@Irishmomof2: My Alaskan family finds temperatures in the 60s to be getting warm and temps above, say, 72F reason to go running for the nearest air-conditioned space—you acclimate to what you’re around. If someone was touring the school from, say, northern Ontario they might have had the same feeling, and even Waterloo (especially an enclosed dorm or classroom) can get mighty warm by those standards!
I remember touring Appalachian State with my dad. He attended from 1967-1971. His two sisters and brother in law all also attended there a few years earlier.
It was kind of embarrassing, because they would go around campus and say “This used to be the library” or “This used to be used as a bunker during the cold war” and my dad kept correcting the tour guide, because she was wrong. All of the “historical facts” that she gave were wrong. It kind of made me think about all of the other tours I had been on. How many lies are you told? I didn’t blame the tour guide. I felt sorry for her, because she had been trained one way and my dad didn’t really need to keep correcting her. Poor thing.
Going thru our second round of college tours. Here are my thoughts.
Penn State - Happy Valley is an accurate name. Tour guides were both knowledgeable and you just got a great vibe that most of the students there liked it. Lots of “We Are…” chants going on. Tour guides taught the group to respond “Penn State” whenever students passing us would start the “We Are”.
VCU - Visited on an Open House day. They had everyone in the basketball arena, and then everyone divided up by College. College of Engineering had a session and then you divided up for another info session by major. I thought this was a great approach. Campus tour was good, but they could have picked a better dorm room to show–this one needed some cleaning and repairs. Honors College building/dorm was awesome.
Boston Univ - by far the worst. First part of the Open House session was Admissions spending 45 minutes reviewing 3 sample applicants and how they would make a decision. Took my son and I about 3 minutes to pick which student they would accept–why waste 45 minutes of time on that??? Then we took an Engineering tour that was a waste of time. Tour guides couldn’t answer any questions at all. We had tried to set an appointment to meet with a professor, but were blown off–never responded to our request. Campus tour guide was much better.
Case Western - nice tour, was impressed by the campus and the tour guides.
My youngest is graduating college in May but the best advice I could give parents going through the college tour experience for the first time is to limit their (parents) questions to no more than 2 each. I wish I had figured this out right from the get-go myself! I cannot stand listening to those one or two parents dominating an info session or tour.
The one question I’m most grateful I never have to hear ever again (at most selective schools) is: “Is it better to take the most rigorous classes or get A’s?”
We were touring a selective LAC in rural KY and one of the other parents (who had introduced herself as being from a large northeastern city) asked if there was a hospital anywhere.
I can thing of two head-scratching tour experiences, one with S1 and one with S2:
MIT: We went during a “wintry mix” storm (snow, slush, rain, etc.) Horrible to be outdoors in. Luckily MIT has an extensive system of tunnels, and breezeways between buildings, so student rarely have to go outdoors for long. Unfortunately, though, our unexperienced tour guide decided not to highlight/mention/use that at all, and instead went through the standard tour, including standing outside in the horrible weather during all the usual “stop and talk” points along the tour. She didn’t even take us inside buildings to stop and talk!
U of Waterloo: We arranged for an engineering tour after the main campus tour, and that was led by a student who had apparently never done it before. There were only 2 young men (both HS juniors) on the tour, each with his mom. The student leading the tour gets to the EngSoc office. My impression of EngSoc from decades earlier was that all they ever did was organize pub crawls. So we get to the office and I wonder what the student is going to say, and he told us that they arrange social activities for the engineering students. Like, um, pub crawls. Yes, that was the only thing he could think of to mention to two 16yos with their moms 
My S and I went on a engineering tour at South Carolina. The tour guide was a young student and it was his first tour. He was so excited to show us the wind tunnel that they have. My S leaned over to me and stated the one they have at his current high school was the same size.
There was one mom on our Cornell tour who, after the [great] tour guide had just explained the universal PE requirement as a bonding and creative opportunity (they have everything from jogging to nutrition to ping pong) - said, “If my daughter is a Varsity athlete here, would she still have to do that PE thing with everyone else?” [gag]
And a mother on our UMDCP tour (again with a great guide) asked if they would be allowed to replace the dorm mattress with a Tempur-pedic…
I went on a UChicago tour a long time ago. There was a mother and D. D was obviously very annoyed about being on the tour. Mom was sort of explaining why they were there to the tour guide, saying that they had visited Northwestern and the mom felt that as long as they were in Chicago–a long way from home–they should visit Chicago too.
Guide tried to interest the D by asking, “Well, what 2 things do you want most in college?” D said “a journalism major and a field hockey team.” Tour guide looks stunned and says " Um…we don’t have either." D yells at mom “I told you this was a waste of time!”
At one small liberal arts college I visited, the student giving the admissions presentation was a stoned swimmer with matted hair who sat backwards on his chair and refused to wear shoes. It was a very informative presentation, however.
We did the “tour thang” at each college visit but also struck out on our own afterwards. These were usually the most informative time of our visits. DS was a prospective CS major so we always visited the CS building to look around, look at Dept bulletin boards, etc. At URoch, Allegheny, and RPI we were greeted by a faculty member and had a short talk about the Dept in their offices.The UR and RPI profs gave us a short tour of dept facilities also. Similar thing happened at CWRU and was invited to a Dept picnic that afternoon. Didn’t encounter a soul at Oberlin.
DS found the Dept BB’s to be particularly interesting as they had job, internship, fellowship, etc offerings posted. Student club, guest speaker, conference, seminar postings. Some departments had student research poster board presentations posted also.
These impromptu visits were often the highlight of the day.
University of Hartford - One of the boys on the tour with us was sexting and getting nakie pictures from a girl on his phone. His parents were super adamant about the business school and his dad was an alumni, which made him super into the tour.
@deepseafish - The swimmer was stoned, or exhausted from 2-a-day practices, classes, homework, team travel, and a student job?
Solid answer would be “they drink anyway”.
Well, that could have been the thought going through her mind, but had the student actually said that, someone would have included it as an example on this thread 
At an honors college in Florida, a prospective student held mom’s hand for most of the tour. (No discernible disability, but I don’t wish to be unkind if that, indeed, was the case.)
Same school, another prospective student dressed eerily like one of the Columbine shooters. Long black coat, military boots, etc. I’m familiar with emo or goth style but this seriously gave me the chills.
I took only two tours with ShawSon, because he said, “I don’t want to visit and fall in love with schools that have a 10% chance of accepting me.” [He was largely applying to elite schools]. At Brown, after the tour, there was an information session in a chapel-like building and there was a couple that asked several highly detailed questions about their marvelously gifted daughter who was only interested in the joint BS/MD program. There were several parents who asked questions that were completely answered online. Ah well.
With ShawD, we took 2 US tours and 7 Canadian tours. In the informations session at New College of Florida, the admissions officer clearly explained how we could apply to be eligible for significant scholarships even though we were from out of state (I can’t remember any details four or five years later).
We took one of our New College tour guides to lunch at the vegetarian coffee shop and I asked her whether the school was more hookup or long-term dating oriented. She told us that the female/male ratio was around 60/40. In the first semester, she said that all these guys who hadn’t gotten any female attention in high school thought they’d died and gone to heaven, but it was such a small school that everybody knew when you made the walk of shame and who you were with the night before, so most girls became a lot more cautious about things like hookups. I was expecting my daughter to die of embarrassment but the girl seemed pleased by the question and ShawD found her answer valuable.
@Madison85 - Stoned. Trust me, it’s not hard to miss the red eyes and sickly-sweet scent.
Two things we saw on tours that made me wonder why all schools don’t do the same thing… at WashU the guides had portable head mikes on so that they didn’t have to scream. They were easy to hear. At Vanderbilt the guides said they don’t walk backwards and talk - again, simply made it easier to hear them and we weren’t forced to walk at an unusually slow pace.
Not exactly tour-related but very impressive in terms of a welcoming Admissions Center: When we arrived on the campus, there was a parking spot with a sign with my daughter’s name, Wittenberg Class of 2019! It was a great personal touch.