<p>@justice66 wow, we loved JMU. S loved the campus, friendly people, organized tour, and excellent lunch. Safety school so he did not end up going here. Amazing how different the experiences can be at the same school. :-/ </p>
<p>It’s been a few years, but Knox was the only place we toured where we left knowing it was probably a “no”. The tour guide had just returned from her study abroad and talked about how hard it was to be back in the middle of nowhere at Knox, and she was eager to graduate. Then over lunch we asked the student who ate with us what she and her friends did for fun and her answer was to go to Walmart.</p>
<p>At the University of San Diego (USD, not UCSD) the tour guide was a surfer dud who kept talking about how great it was to live on the beach.</p>
<p>D1 was an aspiring engineering major. One thing she was definitely looking for was an opportunity for a coop experience. We visited Vanderbilt and during the general information session were told that Vanderbilt did not believe in coops. We were supposed to tour the campus after the information session but D said “that’s a deal breaker, unless you want to see the campus I’m ready to leave”. We went home.</p>
<p>Neither of my DDs liked the NW tour or admission session. However, the real kiss of death for D1 was that the one kid from her high school (plane ride from Chicago) that she absolutely despised ended up on our tour. To make matters worse his obnoxious father kept asking her about her grades and SAT scores. Not sure even the best tour on earth could have overcome that experience.</p>
<p>^^^ that’s funny 1012mom…one of my daughters crossed BU off of her list because of something similar. There was a boy a year ahead of her that went there. He worked for us and bullied another worker who wasn’t exactly academically gifted. The irony is, the bullied kid ( now 26 years old ) has a steady , blue collar job that pays very well while the BU boy is riddled with heavy debt from his undergrad and grad school education…and no job :D</p>
<p>We visited 14 schools or so and my daughter applied to Vanderbilt ED1 and is loving it there and excelling academically. Our “kiss of death” experience was at Swarthmore where by the way we had an excellent admissions officers talk. Students appeared isolative (not talking to each other) and dour. A professor who we asked for directions and seemed cool and friendly essentially told us he would not have gone to school there since he wanted to have fun as well as study during college. The student took us down a dingy hall to a dorm room that smelled horrid. Beautiful campus and excellent reputation could not make up for the atmosphere which was depressing. </p>
<p>Oh I forgot on Swarthmore. They had the New Yorker hanging around but when we asked about a college newspaper the tour guide said he thought there was on online but wasn’t sure. </p>
<p>At a very famous women’s college this past summer, the tour guide was apparently instructed to stick to a tight timeframe…and felt it necessary to chastise the relatively small group (of parents and kids) to “stay together…close up the gaps” a few times in the first couple of minutes. Enough that another parent in turn felt it necessary to chastise me for not “closing the gaps”. You know, the ones that naturally occur when you have a large group of people of different level of mobility. The one that happen ON EVERY COLLEGE TOUR EVER. I wonder what she had to say to the grandfather and crew who was lagging farther back than I was!</p>
<p>When we got to the second stop, the Admissions Office had wisely sent a second guide to take half the group. We joined her group (with pleasure!) and were never once hurried or chastised for dawdling. And I know this will amaze you, but we ended up at the final stop within minutes of our first group.</p>
<p>Best part is that back at the Admissions Office, I found out the mom mentioned above was shepherding her so to be junior year daughter. Plenty of time left for freaking out in that family.</p>
<p>Did not mention specific college because I have written to Admissions Office to complain about it already. They were extremely apologetic (and admitted to giving the directions on sticking to tight timing based on complaints that other parents had felt tours were running slow historically and causing them to miss second college visit scheduled for the same day). Senior AO offered personal tour should we come back. </p>
<p>I would hope there are crucifix’s on the walls at Fordham. It is after all a Catholic school… 
</p>
<p>If the tour guides can’t walk backwards, they are off our list! </p>
<p>Beloit - we went to Admitted Students day only to find out that they canceled one of her possible majors totally; they added Printmaking and eliminated Ceramics. If she wanted to do any ceramics at all she would need to go into town (doesn’t drive and even if she did she wouldn’t have a car) to a studio that was basically set up for elementary school kids. </p>
<p>When I was on a tour at Trinity and the two tour guides kept laughing immaturely at anything the other said that might allude to being gay. And it was in rankings of the most LGBT-unfriendly universities in the US.</p>
<p>If the tour guides can’t walk backwards, they are off our list!
@Mscharg1 The tour guides told us on our tour at Vanderbilt that they are not allowed to walk backwards. Vanderbilt ran an exit poll of people on tours and the number one comment from parents was that they were concerned the tour guide would fall while walking backwards, so Vanderbilt has guides walk to the next stop on the tour and speak to the tour group while standing still.</p>
<p>For S1, no major kiss of death issues on visit. For S2, there were a couple of things he did not like-Drexel’s tour emphasized the brand new fitness center (fine, you just spent _______ million dollars on it but it is a fitness center). He also did not like the feel of the campus, as it is a little spread out and integrated into the city. You can stand on a street corner with a traffic light on a major road, and two corners are Drexel, one is UPenn, and one is privately owned. We learned that he seems to like a more compact campus that is not real big, and maybe a little more self contained. He also is very wary of the schools that really play up their new building they just put up, especially if it is not academic. My wife was put off by the cigarette butts that seemed to be breeding outside of every door of every building at Lafayette. I wouldn’t call it the kiss of death, but it was a little frustrating listening to a Stevens Tech rep tell us that he did not know the difference between the Bachelor of Engineering degree they offer and the BS in Engineering that most schools offer (and I am an alum). </p>
<p>I do think that when and how you are visiting has an impact on your impressions. Going at an open house? They have every student tour guide on their staff available that day and it will be crowded and perhaps rushed. Schedule an individual visit? It will (should) be one guide, with some individual attention. Just dropped in? All bets are off.</p>
<p>The different touring styles are interesting. We went on one recently where there were 2 tour guides (that seems fairly common), but they did not walk backward. They just walked and talked and I could not hear much of what they were saying at all! If there are 2, couldn’t one face front and warn the other of obstacles if that is an issue? Another one didn’t talk while walking at all, but stopped at specific places to talk. That was rough because it was so cold out, during a cold snap that some on the tour were not dressed for, so the group didn’t ask many questions! Another thing I’ve noticed that bothered me at a few places, was the tour guide would ask after each stop if there were any questions about it…specifying “any questions about the library?”, or “any questions about the ______”. It just didn’t sometimes made me reluctant to ask questions off that particular topic. </p>
<p>No kisses of death so far for me, but then again, I’ve only visited three schools.</p>
<p>Penn: My first tour. The info session was HUGE, which I wasn’t a big fan of. It kinda just seemed less personal. The tour guide was okay, but not super friendly or anything.</p>
<p>Yale: Cute British boy did the information session. I actually liked that an undergrad did the session. He provided the same information an admissions officer would, but it was more fun and personal because he spiced it up with anecdotes. Again, he was really cute 
The tour was pretty good. I didn’t like that it ended so far from where we started, but it was easy enough to make our way back. Of, the three, this was my favorite tour.</p>
<p>Princeton: I didn’t even go to the info session. The tour was solid. Not fantastic, but not bad either.</p>
<p>Loyola Marymount University - tour guide rocked several Cartier bracelets as well as a flashy diamond engagement ring that she made very obvious and chewed gum very loudly. She was very uninformed about a lot of questions pertaining to freshmen life. Also tour ended a good half a mile at least from the starting point. Overly emphasized the gym by taking us on a detailed tour - and while nice - isn’t why I want to come to your school. Not an overall awful experience and the campus was in fact beautiful, but the tour guide made it hard for me to have a good impression of the school. Not a great idea to chew gum while trying to communicate what you like about your school.</p>
<p>Kiss of death: George Mason - it was a two hour tour and we walked to every far corner of campus, and didn’t go inside a single building. Also, the tour guide was mostly interested in explaining how you could spend the entire day in the cafeteria, eating, with only one swipe of your meal card.</p>
<p>At Temple, I called in advance spoke to the admin of a certain dept and asked if my son could sit in on a class while he was there. She said no, it was not allowed. So I pulled up a class schedule and had my son email a professor directly to ask if he could sit in (we were coming from far away and knew that there wouldn’t be a second trip). He was very nice and chatty and said of course, and when they got there, insisted my husband sit in on the class as well, spent half an hour chatting with them afterwards, and then brought them into the dept office and introduced them to the admin, who definitely remembered that she had said no… I thought there would be a black mark on my son and he wouldn’t get accepted, but fortunately all went fine - and then he ended up at RIT even though while we were visiting there was an impromptu snowstorm, and it was the end of April.</p>
<p>Canisius was probably the nicest place we visited, everybody was so down to earth and NICE - in the dept my daughter was interested in, the admin showed us where she kept the peanut butter and jelly, so when the kids came there to study they could make themselves lunch. And she had a picture of every student in the program on her bulletin board and knew all their names.</p>
<p>At SUNY Albany we were standing in the lobby of a dorm where you could very distinctly hear a dog barking incessantly. Finally one of the mothers asked if dogs were allowed in the dorms. The guide said no, and then kept us in there an additional 10 minutes giving us the scripted lecture. That was probably the strangest, no common sense involved.</p>
<p>Endicott was a lovely little school boasting its own beach. When the beautiful vivacious little tour guide (my husband was already sizing her up for my son) brought us to a dorm and found someone to let us see their room, the smell of vomit was so strong that I had to walk back out. But not before noticing that it was a forced triple and the third bunk was at least 10 feet off the floor.</p>
<p>FWIW, a devout Jewish student is not going to look at U.Va. anyway. It’s not so easy to keep kosher in a town with a small Jewish population and only one (Reform) synagogue. I went there for grad school, and yes, it’s problematic that the chapel is Christian and on the grounds of a public school. That being said, if you’re not religious (and I don’t think this family was, or they wouldn’t be looking there), that cross shouldn’t have been a deal-breaker. I agree that some of the reasons for crossing schools off the list puzzle me, at least from the adults. Then again, some people do make judgments based on “feel.” I’m not that intuitive or sensitive to my surroundings, I guess. </p>