<p>One thing I liked at my college visits was going on residence hall tours, which were like hour long tours where you got to see rooms in multiple halls so you could compare to see which one you liked best. Much better than quickly walking by one room in one dorm on a campus tour.</p>
<p>I think that making small efforts to be personal go a long way. Some schools made an effort, and some didn’t. Making someone feel at home goes a long way. </p>
<p>At one visit/audition, multiple guides wished me luck before my audition, and asked me how it went afterwards. The music staff invited me to listen to the wind ensemble rehearsal, and the department head sat down to talk me through a schedule and answer questions for an hour. Even though it was the biggest school I applied to, it felt the smallest because of all the personal attention. I loved that, and I’m attending that school this fall.</p>
<p>Highlights from college tours over the past 4 years (with 2 kids):
GWU gave out Popsicles on a very hot day,
Elizabethtown College had one tour guide per family and gave out a small carrot cake to take home (I liked this but my D thought it was strange),
Tufts had giveaway ponchos which helped during a downpour,
Elon has a wonderful intro film,
Swarthmore had a day for juniors which provided great advice for both parents and students.
Non-highlights include the info session at Brown where we learned about getting a “liberal” education, the tour guides at Fairfield who ditched the tour group due to rain, and a tour at York College that included most of the gym but not a single classroom.</p>
<p>I would strongly reinforce the importance of going inside the buildings. The architecture may be beautiful and the history of the school may be interesting, but I really care about where my child will be living, eating, learning. Some tours went in a few buildings, but they were the showcase buildings, like the cathedrals or museums. I don’t really care about this. Take us inside the dorms, dining halls and at least one classroom building. This is much more important.</p>
<p>Secondly, give good directions from the parking lot to the info session. The worst experience we had was at Boston College, where the parking garage was REALLY far from the info session, there were no maps, signs, or indications of the name of the building, and the entrance to get in was on the opposite side of the building. It was so frustrating. We had to ask numerous people for directions, and no one knew where to send us. </p>
<p>I really appreciated tour guides who would stop under shady areas in the heat and wait to speak when everyone could hear them.</p>
<p>I like others’ suggestions for free parking and a meal in the dining hall :)</p>
<p>Most of all, I have read a lot of threads where people have been turned off from a school because of a tour guide. I think it’s important to recognize that these are students, not much older than the kids looking at the schools, and the school should not be judged based on the guide’s behavior.</p>
<p>At Columbia the tour only showed the lobbies of buildings. At Brown the tour did not enter any building and the admissions person who spoke at the information session did not introduce himself (the two students however did). At Drew’s open house/tour they did not let you into the library! At GW the tour guide made this big speech about security on campus and then proceeded to get us into buildings without showing any ID!</p>
<p>My favorite college visit story is when we arrived at Brown and checked into the Brown Inn on campus (now closed). We left the inn and proceeded to walk down the block where we witnessed several police arresting a kid on a bike. How is that for a welcome!</p>
<p>Youdon’tsay–I agree-try to match up the tour guides with intended majors as much as possible. In big group tours I understand this isn’t possible but for individual tours, it shouldn’t be that hard. One tour we went on the guide was a theater major, showing our potential math major around. He couldn’t answer a single question S had about the math department, etc. He asked about meeting with someone from the math department, nope, they couldn’t arrange that for whatever reason (weekday visit, pre-scheduled over a month in advance). </p>
<p>One school we attended, they try to get your tour guide to match your major or as close as possible and get one from your general geographic region. Our tour guide was from our neighboring town and graduated from our same school district (different high school though). That was especially beneficial.</p>
<p>I would say the most common complaint I heard from various tour groups at different colleges was that they didn’t get to see a dorm room. I can understand all the reasons they may not want to do that, but it was a definite plus at places where they did it (I remember seeing dorm rooms at Amherst and NYU).</p>
<p>It always bothers me when at a college that has a strong engineering focus and all of the guides are non science majors like communications or something.</p>
<p>We always appreciated tours where we could see the library, group study rooms, and some classrooms including a typical lecture hall where freshman would have classes. Also liked a peek in one dorm room with the option of a more extensive dorm tour later or at the end. Ditto for labs and engineering facilities, could be a separate tour, but provide the option.</p>
<p>It was great when tour guides shared their contact info for questions. I also like seeing how the tour guides interact with other students on campus. That cab. Really show you how friendly a place is.</p>
<p>I appreciated a pen and something to write on. Keeping the pen was nice little memento of the trip. Free t shorts were great but those were rare.</p>
<p>I remember at one school my daughter mentioned that she liked to ride horses to the person who checked us in. The person asked is there something that you what to see that you think may not be on the tour?. While on the tour, guide tracked down the name and cell number of a student on the equestrian team and provided directions to the school barn which was off campus. Ultimately, D went there.</p>
<p>I appreciate that college dorms are not going to look like model apartments, and I’ve got a pretty high tolerance for dorms that are pits coming from an alma mater that I don’t think has such great dorms, but the Haverford dorm / rooms / common areas we saw were beyond disgusting. It was a … c’mon, guys, REALLY? You thought this was appropriate to show? Have you no judgment or common sense, whatsoever? And we had just come from Bryn Mawr, with dorms like castles. </p>
<p>And my pet peeve (they did this at GWU and Tufts) is … you’ve got a lot of people, and then there are, say, 10 guides at the front of the room, each guide introduces him / herself (year, major, where from, interests) and then they tell everyone to flock to the guide that is of most interest. Well, so the hot girls / guys get the most, and the nerdy or different looking tour guides stand there awkwardly when nobody picks them. NO. Don’t do it that way. It’s too much shades-of-being-picked-last-for-gym-class. Just have people count off or do something that assigns everyone fairly / equally / randomly. Really, the world won’t end if you’re a theater major and your tour guide is a science major – deal with it.</p>
<p>Villanova offered open houses on various days for each major college in the university. It allowed some specialized informational programs and tours, and avoided overcrowding. There was one open house for business, one for engineering, one for sciences, one for liberal arts and one for nursing. At each, they had students and profs from those depts. available to answer questions.</p>
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<p>After you do the official tour - look for things they didn’t show you. For example, if they are proud of their library, they will take you inside, but at least one college with a small library purposefully did not take us inside. Another college had a major academic building in serious need of rehab that was not on the tour. The tours and the directions to the admissions office pass by the nicest neighborhoods and try to keep you from noticing that slum on the other side of the campus.</p>
<p>Many colleges will show you the newest dorms. Before you pick a school, find out what the worst dorms are like. </p>
<p>A couple colleges kept a sample dorm room unoccupied so it would always be available for tours. However, many colleges for security reasons don’t let you see any dorm rooms until after you are accepted.</p>
<p>At open houses, I really love when they separate the parents and the kids into different info sessions/tours, or offer a wide variety of activities at the same time. Lawrence (student day) and Wabash (summer science day) did that and it worked out so well. While the kids were off doing a science tour, etc, we parents were asking all those embarassing questions and looking for blue lights. DS and I were also able to divide and conquer for info sessions, one going to theater another to premed. He cared about dorms while I attended financial aid. Once we met up at lunch we were able to point out can’t miss features and rethink afternoon schedules. </p>
<p>I don’t think it was entirely a coincidence that he is attending one and the other was a top pick until the end. </p>
<p>I don’t mind if the tour guide has a different major as long as DS could talk to someone in the department or their materials were good. I love diverse student panels and tour guides-not just shiny admissions types. I like to see athletes, science types, artists, student government types, Greeks and even gamers.</p>
<p>My oldest didn’t care at all about dorm rooms - in his opinion you’ve seen one you’ve seen him all. He actually ended up with a 1 bedroom apartment at Carngegie Mellon - far nicer than anything we’d been shown, but it was a little bit off campus. We didn’t mind since the walk was the only exercise our son ever got. I don’t care much about rooms, but some dorms have much better common spaces than others. </p>
<p>I hear Pizzagirl on the lonely tourguide (though I don’t think hotness was an issue) - we experienced that on our second visit to Tufts where no one wanted the Chinese girl with the accent, except one other Indian family. We ended up touring with her and enjoyed her perspective. She really wasn’t that hard to understand especially since we were such a tiny group. In all my college visits never had a single tour guide that had the same major as one of my kids except the departmental tour at CMU. Our best tour guides were the theater majors - fancy that! :)</p>
<p>The thing that really stands out to me as I look at the list I compiled below is that good or bad visits didn’t seem to matter much to DS - he applied at places with horrible tours, didn’t at places with good ones, and will probably enroll at a school that’s not on either list.</p>
<p>Best tour experiences:
Sample of toasted roll at Miami U
Individual tour at Grinnell
Individual greeting on message board at Iowa State (!)
Free parking without a voucher (just from a friendly attendant who asked if we were visiting) at U Oklahoma</p>
<p>Worst:
Almost entirely exterior tour at Georgetown
Dean who went on (and on) at Pitt
Meals (but not from the dining halls) at Tulane, Pitt (c’mon, if you’re going to pay for lunch anyhow, at least let us go to the dining hall…)
College of liberal arts presentation at Ohio State, with an admissions person who’d been on the job for a week and a few students who got there late and knew nothing</p>
<p>Here is what made my friend and her D hate the school that was probably the best fit: To be able to park in the parking garage, my friend had to show her DL and proof of car insurance. She had forgotten to put the current proof of insurance form in her car, so they were turned away from the garage and had to park far away on the street, and of course it was pouring rain.</p>
<p>YDS, we’ve been on those no water in 105 degree weather death marches, too.</p>
<p>Here are my suggestions:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Tell us how to find you! Many campus admissions offices addresses are something like “Campus Circle” i.e. not a “real” address that the GPs will recognize. Also, give us a clue as to where on campus…many buildings have the buildings’ signs toward the quad, so when you are driving near them, you don’t know which building is which. And if there is construction that makes it difficult to get to the building or the parking lot, a heads up would be nice.</p></li>
<li><p>If you have a giant football stadium that you love to show off, either have it be the last thing on the tour, or schedule separate tours. Many of the stadiums are way on the edge of campus and there are some folks who aren’t all that interested in trudging out there.</p></li>
<li><p>When it’s hot, stop to talk in the SHADE if at all possible.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yeah, right or wrong, I assume that what they show and don’t show is intentional. If they show off the stadium but not the library, I assume they are proud of their stadium and not proud of their library. If they don’t make it easy to eat in a dining hall, I assume they are not proud of the food.</p>
<p>PghMomof2–funny you mention Grinnell as being one of your favorites, it was our absolute WORST out of probably 30 tours over the years. We had an individual tour as well, tour guide spent his time texting his friends and pointing to buildings saying things like “that’s the science building”, “that’s the dining hall”. Couldn’t answer a single question DS had because “that’s not my major but I bet someone in the office will know”. It was so bad DH wrote a letter to the admissions office about the tour–but they were rude too so who knows if it will help.</p>
<p>My alma mater (Northwestern) is building a new visitors center on the lake and I’m really glad for it. The current visitors center is a converted old house at the very south end of campus, on a residential street as opposed to on the main lakefront section, and it’s difficult to lead tours from there and see all of the campus. You don’t have a sense of being “on” campus at this buildling. I think it’s a very smart move for them to build this new visitors center and give a better impression.</p>
<p>^ I hope that your alma mater puts some thought into the visitors center parking. We found parking at Northwestern hard to find and signs were very confusing. Ended up with a $50 parking ticket. (we loved everything else about the school, though).</p>
<p>I will gove kudos to Northwestern for modifying their tour when it was 105 outside. We spent more time in classrooms and in the shade and cut out some of the walking.</p>
<p>Worst experience was Brown by far. They schedule one hour tours immediately followed by one hour info sessions. They direct you to park on the street far from the tour end or info session site with two hour meters so you had to constantly worry that you would have time to re-feed the meter without getting a ticket. There was a large crowd for the tour of perhaps 90 with six tour guides. Rather than break up into a manageable 15 members each, the guides toured in pairs with 30 people and it was hard to hear what they were saying. Finally, YGD’s child wanted to ask questions at the end of the tour but I wanted to make the info session start. We got there and the adcom was answering questions at the front of the room for 20 minutes while we all waited for them to start.</p>
<p>Kudos to Stanford which gave its guides headsets and a fanny pack speaker which made it so much easier to hear what they were saying. This comes to them at nominal cost and should be standard at other schools.</p>
<p>This isn’t exactly the tour, but has anyone else encountered the secretary in admissions who has been there FOREVER, and is a first class witch? I can name 2 schools (one from our visits 5 years ago – but I bet she is still there, and one from our round of visits this year) where I cannot believe that the schools make that person the first encounter point for students coming in the door. They are snappish, condescending, and rude.</p>