer perspective unique to each school, so that is always cool to hear coming from a the student guide.
@TomSrOfBoston absolutely that would be a little creepy. I mean maybe a way for just the prospective students to. Seems hard to coordinate with the tour guide, and I’m not sure the university/college would be ok with that.
My S said that the most valuable information he got out of college tours usually wasn’t what he heard from the guides (although some of them were great and were a good source of information). What he really valued was what he saw and overheard while he was walking around. He heard students talking in dorm hallways (sometimes embarrassed when they saw t a tour group come swinging around a corner towards them), in the library, and walking by on campus. At one school he saw students eating lunch with a professor whose class he’d just sat in on, saw students rehearsing a play and helping one another with their lines, etc. I think he’s right…the tours get you to places on campus you might not see on your own, provide some good basic information and the chance to ask for more, AND they let you be a fly on the wall…which may be the most useful part.
My advice would be what @thumper1 said - do research to decide where to apply, but wait for the tours until after the acceptances come in. We made the mistake of touring three or four schools across the country before ever applying; we would up going back to three of them anyway for auditions, and the fourth she didn’t pass the prescreen. All said and done we spent about $3K we didn’t need to.