<p>I've been a tour guide at Brown for quite some time. If you include the Physical Sciences and General Campus tour I've done about 150 over the last few years. Before I leave the program at the end of this year I want to give my feedback on the process based on my own experience and I'm just wondering if what I expect jives with what students are seeing as well.</p>
<p>I'm wondering if you guys could list some schools, the length their tour was, and what was something that was distinctive which made the tour great or terrible. I don't want to hear your guide was awesome and you'd want to be their friend or something-- I'm talking structural things/script stuff.</p>
<p>I was impressed that my tour guide was articulate, earnest, and respectable. And, of course, she was knowledgeable about my school.</p>
<p>These qualities may obviously seem like valuable assets to every tour guide, but it makes me cringe every time I pass a huge tour, and its guide is "um-ing" and "like-ing," unable to answer specific questions about academics, admissions, campus life.</p>
<p>Thanks for the feedback-- but that's the kind of thing I'm not really looking for. It's not qualities of a good guide, but qualities of a good tour.</p>
<p>We attended the Junior Info Day at Loyola of Maryland. The day was 6 hours long. The tour was about an hour of that. Our tour was awful. There were probably 1000 attendees (students + parents). They had about 50 guides. </p>
<p>ALL the guides followed the same tour plan/path. So each "stop" along the way was a mob scene. Not to mention the traffic jams getting in and out of each place. </p>
<p>Oh, and our guide was a ditz. A FRESHMAN! (note to colleges - NEVER let a freshman be a tour guide.) She still had all the "um yeahs" and hair twirling of high school. And, if somebody asked about a place on campus her typical answer was "I don't know. I've only been here for one semester. Never seen the inside of that." Ugh! Awful.</p>
<p>20 would have been OK if the guide knew how to walk backwards and speak loudly. Alas, this girl walked in front, never looked back at us, and never raised her voice.</p>
<p>(There were about 35 - 40 in our group at U of Md. That guide was awesome. Did everything right that the Loyola girl didn't.)</p>
<p>I appreciate your desire to take personal responsibility for the quality of your work as a guide and that you want to compare it to what other schools are doing. However, the quirks in the tour usually prove the most informative part. The guide for the tour I took of Yale made a point of pointing out how the donor of nearly every building we visited had in some way been misled about the purpose of the building. She noted how that was reflected in the design ie. a library that looked like a church.</p>
<p>Cpenoi-- I largely agree with you. I definitely think that being distinctive is the direction tours should go and my frustration largely comes from what I view as a somewhat homogeneous tour, especially when compared to other schools, and a place which is quite distinctive itself. It frustrates me to no end that we supply information I don't feel is particularly useful in making decisions but which we feel pressured to talk about because people are expecting to hear certain information so that they may compare against other schools.</p>
<p>In my opinion, our science tour has done a better job of avoiding those things and has been far more organic in its development. As a result, I've seen that I get far better feedback after those tours and far more enthusiasm. Same tour guide, same personality, but a different tour that I find to be more useful.</p>
<p>I'm wondering whether people actually are dying to see certain things simply so they can compare them or whether they're willing to admit that time spent talking about absolute quiet rooms and volumes of books in a library is better spent doing something else.</p>
<p>I'm wondering whether a tour being 1.5 hrs instead of 1 is too much if the result is seeing a far more complete picture of the campus, certain from a student's view.</p>
<p>I'm wondering whether people are more interested in a tour that is distinctive from a walking, visual info session.</p>
<p>There's a lot more to it than that, but I think people are looking for something better than the typical tour and I wondering if I'm crazy. Is it crazy to think that it's just not necessary to do certain things or are people really that attached to an easily compared format that they really do expect and want to see and hear about these things?</p>
<p>I could talk for hours on this, but instead will try and give you some key points since we are just back from a Spring road trip where we visited eight schools. We have done some smaller trips as well over the last 1-2 years.</p>
<p>-Walking backwards: Do tour guides all go to a special summer program that teaches them to talk while walking backwards? Almost every tour guide did this. I found this very awkward and distracting as a parent, feeling I was about to watch somebody's child fall and crack open their skull. It's OK to walk (forwards), let people absorb their surroundings (with a little silence and discussion amongst themselves) and, once at the destination, begin talking. Really.</p>
<p>-The stops: the most important things for prospective students and parents to see are where the students hang...library, student center, dorms, dining hall, bookstore, etc. Walking around to stop in front of every academic building, and sharing very little info on the programs, is not productive. Better to point out several buildings from a central vantage point. Questions on academic programs are covered in the information session, and hopefully the student will visit a class or two in the buildings they would be spending most of their time in.</p>
<p>-Final stop at the bookstore: The best tours wind up at the bookstore, since most of the prospective students want to pick up a sweatshirt or something. Most tours seemed to end back at the Admissions office, which works well if the Info Session begins right after. Finding our way back to the Admissions office was a challenge to see how well we got a feel for the layout of the campus.</p>
<p>-Perspective: It's important that the student tour guides give the student's perspective. There is no need to recite facts and figures just covered by a more experienced admissions officer in the Info Session. Tell us what it is like to live and learn here.</p>
<p>Those are the points that most immediately jumped out at me. I will post back if I think of others. It is great that you asked for feedback here and that you will share this with your colleagues. Best to you,</p>