<p>Well @HarvestMoon1 many times they are paid campus jobs or internships but you miss the point: if they are going to do a half-assed job they should be doing something else. Like everybody else. They ARE representing their school, after all. My D told me after our 6th or 8th college visit that she came to realize that the info session and tours “really are a window on the soul of the campus” and I told her I had come to agree with her. At the outset I don’t think it occurred to either of us that that would be the case. </p>
<p>And if you are going to potentially put forward 60K cash per annum for 4 years to send your offspring to a supposedly good college, wouldn’t you expect to be treated like a well-paying customer? When you visit a car lot, do you expect the salesman to act like he wants to get rid of you so he can get back to playing solitaire on his computer?</p>
<p>At Beloit College, the choral conductor had the kids use a tuning fork at each phrase or so. The very cute tour guide who had been accepted to grad school at Stanford was not sufficient to offset that unusual practice.</p>
<p>In general, we found info sessions not very informative as you could find the same info on the school web site. The tours were a little better, but DD liked attending classes, observing and talking to students, and observing choral conductors the best. She’s never had an interest in being a music major, but choral singing has been a big part of her life since second grade and one of her merit scholarships is for music. BUT she chose not to apply to schools with the best choral programs because they were too remote and she’s quite an urban kid. The visits helped us put into some type of context the “located in a small city” descriptor in those phone book size guidebooks.</p>
<p>@rhandco dude you’re seriously caught up in the way distant past. With skyrocketing tuition hitting 40k or (even 25k at public universities) I’m checking out the goods. This ain’t the “good ol’ daze” where you wrote a check for a few hundred dollars from your regular checking account and sent it off in the mail to pay the kids’s tuition twice a year.</p>
<p>I’m going to be paying potentially 60k per year- not FA eligible- and we’re getting our money’s worth or looking elsewhere. Also D and I are close and we disuss everything and share opinions. </p>
<p>@madad We had exactly the same experiences with Cornell and U Rochester. My D was turned off completely by the cattle call nature of Cornell. The tour guides that were there for our HUGE group made NO pretenses. In fact, we left after them info session and before the tours began because we were put in a looooong slow line to sign up, and the guides were clearly uninterested. U of R the next day, however, was very pleasant. The info session was well-done, interesting, informative, no cheesy-ass, insulting-to-your-intelligence PR video, and a very memorable tour, with an intelligent, informative, responsive, guide who had tons and tons to say about campus life, very detailed descriptions of the food, the dorms, dorm life, the libraries, intra-murals, available ammenities and off-campus opportunities including the lake, boating, equine activities, etc. They also interviewed her the same day.</p>
<p>I got the strong impression that U of R is a more dynamic and diverse environment, very engaging, while Cornell is this Ivy-crusted institution with a lot of legacy students. </p>
<p>Wellesley: I had an overnight visit it was scheduled to spend the night in the sustainability co-op. It was full of vegan lesbians. Nothing against either group, it was just totally not my social scene, and made me feel super out of place, like I didn’t belong at the school.</p>
<p>@Jimkingwood: That’s an interesting analogy. If I go out to purchase a really nice car – say, one that costs $60,000 – and the sales staff are rude or uninterested, I have the ability to go down the street or to the next town and buy the exact same car from someone who can provide me with better service. Both fortunately and unfortunately, colleges aren’t as fungible as that. And, at the “supposedly good” ones, demand greatly exceeds supply by a factor of 10X or more. </p>
<p>Thus, if Harvard gives a lousy tour (which, IMO, they do), it’s because they don’t have to do any better to attract the type of candidates they’re seeking in more than sufficient volume to create a great freshman class. In contrast, and not to pick on the place, Case Western put on by far the best on-campus info session and tour I’ve experienced and will actually leave you excited about Cleveland. But they have to recruit harder to convince high-stats East Coast kids to give the place a chance. </p>
<p>You said your daughter considers tours “a window on the soul of the campus,” and that’s probably right. But it is “A” window, not “the” window, and you’re buying the house. FWIW, one of the “kisses of death” mentioned above is my older son’s college, where we’ve never been made to feel anything other than completely welcome. First impressions are important, but they probably shouldn’t be your only impressions before making a go/no-go decision on a $240,000 purchase.</p>
<p>(All that said, and to loop back to my example, my older boy found Harvard’s tour sufficiently off-putting that he did not apply. The younger one was with us that day, also found the tour comically bad, but plans to apply anyway. Different strokes.) </p>
<p>Kiss of death: My son went on a tour of St Johns university in NY and was turned off. We are Jewish and he said their was a cross in every building, they started the tour with a pray and the slides that ran during the information session had a picture of a cross every third slide. Yes we know its a Catholic University but do they have to shove it in ones face? He came home (went alone) and said he just couldn’t go there.</p>
<p>St. Johns is a Jesuit Catholic University - that means they are devoutly Catholic (very religious). That’s why it is important to visit - to see if the school fits you.</p>
<p>@SomeOldGuy - Can’t really agree with you. My D and every single one of her high stats friends were really turned off by the Harvard tour. “Arrogant” is the word I heard time and again when folks give their assessment of it. </p>
<p>We’re a full pay family ( and actually, so are all of D’s high stats friends), but we put a budget on our D, and I’m quite, ahem frugal, so I meant it, so H was never a real consideration for D, but I can tell you that if she were to cry to her Daddy that H was her dream school, he’d be signing the 20k in Parent PLUS loans that would be needed for her to attend each year. Who knows if she would even get in, but she wasn’t even impressed enough to try. </p>
<p>Eventually, if reactions like my D’s (and her friends and your S’s, apparently) become indicative of a larger trend), H is going to have to get the bulk of its full pay kids from overseas and that will change what Harvard is. </p>
<p>And Harvard may like to think it’s in a class by itself but there are a lot high stats kids applying ED to Stanford, Vandy, Duke, and elsewhere who’d disagree. If the only people I knew who drove Mercedes were real a-holes, the Mercedes loses some of its appeal and the Lexus takes on a new shine. </p>
<p>@shoboemom - yes, that’s the Wellsley I’m talking about. As I said, I wasn’t there, but D’s version of events were confirmed by her friends and the Mom who did take them </p>
<p>D definitely got a crass vibe that skewed heavily lesbian. I’m sure some girls are looking for exactly that in a college but it just wasn’t my D’s scene. </p>
<p>At Seton Hall, two tour guides decided it would be more fun to tour together, making the group size way too large. One of the tour guides was completely obnoxious. He had a story about EVERYTHING, and did not stop talking about himself. We snuck away when the tour was approaching the two hour mark (it was supposed to take an hour). Then after suffering through this tour that would not end, I got an email from the school the next day asking why we didn’t show up. </p>
<p>Best tour - U of Rochester Engineering Tour. Tour guide loved the program, was very knowledgable and had pursued really quirky EC’s (organ lessons, Irish step dancing, asian arts). It was great fun.</p>
<p>Worst freshman dorms - Connecticut College & Case Western Reserve. Worst food - U of Rochester
Best freshman dorm - U of Rochester. Best Food - tie between Skidmore & UMass Amherst</p>
<p>“My son went on a tour of St Johns university in NY and was turned off. We are Jewish and he said their was a cross in every building, they started the tour with a pray and the slides that ran during the information session had a picture of a cross every third slide. Yes we know its a Catholic University but do they have to shove it in ones face? He came home (went alone) and said he just couldn’t go there.”</p>
<p>If it’s a Catholic university, it’s entitled to “shove Catholicism in one’s face,” and it’s arrogant to expect them to get rid of all their heritage. I’m not familiar with St. John’s, but I’ve toured Georgetown and Notre Dame. They are both Catholic (ND more “physically” so than Georgetown) but it is what it is. And btw I’m Jewish.</p>
<p>@Jimkingwood said: "@rhandco dude you’re seriously caught up in the way distant past. With skyrocketing tuition hitting 40k or (even 25k at public universities) I’m checking out the goods. This ain’t the “good ol’ daze” where you wrote a check for a few hundred dollars from your regular checking account and sent it off in the mail to pay the kids’s tuition twice a year.</p>
<p>I’m going to be paying potentially 60k per year- not FA eligible- and we’re getting our money’s worth or looking elsewhere. Also D and I are close and we disuss everything and share opinions. "</p>
<p>I don’t like the tour to combine parents and kids. I find it very important for my child to look at the campus with peers and experience the tour without mommies and daddies chiming in “pertinent questions and comments”. I would be 100% on board with touring as a group of parents.</p>
<p>Case in point: my son is an athletic recruit, and the mommies and daddies were bombarding the coach with questions after the recruiting camp. It was embarrassing, and none of the kids were able to talk to the coach (this was on campus so it was allowed). There were mommies asking the coach flat out “so, are you giving my son a spot?” and “when will you tell us? He needs to know because he is looking elsewhere.” And this was D3, not even for scholarships or anything!</p>
<p>And we are used to club coaches let alone HS coaches who will not talk to parents AT ALL unless a player has an injury or just to be civil. The idea of talking to a coach on behalf of your child went out at 12 years old…</p>
<p>Of course I am not going to drop tens of thousands of dollars per year without checking out the campus, and doing a tour! But I don’t think it is appropriate to treat this transition to adulthood as ma or pa’s last gasp at being a helicopter parent.</p>
<p>And I do consider myself quite a helicopter parent, by the way.</p>
<p>PS - Kiss of Love for my son is always if there is a great restaurant on or adjoining campus. Sad to think that is part of his criteria LOL.</p>
<h1>198 - that is definitely a “no-no” for us as interviewers and that should not have been done. Don’t know what school did it but I would bring it to the attention of the Adcoms (after the admission season is over, of course)</h1>
<p>@ekroxx #198 - that’s a no-no for interviewers from my school (peer of @Tperry1982 's) also and definitely tell the admissions office so that they can give appropriate guidance to the interviewer. I differ from Tperry on when to do that - I don’t see any reason to wait till admission season is over. I can’t see why the admissions committee would hold it against you to be proactive about this, and it’s pretty unlikely they’d tell the interviewer who blew the whistle. Just don’t be whiny about it.</p>
<p>@Requin - I guess I can agree with you on the timing. I probably wouldn’t make a difference. I just thought they could just move on with the application process and deal with that after since the interview has already occurred. But glad we agree that they should be contacted so the interviewer can get a friendly reminder.</p>
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