Moments that make you scratch your head during tours

Parents Forum
61

<p>These college tour stories are hilarious. I don’t recall any specific stories from touring with my D and S, who are 3 years apart in college now, but can comment on my own parent’s view of a few types of tours:</p>

<p>Boston U - best tour guides, knowledgeable, enthusiastic, campus was in prime shape plus they fed the parents, too. Surprisingly nice city campus.</p>

<p>Columbia - Oddest tour group; aggressive parents, some kids looking at colleges way too young,goofy tour guide … kept yelling hi to other guides she passed and would ask if they saw the latest episode of XYZ on TV last night. At Columbia they watch TV instead of going to the live city of NYC? Silliness to me. Nice campus, but Ivy competition in future students was evident.</p>

<p>Ohio State - Fun tour … tour groups would yell across campus, one would start, “O-H” and then wait for the response from the other tour group 100 fee away, “I-O!” Definitely emphasized sports and sports facilities a little too much for my D.</p>

<p>U. of New Hampshire - Best finale … at the end of a cold, rainy tour, they dump you off in a cafeteria that any 17-year-old boy would die for … fresh food, ice cream machine, etc. </p>

<p>U. of Maine - if you like the outdoors, travel here. The brochure they gave us had a baby black bear cub on it, making me want him to go there just so he could take a picture of himself with a rescued bear cub. Very welcoming staff.</p>

<p>St. Lawrence U - Great tour guides, my S and Husband commented that the girls at SLU were their favorite of all tours (I wasn’t on the first campus tour). Claimed they were healthy like VT girls but prettier. S did apply.</p>

<p>Berklee College of Music (in Boston) - If you are not a city person, this one is the most interesting. It is in the city of Boston, and the students walking around look different than other colleges. Well, they look like musicians, not just ordinary college students. The population is very diverse, and you get to hear good music if you plan your day right. Admissions staff was over the top helpful and welcoming, even when H asked the question, “So what kind of money can
you really make as just a music major?” (D crawls under chair.)</p>

62

<p>Touring WPI, crossing the quad, tour guide points out the bronze school seal in the center of the quad. “Don’t step on the seal or you will never graduate.” A kid comes flying in out of nowhere, jumps through the air and lands feet-first, slamming on the seal!</p>

<p>Minutes later, as we walk through a crowd of students, they start yelling “Don’t come here! It’s not worth the money! UMass is a way better value!!”</p>

<p>Very weird place.</p>

63

<p>How do some of you not yell “Shut the eff up! I travelled x hours to come to this tour!” at some of the obnoxious parents?</p>

<p>OMG! I’m too old to be embarrassed and I would seriously tell some of those people to stuff their pie holes.</p>

64

<p>Unlike MADad, we had a great tour of Cornell. We were there on President’s Day last year so there were lots of touring students and parents, but they had plenty of tour guides. Ours was, hands down, the best backward-walker I’ve ever seen, and she was cheerful and knowledgeable as she took us through most of the campus, explained the various complications of taking courses or double-majoring or minoring across the different colleges and schools, had a lot to say about residence hall/apartment-in-Collegetown/fraternity-sorority living, etc., etc. The best I’ve seen so far. Although it was really cold outside, everyone stayed with her from beginning to end of the tour.</p>

<p>And belying all the stereotypes, she was an Asian engineering student.</p>

65

<p>Two strange tours - one several years ago at Kalamazoo - tour guide who could only answer questions about her recent trip abroad, during the tour of a dorm we mentioned that ten out of our group of twenty were missing. She shrugged and said they would find their way back and kept on going. Second was this year at Vanderbilt, we had driven 6 hours and planned a two day trip three months in advance for spring break for my junior D. We arrived early early for my D tour and day with another Vandy student and we were told it was cancelled, that admissions was concentrating on seniors. We tried to sit in on classes etc but they would not allow it. We waited til the next day to do a general tour, but the damage had been done.</p>

66

<p>When we visited Notre Dame the day after Memorial Day, we arrived a couple hours early for our tour. When we walked into the Admissions Office, we were greeted with, “You must be rmlson and rmldaughter!” It was a pleasant surprise to have a personalized greeting.</p>

<p>We went to lunch at the Dining Hall and when we returned to Admissioins, we discovered how they could identify us. We were the only family that afternoon! It was a great info session and tour - no boneheaded questions that day :wink: T26E4 would have been pleased.</p>

<p>The next day, Wednesday, we had smaller tour groups at UChicago and Northwestern, but they were still bigger than ND - and no personalized reception. Timing is everything.</p>

67

<p>A few years ago we were visiting Bryant University in RI during an open house. The tour itself was interesting as the tour guide immediately contradicted what we had been told in the presentation by the admissions group. The parking lot had piles of beer bottles and we saw a couple of wine and beer bottles around campus. Another student passed us carrying wine… Anyway, during the tour, we passed a dorm and some guys leaned out and yelled, “No more dudes!!”. My niece smiled and my son frowned. Neither applied.</p>

68

<p>Not the tour, but the info session: At UC Berkeley, the admissions rep’s answer to almost every question was “I don’t know.” And when someone asked how the state budget cuts affected the school, she replied, “Not at all.”</p>

<p>Fortunately the student tour guide set us straight and gave honest answers, but by then, we were so turned off, D declined to apply.</p>

69

<p>We also had a great tour at Cornell.</p>

<p><em>So much</em> depends on the tour guide, and so many decisions are made as a direct result of the quality of the tour guide, that it boggles my mind that some students are allowed to be tour guides. Do these schools not get enough people wanting to be guides? Do they not train them or evaluate them before turning them loose? Do they not have standards? Do they just not care?</p>

<p>Just in this thread alone - how many decisions to apply or not apply were made directly because of the tour guide? And yet this one student is such an insignificant part of the school, and an incredibly poor predictor (IMHO) of the experience another student will have there.</p>

<p>I warned my kids constantly to try not judge the entire school one way or the other just based on the tour guide.</p>

<p>The info sessions are another source of questionable decisions by the school. And these people get paid! The worst was at Bucknell, the rep must have said something 10 times about if you were a “Bucknell-kind of person.” I felt like we were joining a cult.</p>

<p>I will say that schools that offered up a free meal in the dining hall were generally viewed more favorably than those that didn’t. I get that it could be expensive if you have thousands of people touring, but I always felt like a free lunch is a small price to pay for someone who is going to possibly spend $100-200K+ at the school. And good food is a powerful selling feature. My favorite food experience was at University of Richmond, where some crazy alum donated a huge amount of money to create a “dessert endowment”, to provide an incredible array of desserts in the dining halls. It was amazing.</p>

<p>I always wondered if the schools that didn’t knew they had crappy food and didn’t want the prospective students to know. :)</p>

70

<p>That’s so funny about Bucknell. When we visited there 2 1/2 years ago, it was the best info. session we attended out of the 9 schools we visited. Of course my son slept through most of the info. sessions, so they didn’t really factor into his decision :)</p>

<p>I agree about the free meals - definitely a plus. But what I didn’t like is when schools gave my son a free meal ticket but I had to pay for the rest of us to eat with him in the dining center!</p>

71

<p>Most schools I visited mainly provided water bottles and sometimes bagels during the initial tours and then free meals at the accepted student events.</p>

72

<p>These comments make me wonder if tours hold any value to schools.</p>

73

<p>There is a flip side to all this incompetence and scorn. I was very impressed with our tour guide at Harvard. She was very knowledgeable, polished, articulate, witty, and unflappable in the face of confrontational questions. She definitely was a valuable ambassador for the school. </p>

<p>However, I tend think it more because she was senior instead of the more usual sophomore we got at most schools - kids who were taking tours themselves not all that long ago. It may just been mostly the difference between being 19 years old and being 21.</p>

74

<p>Good point on the meals … we definitely had meals for the accepted students tours, but only a few schools dropped you off into a high-end cafeteria and fed you as part of regular campus visits. </p>

<p>The general tours are where some schools don’t invest as much as perhaps maybe they should in woo’ing the potential clientele. I know when I scheduled a tour, I always coughed up the extra 5-10 bucks per person to have food built into my afternoon, and I looked down on any schools that had a sloppy or ill-prepared tour guide. My thought was that if students as a whole didn’t love their own college, then the school couldn’t be as selective in picking the best representatives to give the tours.</p>

75

<p>They could spend fewer dollars sending out endless “view books” and a bit more prep on their tour guides. We had outstanding guides at Whitman and Occidental. Guess which schools are at the top of Spygirl’s list? </p>

<p>Not just because of the guides, but it certainly helped.</p>

76

<p>@redpoint…lol, we were just at Wooster last week and the dir. of enrollment said the same thing :)</p>

77

<p>^ And if someone was sitting in that chair, then I’m sure the director of enrollment would conveniently forget to mention it. ;)</p>

78

<p>^^^Notrichenough - I was thinking the exact same thing.</p>

79

<p>And he made sure to mention it was a joke right afterwards. Otherwise he might have been tackled!</p>

80

<p>Spykid reminded me yesterday of how our Whitman tour guide responded to the inevitable, will my child be safe on campus question.</p>

<p>Tour guide who is a broad shouldered 6’ 4" chunk of human says, “Absolutely, I’ve always felt safe here.” Mom shakes her head, points to her diminutive daughter and says, “What about a 5 foot female?” </p>

<p>Tour guide says, “Oh sure, there’s never any muggings or that kind of thing on campus.” To his credit, I suppose, he never quite understood the mom was talking about sexual assault. He was just oblivious.</p>