<p>i'm a tour guide at my prep school, and i was just wondering what potential applicants like to know most about the school, or what things they'd typically like to see or know about - it'd actually help me a lot!</p>
<p>cool! i’d like to ask about how different living at boarding school is to living at home… and what are some of the bad parts of boarding school (things that you miss).</p>
<p>i would want to see what the food is like.</p>
<p>also what students do in free time/weekends.</p>
<p>how much competitions there is, and how much work load there is.</p>
<p>haha, i’ve seen you around CC! you’re from china, right? are you flying in for interviews? i go to PEA and i’m definitely an international kid - i live in the philippines!
where are you interviewing?</p>
<p>also, i could answer those questions… if you wanted haha</p>
<p>Hi! First off, I already toured/interviewed at PEA, and my tour guide and interviewer and everyone were awesome, haha.</p>
<p>I guess some people may ask:</p>
<p>1) How is the humanities program? English in particular?
Is it true Exeter is more math/science inclined?
2) About dorms, food, etc…social scene, course load, friends…along that line.
3) Academics, teachers, harkness, art, music, athletics programs</p>
<p>Could you answer number 1 for me? 
Thanks !</p>
<p>Imagine if you coincidentally got matched up to someone on CC, that would be pretty amazing.</p>
<p>haha, i agree, it would be pretty amazing and extremely coincidental! i know cutiedida and urbanflop are tour guides at exeter as well 
- i think the humanities program is great. english is a good course, and definitely pretty rigorous. on another thread, it became apparent that the amount that exeter students read isn’t as much as a public school (for the fall term, i had to read black swan green, macbeth, a collection of poems by mary oliver, and a bunch of short stories) - it may not seem like much, but english classes only meet four times a week over a term of ten weeks. a lot of it has to do with reading text, annotating, and preparing your thoughts, questions, and references for the table. the difficulty lies in the preparation, i think, and exeter teaches you a lot about that. my world history in the 20th century class was pretty similar, although our history textbook was quite dense. but i got so much out of that class, and my teacher was amazing. exeter is not necessarily more math/science inclined - wherever you look, there are amazing mathematicians and scientists, but also avid english and history students as well. the programs are pretty much of the same caliber, but yes, i suppose, for some people, the math and science programs are more of their niches. </p>
<p>everyone always wants to know about the social scene at exeter! we get out, guys! haha!</p>
<p>bump! (10 characters)</p>
<p>I want you to show me a group of your friends and just talk about the school.</p>
<p>When my d toured schools, I wanted to know how the tour guide selected their school. Did they look other places and when did they know their school was the place they wanted to be.</p>
<p>At the top schools getting a great education is a given, I was more interested in the guides feeling and experiences.</p>
<p>Good idea for a thread aeroplanes. It will definitely help me for tours!</p>
<p>snapepotter, sometimes it is difficult to bump into and see friends on the paths especially when the particular period isn’t their free. but i’ll keep that in mind!
thanks for the contribution as well, alexz825mom :)</p>
<p>AAirplanes, what’s the science course that’s taken most often by preps?</p>
<p>pittsburgher, typically the most-taken first-year science course is biology, but some preps like to take a plunge and get physics over with. it depends on what they feel their strengths are.</p>
<p>how does the school choose tour guides? do they try to match the applicant with a particular person? (girl/guy, age, international or not)</p>
<p>My d is a tour guide at her school. They typically give you a tour guide who has an open block at that time. They do, however, try to match up prospective student athletes with a tour guide who plays that sport. The school expects the tour guides to stick to a specified route, in order not to miss any of the highlights. However, if a prospective student asks to see something off the official tour, the guides will accommodate.</p>
<p>Funny note: at my d’s school, it is apparently traditional for other, non guide, students to wish the tour guide a “happy birthday”. When it becomes awkward, is when there are two guides on a tour and each one is separately wished happy birthday at different places en route. I’ve told my d to let the prospective students/parents in on the joke. They will appreciate being part of the inside joke.
zp</p>
<p>I always wanted my tour guides to tell me more about themselves, tell me about their friends, etc… like give me the scoop on everything and be real as opposed to just stating that this building was built in 1923 blah blah.</p>
<p>They go through a rigorous training program at the Tourguide Academy before they start.</p>
<p>Frankly, I find that happy birthday “tradition” quite annoying and rude. Overused, unoriginal and not welcoming at all.</p>
<p>Maybe I have a juvenile sense of humor, but I think the Happy Birthday thing is funny.</p>
<p>vivsters, sometimes it is completely random when they’re looking for people with free periods, but exeter has loads of tour guides, so it’s pretty easy to match people up with (hopefully) common interests. but other than that, it depends on who has a common block. i toured one guy from maine who was interested in greek history (which i haven’t studied myself), but i also toured one of my best friends from back home. it’s the luck of the draw!</p>