Most of our tours were very small and personal, so the guides just walked with us and spoke. But at one large school the tour was equally huge and the guide would stop and face us to speak, but also talked as she walked forward. As a hearing-impaired person, this led me to miss some information. I ended up having to ask D or H what was said. So, if given a choice, I would pick small and side-by-side guides or backwards-walking guide, however funny they may look.
I donât even think they look âfunny.â What do you think museum guides do? Or private city guides? Itâs just not anything even notable. Itâs like noting that the campus has grass.
Fancy art museums like the Getty give everyone on the tour a wireless headset, and the tour guide uses a microphone that broadcasts to the headsets. I think thatâs only for the outside tours.
For some tour guides, walking backwards is necessary because they donât project their voices. My DD is always up front and wants to be engaged and some guides are hard to hear. I appreciate the backwards-walking-voice-projecting-knowledgable-non-gum-chewing guides very much!
Iâm not sure whatâs odd about backwards walking. Pretty typical unless itâs a very small group. It was the norm when I toured colleges too. I was a tour guide for a couple of years and we did it too.
I only ever ran into anything once. It was a sign that hadnât been there the week before. 
No it wasnât Penn it was Princeton. An amazingly beautiful school and of course an incredible academic environment. Our daughter applied there early was deferred and ultimately rejected.
At the time she was devastated. Now she is so thankful and there isnât any where else she would rather be than where she is.
At Florida Southern, one of the seven Frank Lloyd Wright structures is the covered walkways. The covering is only 7â tall, and our tour guide was over 6â. The walkways are pretty steep, so as he walked backward, uphill, it appeared to all of us as if he were going to bonk his head with every step. Nope, he walked backward, uphill, talking just fine. The optics to those of us looking uphill at him were a little strange.
And of course we were told at least 3 times that if a student entered the F.L.W. fountain (also called a âWater Structureâ) there was a $500 fine and/or expulsion. I heard the words âFrank Lloyd Wrightâ more times that day than I had probably ever heard them in my life.
It doesnât bother ME, as I said, I prefer it. But it seems to be a great source of either irritation or amusement to others.
When I went on college tours for me, my father was always looking for a âsignâ that THIS was the right school. I was a South Asian studies major. So on one tour the guide was from India - a SIGN. On another tour we got a parking spot next to an Indian restaurant - a SIGN. On yet another the (non-Indian) tour guideâs name wasâŠINDIA. In the end we got too many signs and had to go with other criteria!
@Greatkid âThe most notable experiences were at one Ivy league school where seemingly for the entire student led information session she repeatedly commented about how unlikely it was that an applicant would be admitted there.â
I think handling this issue in the right balance and trying to be realistic, but not snobby or arrogant takes real social intelligence. I think that some speakers convey precisely the right tone, but may do not at all of the top schools. DD1 refused to apply to Harvard after her session leader was very snobby. I tried to convey to her that this is a very small percentage of the Harvard grads I have known, but 17 year olds do not listen to their parents. The Yale session leader was a fill in who just talked about âWhat Yale is looking for.â When it was over, DD1 looked at me and said, âShe did not give me a single reason why I would want to attend Yale.â I think it is difficult for the AOâs at all of these schools to have a uniform product in terms of presentation and setting the proper tone. Trying to be realistic, but not snobby, and making sure that you convey clearly what the reasons are that might lead a student to choose your school. The Penn, Columbia and Brown sessions and tours were great when we were there, but others say they have different experiences.
Unfortunately, I think it comes down to who you get on a particular day and time. Ideally, it would not matter so much, but for many students and parents it is their only opportunity to visit the school.
It is unfortunate that the tour guide makes such an impression. We toured one school in April and the tour guide was a soon to be graduating senior. Most of the tour was her talking about how much each space meant to her (hereâs where I have coffee, hereâs where I meet my friends), interspersed with tears. While she was very nice, at the end of the tour we realized that we hadnât learned very much about the school at all. There was no mention of classes, places to study, etc. D liked the school but we are left wondering if the low emphasis on academics is indicative of the school or just our tour guide.
The tour guides AND the students kids meet along the tours can certainly make quite an impression. But weâve counseled our D to remember that just as the 5 kids sitting with her in a class donât define HER entire HS, then the same goes with the few she might meet on a college tour. She had a tour last spring on which the guide did not impress her, but the school itself and the program sheâs interested in DID. So sheâll apply, and go back for another visit if sheâs accepted and the money works out.
At MIT, a prospective student asked: why do we have to take humanities classes?
The tour guideâs answer: âwell, theyâre not so bad.â
I quickly realized that MIT was not the place for me.
A couple others:
At Princeton, my tour guide clearly did not want to be there. She didnât get excited about a single aspect of the school, and at the end of the tour asked âso can I leave now?â
During an info session at a certain school in Massachusetts (not saying the name cause Iâm actually applying there), the admissions officer used the word âirregardlessâ twice, right after telling the group that there is no excuse for grammatical errors in our essays. My mom and I were stunned.
@Much2learn We have attended Ivy League admissions sessions and state schools. The Ivy Leagues schools were like âOf course you want to come here, this is what we wantâ while the other schools were trying to convince you why you would want to attend their school.
^^ Itâs good to be King.
Our tour of Dartmouth was odd - after listening to our tour guide talk about the parties, another student asked, âIf Iâm not into skiing and I donât want to go Greek, could I be happy here?â The tour guide cocked her head, thought for a minute, and replied, âI guess so.â That was enough for my daughter - we didnât finish the tour and she couldnât get away fast enough.
@bopper â@Much2learn We have attended Ivy League admissions sessions and state schools. The Ivy Leagues schools were like âOf course you want to come here, this is what we wantââ
I only saw this at Yale, and somewhat from Princeton. I honestly do not believe that it was intended. I think the lady presenting was inexperienced.
I know that it may seem like everyone wants to come to an Ivy, Stanford, or MIT, but the students the Ivies really want are often picky and only willing to attend certain Ivies, and then only for clear reasons. Many of these students are not very interested in rankings. They want to hear specifics about why they should choose your school above all others. If you canât explain why a student should who has other great options should pick your school without being snooty, and condescending, you may be out of the running. Also, schools like Berkeley, Northwestern, Michigan, and UVA make a good case for why you should attend their schools over an Ivy, Stanford or MIT, in many instances. Ivyâs who think their name will carry the day are probably going to lose a great student.
I think that when Ivies address this question they need to respond as if they are talking to the daughter of the President of the United States, who also has perfect grades and test scores, or as if Malala Yousafzai is asking the question. At 16, I won a Nobel Prize, why should I attend your school above all others? If the presenter canât answer this question well, s/he should not be presenting.
Our worst tour was at the Big State University in our state. We scheduled a departmental tour (10 AM) and info session (11) and a general tour that started at 12:30 followed by a dorm tour. The info session was supposed to be an hour long, giving us 30 minutes or so to grab a quick bite before the afternoon stuff. Weirdly, the guy leading the info session asked how many of us were doing the general tour - most of us. Good, he said, Iâll just lead you right to the starting point at the start time. Which meant that he gave us the leisurely version of the info session and gave us no time for lunch. What DS and I really wanted to see were the dorm rooms, but by 1:45 we were ready to gnaw our own arms off with no end in sight so we bailed and never saw the dorms.
I would be hard pressed to find a âbestâ tour, though our guide at Northwestern was a delight. We were very curious about the Ivy info sessions and tours as we know not one soul who has gone to one for undergrad⊠nor even had a successful bid in applying to one. For the most part, it was both a comfort and a surprise to find that they were mostly the same as our Big State School visits, but Yaleâs âWhy I Chose Yaleâ video was a total breath of fresh air. (Though, as Iâve read somewhere on this forum, it goes on a bit too long.)
Sadly, ,though, our tours at the Ivys were a bit too touristy, and not enough âserious applicant.â
I toured Ole Miss and remember the tour guide telling a story about how they would always light a Christmas tree, but just realatively recently transitioned to electic lights instead of candles because they kept accidently burning the tree down.
She then told us how Ole Miss is considered the âHarvard of the south.â Hard not to laugh about claiming yourself on the level of Harvard after talking about accidently burning down trees year after year.