We visited Case Western on Aug 1 for a 4-hour “Preview Day.” We had traveled nearly 10 hours (combined with visiting friends, but still a long trek). The tour basically showed us one engineering classroom, the inside of the library (Look! The stacks move!), and the exteriors of numerous buildings.The rest of the morning was spent with various administrators providing admissions and financial info that anyone could easily locate on the website (and if you’re going to spend that much time at a single event, you should be at least somewhat prepared.).
When we were about a block away from the athletic facility, the tour guide just kind of waved at it and said, “No need to stop there. Unless you’re a varsity athlete, you’ll never go there anyway.” I do think some schools are too focused on showcasing their rec facilities, but. . .
You could see a cafeteria or dorm informally AFTER the day’s events were over–at which point we were hot, hungry, and thirsty (they had somehow run out of bottled water even thought this was an event for which you pre-register).
When asked what the students do for fun, the tour guide looked puzzled and finally came up with two things: “We make paper airplanes before the weekly movie and whoever hits the MC first gets free popcorn!” and “There’s a box in the engineering building where you can leave old electronics and then other people can pick them up, fix them, and recycle them into something cool.” Really had high hopes when we arrived, but the time we left my D declared it a school “where fun goes to die.”
At one school the tour guide pointed out that they were building a new library. “There aren’t too many places to do homework on campus now, and the school wants kids to study more”.
Not necessarily “moments” on the tour, but post tour. We spent two days at the Claremont Colleges touring Pitzer, Harvey Mudd and Pomona. We went into town for lunch after one of the tours to a nice pizza/italian restaurant and had a lovely server that chatted a bit with us about our visit to the town. Turned out she had just graduated from Scripps the year before. Afterwards, my DH and I looked at each other and thought that after spending $60K/year for undergrad, she’s making close to minimum wage as a server. Second post tour moment came after DD and had toured Reed College earlier in the year. Reed has a reputation for quirky and the people we met there did not disappoint. Our guide was named Kale and was relatively memorable for his “normalness”. Fast forward a couple of months and guess who we see on Wheel of Fortune College Week? Kale!
If they are like my kid - no. Actually during accepted student’s weekend they had regular tours and additional CS tours that complimented the more general tours. I don’t think either kids ever had a tour guide with the same interests, and no surprise, an awful lot of the tour guides were drama majors.
@enlightenme2 Did you go to Pizza n Such? in the Claremont Village? Lovely place. The owners’ daughter recently graduated from Scripps and rejoined her parents to run/manage the restaurant. I wonder if that’s who you talked to (and different circumstances than you might have imagined!)
@luckycharms913 - we had a similar experience as Case! My son and I had high hopes for the school. My son’s first priority is academics, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t want to enjoy himself occasionally as well. When we had finished with the day, we were sitting at a restaurant and I asked him what he thought. He said “no way…there was not ONE mention of anything fun”. He had even tried to ask some questions about freshman orientation and other activities-.anything to get the tour guide to “bite” with regards to talking about fun traditions–with no success. We never saw the inside of the athletic facilities, nor the student center, etc.
I am sure Case it a great school, but in our “case” the tour really blew it. (I should note that we also have toured UChicago–it seemed like a fun factory compared to Case).
We attended a Case “local” admissions event at a hotel in which 100 or so folks attended. One admissions rep did the entire presentation and it was so canned and generic, she could have been discussing almost any college in the U.S. I was truly startled at the low quality of the event, which was neither informative nor entertaining. We didn’t rule out Case based on this one contact, but they certainly wasted our time and missed an opportunity to “sell” us on Case.
Won’t mention the school because the school had nothing to do with this but a flip-flop wearing girl on the tour had the looooooonnnnnngest big toe toenails I’ve ever seen. No way she could have worn regular shoes. Sorry, but I don’t know what was going on there.
My child and I visited both RIT and Case Western. I agree with your assessments. At Case ,while the academics are impressive, I found the administrators and faculty elitist in attitude and presentation style (and I went to an Ivy League school, which was not ‘snooty’ at all). One history prof at Case said to my son, well, if you don’t get in here, that’s okay, I’m sure you’ll do fine somewhere (not knowing anything about my child’s background). The undergraduate admissions dean had an attitude as well. They act like they are doing you a favor.
At RIT, I was impressed by the fact that the faculty do all the teaching, and the co-op programs. At the same time, my son is hard of hearing, and at several presentations, including ones specifically for hard of hearing and deaf students, the administrators did NOT use microphones, or turn the captioning on the videos. Yet, the Admissions office brags about how we are so great that we have so many deaf and hoh students! There appears to be a disconnect on several levels here…
I think our best and worst may have been at the same university! At University of South Carolina, the tour guide was very impressive, personable, knew what he was talking about …but then we stayed for the special honors college info session and it was just awful! Starting out, it was in this odd, old building, that had a reception desk, but that was for something else and no one seemed to know there was an info session planned. It was a retired professor and he really seemed to know very little about the honors program, beyond how to apply (which was on the website). I’d seen discussions of great activities organized for the honors college students, but when asked he said he didn’t know, but they could probably organize that kind of thing on their own. I had hoped to convince D to apply there, but that session sealed the deal…no application.
At FSU (Florida State) they seemed so unorganized! It felt like it was the first tour they had done. People were waiting around, not knowing where they should go, then eventually were directed to a nice lecture hall style room that was right there…then there was a sort of break before splitting up with the tour guides…again everyone wandering around not knowing where to go…then they directed us back to that same room! Why did we leave? This was summer in Florida, so while we were wandering around waiting for the tour guides, I asked where I could get a bottle of water for the tour, and was directed to buy one at the bookstore across the hall. I did, then not 10 minutes later, as we walked out with our tour guides…they had water bottles set out for us, at the very desk, with the same person who had just told me I had to buy one! The tour also takes you quite a distance from where you start and you all have to catch the bus back! We also learned, accidentally, that the offices for the Anthropology dept (my D’s interest) were stuck in an old strip mall not even on campus! Hmmmm.
At Tulane, students we passed heading into one building warned “Don’t come here. It sucks!”…a few of us laughed, then they added “No, really!”
My favorite moment was at Upenn. The tour guide told about the football “toast” tradition. (They used to have Champagne during games but since most college age kids can’t drink they throw pieces of toast). She said that she likes to throw them at the cheerleaders because she doesn’t like cheerleaders. Later in the tour when she was talking about clubs she asked “what kind of activities do you guys participate in?” and One girl happily called out “I’m a cheerleader”
I remember every tour I took, very many years ago, there would be kids yelling “Don’t come here! Get out while you still can!” I told my daughter that and at about half our tours, there were kids saying basically the same thing. lol
At WPI (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), as we crossed the middle of the quad, where they have the seal of the school in the pavement. The guide explained how it is bad luck to step on the seal, that undergrads who do so are doomed not to graduate. As if on cue, a student came running out of nowhere, leaped through the air, and landed with both feet squarely on the seal! Was actually funny.
I have never gone a bad college tour. Sure, some campuses are unattractive (Drexel University comes to mind) and some campuses are breathtaking (Princeton University - wow), but overall, it’s what the university offers that counts. I have always found the information sessions and tour guides to be helpful.
I think the best tour my D has was at NYU. They had a really wonderful video before the info session, and everyone was so lively and enthusiastic. We learned so much about NYU from that alone. Yale was also wonderful - I like the “That’s Why I chose Yale” video they showed us, and the info session leader was a great speaker. We learned a ton about Yale.
The worst tour - but I want to stress that it wasn’t a “bad” tour at all - was at Barnard College. The campus is tiny (even though CU is across the street) and we didn’t see all that much really. BC is just condensed. It just wasn’t too interesting compared to other universities.
My son and his grandfather just had a tour of a big university in the South, and as they were being loaded into a bus a pick up truck slowed down,and a guy rolled his window down and yelled, “I’m going to f*ck all your daughters!” Thankfully most were already on the bus and only a handful heard it.
Worst.Tour.Ever = Ursinus. Tour guide must have rolled out of bed 5 seconds before the tour, as she was wearing a sweatshirt, flannel lounge pants, flip flops, and had matted, disheveled hair. Said nothing about academics, pointed out buildings, recited their names, and said nothing else. Don’t recall if she even pointed out the library. Gabbed on incessantly about the awesome parties and ease of getting booze if underage. Fine ambassador for the school. Both D and myself couldn’t wait to get the heck out of there. Even skipped having lunch on campus (a must on all college tours, to check out food quality).