Honest thoughts on making most of college tours

I agree with others that the tours, while not perfect, are helpful in getting a sense of the vibe of the school as well as the layout and feel of the campus. We also found the info sessions helpful, sometimes in the sense that they were boring and not well thought-through, which we took as useful information. I think an ideal strategy might be to do a tour and an info session plus something else that will provide a different perspective. People on this thread have mentioned lots of possibilities - eating in the dining hall, attending classes, talking with professors, etc. - and the most appropriate “plus” will vary from family to family. In our case, our S felt very uncomfortable about the idea of eating in dining halls, sitting in on classes, dormstays, etc., but he did try to meet the coach for his sport at each school. He was not a recruited athlete, but in his sport (track) he will still be able to compete at the varsity level at a D3 school. We learned a lot about the schools from those discussions, and the school he will (hopefully) push the button on today is one where the coach spent a lot of time with him, introduced him to some of the team members, invited him to practice, etc.

We went on a bunch of tours with the kid. Sure they are mostly marketing, but you did get to feel the vibe. Some places, like Wash U, actually encouraged and included a coupon to eat in the cafeteria. They highlighted how good their food was. We ate at others as well. We also tried to hit up a place in town to get the vibe there.

At Miami, we did get a person tour of the B school which wasn’t part of the group tour. Our group tour guide was headed over there and took us with. In general, tour guides where helpful with answering questions.

We did get to see a few actual dorm rooms, mostly in the summer time. Others just had a “model” they used.

There is definitely a certain sameness to tours and info sessions, but you can learn a lot by paying attention to subtext, to what they emphasize and what they don’t bring up. If you listen closely, it’s a window into institutional culture and values.

Also, a tour should be only a small part of your visit. Go to a dining hall and don’t eat with your kid. Have your kid talk to students and you talk to different students. My experience has been that, if they’re not studying, students are very happy to both parents and prospectives about their school.

We live on the west coast and spent a week touring schools in (mostly) the northeast, where D19 was pretty sure she wanted to go, so we concentrated all the far schools on her initial long list in one intensive week (focusing on match schools & a couple of reaches). I’m glad we did it before applying because there were a few she scratched off the list, and a couple that moved up; she pretty much solidified her top 5 choices that week.

Unlike some others here, we generally found the info sessions useful; yes there is always a section with the basic stats that you can find online, but there was always something extra…updated stats, more insight into what they look for in applications (from a few), an anecdote of how an essay torpedoed an otherwise excellent application, insight into how X need-aware college worked its admissions, insight into how much ED really impacted at a few of them, etc. We also expected the info session to be much more professional than the student led tours and to be able to answer different types of questions.

The student tours were a bit hit and miss in terms of the guides but mostly pretty decent, we did feel a number of them just had too many people though. About half the tours we went on showed dorms.

One college we did a self guide tour and felt we didn’t get nearly as much out of it as the others we visited.

Our best college visits included unstructured time, where we ate at a restaurant near campus and later had coffee/tea at a campus coffee shop and hung out listening to student conversations and watching people walk by. Also time to find the central bulletin board and read posters for events - do they advertise parties, lectures, protests, movie screenings? Official tours can’t tell you many things, but little things like that can.

We visited 15 schools. What we found most helpful was the major specific tours, including facilities; eating in the dining halls; meeting with profs and having DD sit in on classes. That wasn’t possible everywhere but we found that was all more useful than the general info sessions/tours.

@birkygg I agree that Big State Us are very similar, little LACs are similar…but for some those tours are necessary so you can see that NYU doesn’t have a campus. But for others who research, it may not be necessary to see all the colleges. But going on a tour for Ursinus (2000 UGs) the tour guide stopped in a class to say hi to a professor…that gives you an idea of the advantage of a small school.

Ive been on so many college tours, and I think it is essential for students and parents to visit-I don’t think you can get a real idea of a place from a website or what your neighbor thinks. That being said these schools need to develop EXPRESS tours. 30 minute info session. 40 minute tour of things we want to see: dorms, athletic centers, academic facilities, labs. Give everyone lunch or at least a cup of coffee.

These tours get so tedious and repetitive! It’s exhausting.

We visited Connecticut College last week and I give the tour guide a high mark for not using the word “literally” even once. The whole place moved up a notch in my book!

If I have to hear “you literally can swipe your card 15 TIMES in the dining hall and eat ALL DAY long WHENEVER you feel like it!” I will walk out then and there!

From tour scripts and promotional videos I was always interested to see and hear how the school presented itself, what it emphasizes and what it values and wants you to know. For example UCLA clearly wanted us to know that they valued and were great at athletics. They bragged a lot about all their many national championships. Barnard College wanted to make sure we understood that it was basically a back door into Columbia. Dartmouth made sure we came away knowing that they were heavily focused on the undergraduates. Princeton went on and on about how much Princetonians love Princeton. And so on.

@BronxBaby LOL. In a somewhat similar vein, every college/university tour includes a mention of its quidditch team – shorthand for “we are nerds but we don’t take ourselves too seriously” – without realizing that every college/university has a quidditch team.

One thing about waiting until acceptances are out before touring schools, I get that it lets you save time and money. However, it could be a risky strategy at schools that consider demonstrated interest.

Our S actually counted all references to quidditch as negatives. He loves the Harry Potter movies, but it’s obvious you can’t fake quidditch in the muggle world.

My eyes have really been opened as to how a good or poor tour guide can influence your perception of a place.

Two years ago I toured Amherst with my eldest kid. We were blown away by the place. The guide was knowledgeable and really packed a lot of good information into the hour tour. He started off by asking what everyone’s interests were (this is something I always like though I appreciate it is not always possible, especially with large groups). He spoke with people in all the buildings we went in and drew them in to the conversation to share their opinion on life at Amherst. At the end of the tour he offered to take questions and provided my kid with his email if she wanted to ask him anything else at a later date. As tours go, it was pretty much as good as they get.

This past week I toured again with my younger kids, the tour set off 15 minutes late but we got two tour guides. Ask me anything you want about the main guide’s life to date, talking about it appeared to be his favorite subject. The other guide hung around at the back chatting with a mother telling her things like her son should totally pick Amherst over Harvard as he’ll be up against Grad students for professor’s attention at Harvard (I’m not specifically disagreeing with this logic by the way) offering very little input.
No mention of the Russian archives; we didn’t visit the Beneski Museum, both of which which I consider big parts of Amherst and major draws. The second tour guide chimed in that she’d just learnt that JFK gave his final speech in the library on campus before getting assassinated, which was, like, really cool. Then we had to cut the tour short in order to make the info session.

My kids came away thinking this place isn’t anything like the place their older sibling and I had described. Now I don’t think Amherst has gone from amazing to just seeming ok in two years but I can full understand why my kids have such differing opinions of the place.

Jon234:

Interesting story about Amherst. To me, this illustrates why you shouldn’t read too much into the quality of your tour guide. I imagine that most schools have numerous student tour guides, and some are bound to be better than others. Or maybe you catch one on a good day or a bad day. The school is what it is, and whether the luck of the draw gives you a good tour guide or a bad one, prospective students and their parents should try to look beyond that.

You only get one chance to make a first impression. I’m not disagreeing with what you say but I can imagine it’s not easy to look past this for most 17 year olds. It is human nature to form an opinion based on all the information, good, bad and indifferent, that you have available. For better or worse, the tour guide goes into that equation.

Thankfully, this has been my first experience of a tour guide I was less than impressed with. I remain a fan of Amherst.

@BronxBaby - completely agree - I have ADHD. Give me the abbreviated tour, please, but maybe you can have different tours to choose from. I don’t need to schlep across campus to see the athletic facilities. Is there a pool? Climbing wall - yes or no? That’s all I need to know. Lol.

I feel like the tours (for me, anyway) are really more about getting the student’s perspective on the ins and outs of the school. What is the social life like? What do people do on the weekends? How is the food? Are you able to get the classes you need? How accessible are the professors? Do you have music practice rooms for students? Have you had research opportunities?

Maybe we were lucky that Georgetown was our first tour. At an hour and 1/2, it was loooooong, but we learned so much about all it had to offer and I found myself asking at other schools - do you have _____?

And, yes, I hope schools realize that their guides are being carefully scrutinized for their communications skills. I’m not going to send my kid to a school that can’t produce articulate students.

I took my daughter to an open house of a particularly good university. The droning, on and on. Panel discussion this, real world applications of their programs that. It just went ON and ON. Although there was a very nice continental breakfast none of it was allowed in the theater where the presentations were given! It was quite disagreeable.

@birkygg I don’t think schools do private personal tours. At least that I know of. Sometimes you may end up getting a personal tour if you’re the only family on the tour that day. But, I doubt schools do personal tours. Some tours do include peaks into dorms. And families are usually allowed to eat in the cafeteria before or after the tour…