How Much Influence Does a Campus Tour Guide Have?

<p>During my 30-year career as a college counselor (now retired), I had many students say that they wouldn't apply to a particular college because when they visited the campus, the student tour guide was terrible.</p>

<p>For those of you who have visited campuses, how much influence did the student tour guide have on whether you would consider attending that particular college?</p>

<p>I personally wasn't influenced. However, I know quite a few friends that went on tours at various top schools and chose not to apply or attend based on a bad tour guide. For instance, one friend said that his tour guide conveyed to him that the campus was a rather cold place. Whether it was or not is not the point. The fact of the matter is that the tour guide who was apparently bad at promoting the strengths of the schools had a direct influence on my friend's decision to ultimately not apply to this particular school.</p>

<p>Yeah, it seems a lot of people judge the personality of the student body from the personality of the tour guide. I didn't do it personally but I know people that have.</p>

<p>I think it partly depends on how far along the student already was in forming his or her opinion of the place. If you're pretty gung-ho about a school, for example, you may be more "forgiving" of a not-so-great tour guide.</p>

<p>I didn't really find any of my tour guides awful. And even if they were, I would forgive them since they are only a few years older than me. I payed a lot more attention to the admission's people and faculty that I saw.</p>

<p>The tour guide's personality influenced me. I narrowed my options down to two schools and didn't choose one of them because my tour guide had seemed very out of it, as if they either didn't want to be guiding a tour or as if they were too tired to put anything into the tour guide. I took that to mean one of the following things:
1) If the tour guide didn't want to give a tour, then they must hate the school. I don't want to go to a school where the students don't want to go there. If they hate it, it's for a reason.
2) If the person was too tired, they could have been up all night studying or doing homework. Or maybe they were up all night partying. Either way, not a fit for me.
3)The student could have been on something. I hope this wasn't the case, but it did cross my mind a couple of times.</p>

<p>Anyway, the tour guide really put me off of the place and I ended up not attending that school.</p>

<p>The attitude of a tour guide can reveal a lot about a school. I was completely turned off by the superiority complexes of the tour guides of two Ivy League schools. </p>

<p>I remember very clearly when one of them said "We all know that rankings don't matter BUT we're #1 in such and such and #1 in such and such..." over and over and another one who kept bringing up a rivalry to the point of where it was completely obnoxious and, quite frankly, pathetic. And then there was the good tour guide that said "The Ivy League is an athletic conference" and that was the last time I heard those two words on the tour. Joy!</p>

<p>The combination of a crabby secretary/receptionist (in the admissions office) and an absolutely dreadful tourguide at one school did, indeed sour us to one particular LAC. The tourguide clearly did not like the school (she said she was there at that school only because she was a third generation legacy) she knew nothing about the programs, and her big selling point of the science building was that we could see her bf's dorm from there. Sheesh. Why would a school have someone like her represent them? Bad decision, and bad judgement. Doesn't speak well for the school, IMO. It didn't sound like mommy and daddy had trouble paying for school and that she needed the campus job to subsidize her tuition. We did meet with faculty in the dept my s was interested in, and the dept staff were very nice, but all in all we came away with an "eh" feel for that school. DS didn't apply there.</p>

<p>We have also had mediocre tourguides at other schools who didn't help, but didn't hurt our opinion one way or the other (it happened just a few weeks ago). But on the other side, we have also had some very excellent, energetic, well informed and clearly very happy tourguides who did "sell" the school well. Their enthusiasm really did rub off. You can't help but be affected (influenced) at least a little bit by the impressions made by current students. It is human nature. This topic was, btw, discussed in a previous thread a year or so ago.</p>