<p>When we were making campus tours, my son felt schools wouldn’t be a fit. We just moved on. In all, we visited 13 schools. The visit alone made him cross off three with three others he considered last resort since they were his safety schools. There are many choices out there and as you said you found one that is awesome (and you may find more). The beautiful part about your daughter not feeling the school is a fit is that you can cross it off the list. </p>
<p>The OPs kiddo is a sophomore and there are thousands of colleges in the country. At this point move on from Elon is my advice. In a year if the OPs kiddo wants to keep Elon on the list despite the tour that is another matter. After three kids there were dozens of colleges that looked right on paper, should have been right upon the visit and just left the kids flat. If the college feels “right” to the kid the tour doesn’t matter to them. </p>
<p>Yes and at the end of the day (or the end of junior year) there should be a list - a reasonable list with a bunch of match schools, a couple of what if schools and at least one school that you know the kiddo will be accepted and will want to attend. It is far, far more difficult to find that school, that you can afford that you kiddo will be accepted and wants to attend than any of the others…so enjoy the visits, but don’t fret if theres a couple that the student doesn’t like…at the end of the day it’s more difficult to whittle down the list of applications to a reasonable number than anything else and at the end of the application cycle the student still has to pick one - just one. </p>
<p>An equally pressing concern – how to differentiate between a bad fit and a great tour? </p>
<p>I agree that the tours only get you so far, wandering off and chatting with students is unscripted and probably more meaningful. The goal is not to get your heart set on any one school, anyway, but to develop a list that makes sense, and where you could live with any of them.</p>
<p>I think if you come away from a campus visit, not just the tour but the independent exploring, and you just don’t like the “vibe”, that’s a valid reason to cross a school off the list. I think going back to see a serious contender a second time is also very valuable. I have personally been surprised to find that my overall impression is, more often, WORSE on the second visit. But that is good to know, in any event, and there have been a few exceptions to that. Those exceptions, where the school looks better and better upon closer examination, deserve particular attention.</p>
<p>It sounds like Elon is a lost cause now. Let it go. But before taking future tours, please emphasize to your D how scripted and phoney they can be. At the college where I teach, the ambassadors are the smarmiest, preppiest suck-ups on campus. The online recruitment materials are no better; I feel like I’m looking at a whole other school. You need to look as critically at any recruiting activity as you would look at a TV commercial. The reality can be better or worse than the gut feeling predicts.</p>
<p>I think the impression includes more than just the tour. For our visits, we did more than the tour and included meeting students, looking into interests, and for us, Hillel. The “no fit” impression was a feeling we got driving up to the campus, looking around, interacting with staff and students, and spending time there. We could not really explain why as nothing was particularly wrong- just did not feel right for my kid. For one school, the tour was great, and the tour guide personable and very likable, but this did not override the whole impression. Other students we knew were excited about the school.
I don’t think your daughter’s feeling of wanting to get off the campus was a result of the tour alone, but an overall sense of the campus and school. Objectively, I’ve seen Elon, and it’s a beautiful campus, but fit is subjective, and something about it just did not feel right for your daughter. She did get enthusiastic about other schools. She’s the one who has to spend four years there, so this is important to consider.</p>
<p>Agree Pennylane - the “tour” was mostly a way to get in and around buildings I know for fact my kids were far, far more interested in the kids on campus, they stopped and looked at bulletin boards, they ate in the caf and listened and watched the actual kids far, far more closely than they listened to the tour guides. And face it,the kids that 'sign on" to be tour guides, work in admissions, etc. are one “type” of kid…just like the cheerleaders in high school or the NHS kids or the Robotics kids. The kids are looking around and asking themselves are there enough kids here that look like someone i want to know, are there enough things going on that I might want to go to. Once they check the box on the academic fit they aren’t living and dying on the word of a tour guide. I recall a Colby tour when S2 said to me “I can imagine myself sitting here” when we were exiting the library and going down the steps. THAT is what your kids are doing on a tour…not listening to the tour guide.</p>
<p>I’m not sure whether bad fit or bad tour matters. If the student doesn’t like the school, for whatever reason, then move on.</p>
<p>To be fair… your own kid’s health and attitudes on a given day can affect a visit negatively. I took D2 on a tour of a college less than 48 hours after picking her up from a very intense academic summer program (2 college courses for credit in 3 weeks, I don’t think she slept more than 4-5 hours a night the whole time – but she totally loved the program). She was exhausted even after a really long night’s sleep (which included a meltdown about having to actually leave the hotel for dinner, so I brought her pizza) and missing her friends from the program. To top it off, it was 100 degrees at the college we visited that day. And it was summer, no classes in session. All I can say is that it is good she didn’t have an interview at the college visit.</p>
<p>She went through the motions, but afterwards always seemed really vague on that particular college, like she barely remember it. I KNEW it was a great fit for her, though. So I asked her to please keep it on her application list (the one “mom’s choice” college), and visit again for accepted student days if she got in. And if she didn’t care for it after that, we wouldn’t ever have to talk about it again. She agreed, got in, and ended up choosing it over a couple of top ranked colleges that she was sure she like better before the accepted student visit.</p>
<p>Now, if I hadn’t truly believed this college was ‘best fit’ for my kid, I wouldn’t have even suggested this approach. And it doesn’t sound like the OP thinks Elon is “best fit” for her kid. But I am just saying… a bad visit sometimes isn’t the fault of the college, and occasionally it might be good to consider keeping that college on the list if your kid will allow it.</p>
<p>Yes, tour guides can be bad. Those that do not project their voice are bad (yes, I am talking about you, Duke student!)</p>
<p>If possible, walk near the tour guide and use the tour as a chance to chat with the guide. You may learn more than from the script.</p>
<p>D is shy, so going up and talking to students is out of her comfort zone. So she takes a stealth snoop approach by sitting down and listening to snatches of conversations of students as they walk by or sit down near her. She thinks that provides insight on the campus vibe, too. (Not so sure I agree completely, but it works for her…at least so far.)</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but I also agree there are less than stellar tour guides. The two worst we had were second semester freshmen. They were a gaga about the school. But neither really tried to answer the questions from the group. They stuck to their script.</p>
<p>The tour guide from Claremont McKenna, a freshman, must have said “there is NOTHING like this at SMY other college campus”. My daughter finally looked at me and said “how would SHE know that? Has she been to EVERY other college campus?” DD really hated the school largely because of the attitude of that tour guide (who also looked like she rolled out of bed to do the tour).</p>
<p>The Elon tour guide had the same answer for every question “um (yes, he included UM in his response), this is my first tour. You will need to ask at the admissions office when you get back there.” Hello? If this guy wasn’t ready to give tours, he should NOT have been giving tours.</p>
<p>The only time we had a freshman was at Carnegie Mellon - she did the tour in tandem with an older student, who filled in anything she’d forgotten or couldn’t answer. There was a least one separate tour of the robotics facilities in addition to the more general tour. I’ve always felt our tour guides were good to excellent, though at one school the recent graduate at the info session after the tour was so bad that I think everyone that visited that year commented on it here at CC.</p>
<p>We had a tour at Ursinus that the guide literally looked like she rolled out of bed. Sweatshirt, flannel lounge pants and flip flops. Didn’t talk about hardly anything except about parties. Worst possible ambassador for what we thought was a good school (is one of the 'colleges that changes lives" schools–a book).</p>
<p>“good schools” have plenty of kids who hang around in lounge pants and flip flops… one reason I knew the school my D attended was a fit for her was the “sloppy pony tail” our guide had, it looked just like D’s on many days. 
But the party talk would certainly be a turnoff to parents on the tour.</p>
<p>On chatting up the tour guide while walking from destination to destination – just don’t be “that dad” (or mom) that monopolizes the guide and doesn’t let anyone else ask a question to the annoyance of other tour goers and embarrassment of your child! 
</p>
<p>Horrible tour guide at Haverford - and Georgetown tour guide so great I wrote the office to tell them so. </p>
<p>DS always made sure to grab the college newspapers and to check out all the flyers (or lack thereof). It seemed to be a much better way to get a feel of fit. To this day I will never understand why he wanted to be one of the few liberals at a conservative school, but he knew what he was getting into. </p>
<p>I specifically wanted to avoid this, so I visited the college I’m going to be attending before the scheduled honors day (the tour and interview day for the honors applicants- really them wanting to lure all of us there :)). My friends and I just scheduled a visit (it was handy to go to a high school a very short subway ride away…) and went to a bunch of classes, got a voucher for free caf food :), chatted with the admissions people, talked to the people sitting next to us in class… it was really chilled and we had a blast. No tour, no selling, just us doing what we wanted. By the time we got to the real thing, the honors day, we knew what we were doing and we knew what we liked- if a tour guide or rep irritated us, we were able to remember all of the awesome stuff from last time, the classes we loved so much, the great vibe. (Overall, though, the honors day was great, and I had an awesome interview.) But having that relatively personal prior perspective really helped me not be so influenced by the small details. (I’m Class of 2018… )</p>