It’s interesting what different students are looking for in a work-life balance that it was a negative that the sports bar wasn’t filled on a Sunday Night. Our son transferred to NU partly because he felt most students didn’t take their academics seriously enough at the school where he started. As he said, I like to go out on Saturday, but I don’t want to get drunk on a Tuesday.
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The tour guide thing is such a huge issue IMO and doesn’t get nearly enough airtime. Same for the info sessions. The amount of influence 1 kid or 1-2 AOs have on a visit to a school is…crazy. About as crazy as the amount of influence USNWR rankings have.
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Responding to a post from @OregonMom2024 over in the on-topic discussion:
I’m guessing from your username the answer is yes, but based on your UVM note, has your D considered UO? More of a safety if I’m reading the list of places you’ve visited as indicative of a potential applications list, but my understanding is that while Eugene’s not right on the slopes, Bachelor’s only a couple hours away. And if she likes the rest of the outdoors, it doesn’t seem to get much better from an access perspective, with hikes and mountain biking trails all over the place.
Also, no Boulder? Not quite as easy to access skiing as from DU, but Winter Park can’t be more than an hour and a half, with Summit County not much further. Not that skiing availability needs to be her No. 1 criteria, of course!
Yes Eugene is great, but that and CU Boulder are full of kids from our town. She’s looking for a smaller experience possibly on east coast. Our little town of Bend (population 80k) is great but she’s looking for a change!
Just to clarify, the volume of students that looked depressed that Sunday afternoon/night and the following Monday mid morning had a far greater impact than the tour guide. The lack of anyone in a bar and grill at 6pm said a lot when combined with the faces. It wasnt about partying on a Sunday. Maybe it was a major test day?? Can’t discount that possibility.
With regard to the AO I referenced, that was actually a compliment. We spent the weekend there. My son went in with his Why Essay already written in his head. There was a tour, a student panel discussion and the admissions team. He didn’t see anything distinguishing the school and found the student panel discouraging. Comments like “If you’re looking for a college town this isn’t for you. If you want to go to a school with big sports this isn’t for you.” That’s not one AO. That’s an admissions office doing its job. There was a heavy emphasis on needing to show why and by the end of the day his question was how is Tulane different than that School (pointing to Loyola)?
My kid is currently between three large public schools. One is in the top 30, the other top 40 and the other around 60 in the latest UNWR. That ranking number is playing no role in his decision.
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There were a few others that were visited but I didn’t have anything of value up/down to add
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Wasn’t responding directly to your take in this instance, just in general. In the main up/down/off thread, there are a quite a few takes that are influenced by, at the end of the day, one person. Maybe two. On our tours we’ve tried our best to look beyond/through the specific person in front of us. What’s somewhat surprising is the enormous gulf between the best and worst, whether tours or AO presentations. Honestly there were some schools where I was embarrassed for them. That’s how bad they were.
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In some cases, universities use the ambassador positions to hire work-study students, so they might not be the ideal candidates, but they are students worthy of receiving financial aid to further their education. (Work-study is a federally and sometimes state-funded program that helps college students with financial need get part-time jobs).
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Totally get it. For some students it’s “just a job” and perhaps no different in approach, for them, from checking student IDs in the gym or whatever. Some are enthusiastic obviously, others not.
But what’s weirder to me is the way some schools clearly put a lot of effort into training (if not also screening) and others do not. And this applies to lower level staffers from the AO too btw. And, my criticism for the worst of these is not limited to less selective schools.
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I’m sure some view it as “as just a job” but others are assigned the job, and they just aren’t well suited to the position. I wouldn’t be good at it regardless of training. I’m not extroverted, naturally bubbly, or a good public speaker. I think some ambassadors are the same; they’ve been assigned a role they aren’t naturally good at.
I agree that some universities could do much better at presenting their information. Our worst was a school where the tour guides repeated the exact same talking points as the initial group presentation. It was obvious the guides were trained to say exactly what they said, but it made for a boring tour, and wasted an opportunity to add information.
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Winter Park (and really all the high country areas) are about the same distance from CU or DU. DU is Interstate all the way while CU you have have to take a state highway down to the interstate. But, at CU you can ski at Eldora pretty quickly.
If the town is small, and the high school is small, how many of the student can go to CU? Everyone thinks it is ‘just like high school’ but when 50 kids are blending into 31k, it is nothing like high school.
But your money, your kid.
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Good point, bigger driver is she doesn’t want a state school with 30k.
I think the problem with many of the student-led tours is that they are designed to cater to the parents (the ones making the final decision to stroke the check), so they talk about things that parents care about (campus safety, campus buses, the library, etc.) Most 17 year-olds aren’t interested in those subjects.
Ideally, they should do an AO-led tour for the parents and a separate student-led tour for the kids, where they can feel free to go more in-depth about campus and student life.
Someone mentioned a college that divided kids up into tour groups according to their major - that’s a great idea too, especially if they add in a tour of the buildings where classes in that major take place.
For some kids who maybe aren’t excited to be touring a given college because it’s a safety they’re not interested in or because their parents dragged them there, a great tour guide can make a huge difference. A mediocre one could just solidify the kid’s already negative impression of the college. I agree that it’s important for colleges to make sure their tour guides are more than just students who are fulfilling a work study obligation.
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It’s been a while since we toured, but we visited schools that toured the students and parents in different groups. This struck me as brilliant.
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Lehigh broke into groups by major when we toured. Some of that has to do with the “mountaintop campus” for engineering and other majors.
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Gonzaga did the separate tour thing and my daughter loved it. Trinity U also did for their accepted students day, it’s an excellent idea.
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The greatest thing about our visit to Grinnell College was the fact that they separated out the kids and the parents for the tour. My 2 boys came back from their tour absolutely in love with the school - they thought the tour guide was hilarious and honest, and they said it was the first “no B.S.” tour they’d been on through the whole process. Meanwhile, my husband I thought our tour was pretty similar to every other SLAC we’d visited. You’re right that most college tours are not that appealing to the average 17-year-old, especially since they all kinda sound the same after a certain amount of visits!
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Wrong thread
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Is it worth visiting colleges in Summer?
Yes – most colleges have tours available all summer long. You certainly won’t get the same experience in the summer as you would when school is in session but we found the summer tours to be super valuable in determining fit.
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