“Sewanee: The University of the South” may be a close contender.
There’s a school in my area called Bryant University, and in every single reference in the radio ads they run, the voice says
“Bryant University The Character Of Success”
I imagine it’s just the slogan or something, because it would be dumb to make that the actual name, but it sure is annoying.
What about Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University? Used to be VPI, now it’s Virginia Tech (or the much hated - by me) Va(h) Tech, according to the sports announcers!
@PollyC’s post about the well-muscled UNC-CH tour guide reminded me of our Davidson tour guide last summer, who was a rising senior and confided to the group that he was already planning to propose to his girlfriend (a classmate at Davidson) at a big public event at the school in the fall, and that the college president was in on the plan.
I felt like it was a terrible idea for many reasons but of course I didn’t want to be Debbie Downer about it so I agreed with the other people on the tour that it sounded really cute.
My D thought it was sort of creepy and I have to admit, I wouldn’t want my kid to feel pressure to get engaged as a college senior, in case that was something kids at that school seem to do regularly. D is not applying to Davidson.
@GnocchiB - I want grandchildren in a timely manner, so I’m going to add Davidson to the list now though I’d never considered it for the kids. 
Our UCI tour guide made up a story about the computer lab. It was long and involved and he ended it by saying ‘do you think this is true, well it’s not.’ He then proceeded to tell two more long stories during the tour, one involving the movie producer James Cameron using some big structure for the Titanic movie, and then ask if we all thought it was true and laugh and say it was totally made up. Once, mildly amusing. Three times, really annoying.
Anyone think that the University of Mary Washington is an awkward name?
We toured a school in DC-- the tour guide was really good but was continuously drowned out by planes flying overhead.
We toured nearly all of the colleges in St Paul, Minnesota this past summer. At one of them we had a one-guide-for-one-family tour, and our business-major tour guide admitted to my way-into-the-sciences daughter that she’d never taken a class on the science side of campus, and would be taking her first class over there during her upcoming senior year, to fulfill a gen-ed requirement she’d been avoiding. She was sweet about it and all (and did try to show us around where the labs were and such, to personalize the experience for us), but it did make for amusement at one point when my daughter knew more about how to get around the science buildings due to meeting with faculty members earlier in the day than the tour guide did.
I’m pretty sure I edited his essay a few weeks ago. Same MO-- please edit it… “ha ha, it wasn’t my essay, it was written by someone who got into an Ivy.”
And, yes, very annoying.
This is something I heard about, but didn’t experience. Some guys decided to play a prank on a tour guide and placed empty cans of Natty Light along the tour route. The guide was distraught having to repeatedly answer the question from parents, “Are you sure there’s not a drinking problem at this school?”
I think those are fairly common. Translation: Muslim students need a private place to pray 5 times a day. At colleges where there isn’t a Muslim/ multifaith chapel open all day every day or the campus is huge, the solution is often to have a quiet or meditation room in the library. Rather than give a benefit to Muslim students not available to others, it’s open to all.
UCLA had by far the worst open house I’ve been to. One of the sessions was meant to learn about some of the academic opportunities, but the speaker was some professor and went on and on and on and on about how good her students are, what her students are doing, how she still talks to her former students, what her former students are doing, what she’s doing…half of us walked out.
@Tiredofsnow My father went to Virginia Tech and hates when announcers call it Va(h) Tech. As far as college tours go, on one, a tour of a CC I will not consider as a back up, the tour guide seemed incredibly bored the entire time. Lots of “uh” and “um” 's. On a tour of a state school known for education the tour guide said " education is a popular major but it’s not a good one. Why would you want to be in school your whole life?" after she say my name tag said “childhood education”.
Ohhhhhh, we went to one info session (at our school, not a tour) where the representative went on and on and on and on about one single superstar applicant and said “THAT’s what we’re looking for.” Totally unrealistic bar for most students, anywhere, ever – and not a top tier school either. Bizarre.
@bkjmom Wow, that is worse! Ugh!
We had a really unpleasant info session for Nursing at U of Minnesota where the person running the session kept telling us that only about 50% of the students got into the nursing program after freshman year and that all student would need to have a Plan B for their major if they didn’t get in She must’ve said Plan B about 100 times. She spoke for most of the session about what you would need to do freshman year in order to be able to get in to the nursing program.
Then we went on the tour with a senior nursing student who said oh yeah you really shouldn’t pay attention to what the information session leader said. She was on sabbatical last year and I don’t think she realizes that Minnesota is going to all guaranteed admission. ( if you get in as a HS senior that’s it you’re in).
We were kind of shocked that we just sat through an entire session with bad info
That’s a really multifaceted info session leader, since that person apparently also ran the industrial design info session at Ohio State we went to.
It bothers me when students rule out schools based on one tour. My D refused to apply to Duke because when we toured the school nobody looked happy, including the tour guide. She felt that the school was too quiet for her and “lacked energy.” I actually agreed with her on that particular day, however my guess is that if we went on a different day she would have had a different experience.
She ruled out one of the Boston schools because on the day we toured, our group was tremendous and the school did not plan accordingly. This made for a very unpleasant experience. Friends of mine did not have that experience.
My older kid was planning to apply ED to a school she loved. When we went back for a third visit the tour guide was a bit too unenthusiastic for her and she ditched the ED.
We toured UNC four times (yes…I know…) and thankfully we did not have the same experience as PollyC (CH campus?). If we did, my daughter would not have been happy. She still talks about one of her tour guides - he made quite an impression on her.
These tour guides are often 18-19 years old and although most are well trained, sometimes they make mistakes. Most of the tours we have been on were quite good.
@maya54 What does the university website say about “guaranteed admissions”. I wouldn’t take the word of a tour guide as gospel.