<p>I've seen a lot of posts recently about how a good/bad tour guide affected a potential student's perception of a college... as a tour guide at a fairly competitive school, I'm curious about how we are perceived by prospective families. </p>
<p>Post your best/worst/most bizarre campus tour experiences here. :)</p>
<p>One female tour guide at a Catholic univ had a VERY low cut shirt - not a narrow V neck, but more of a wide U-neck - and she had a nice figure, so her breasts were very “out there.” She was also wearing a necklace with a large brightly colored beaded cross that hung down into the exposed cleavage. D and I couldn’t figure out if the tour guide thought the cross made her look more conservative, but we thought it just served to draw more even attention to the exposed area. Honestly, I know this post makes me sound creepy, but this shirt was just completely inappropriate. </p>
<p>At another school, we had a tour guide who told us about what he and his floormates did that got them hauled in front of the Dean. Also he was from the city and had apparently never seen wildlife before. He was very impressed with the chipmunks on his suburban campus, and gave us a lecture on the dangers of skunks as if we were in Yosemite and he was warning city-slickers about grizzly bears.</p>
<p>Generally the best tour guides are enthusiastic, knowledgable, friendly and honest. The worst are the opposite of those 4 characteristics.</p>
<p>Stopped in Brown Admissions last week on a Friday-- surfer dude kid, aka the admissions rep at the desk was rude & a jerk.</p>
<p>Me: “hi we are in town and was hoping to pick up some campus materials, blah, blah… Do you have any?”</p>
<p>Dude: “No we don’t have any…(5 second pause) we’re going green… (5 sec pause) you can see it online”</p>
<p>Note: I did find brochures that were right at the entrance way-- not a viewbook just nice looking glossy looking Brown campus & local info???</p>
<p>Me: "Oh okay… well we would like to walk around campus could you give us some pointers (since you don’t have anything to give me… :/)</p>
<p>Dude: “Yeah, here’s a campus map & it will tell you everything” (why didn’t he offer that earlier?)</p>
<p>Me: I take a quick look at this photocopied, b/w, tiny print , jam packed with words MAP-guide “Oh it has alot on it, can you just point out a few of the highlights we should go to? We tight on time…”</p>
<p>Dude: “No, not really, it says it better on that page.”</p>
<p>What a lazy jerk. Good luck in the real world.</p>
<p>Our female guide on a recent tour was dressed similarly, but she was heavyset. Very distracting! She also wrung her hands a lot and used the phrase, “That said…” about 100 times.</p>
<p>Some tour guides allow themselves to be dominated by a single person or two who fires question after question and engages them in extensive conversation while the other people on the tour are somewhat shut out. The TG needs to learn to break them off and engage the other people on the tour. Related - all too often the parents dominate the tour more than the students who sometimes don’t utter a word. Maybe the TG could come up with creative ways to engage the students (as opposed to the parents).</p>
<p>One tour guide told the front of the large crowd how he had spearheaded an effort to keep a controversial speaker off campus. Isn’t college about expanding horizons? He also told us about how he had bombed his classes one semester and lost his scholarship but some teacher wrote a letter on his behalf so he wouldn’t get kicked out.</p>
<p>Another tour guide asked the kids what they were interested in so he “could focus the tour on their interests.” And then proceeded to spend an hour talking about his major.</p>
<p>YDS, that’s a good point - I’ve noticed several tour guides talking all about their majors and showing the buildings where they have classes, and neglecting fields such as science altogether.</p>
<p>ML, it wouldn’t have bothered me so much except that he made a point of saying he wanted to know what the kids were interested in (env. science, engineering, English lit in our group) and then he spent an hour talking about music and drama. Not even close to what the kids wanted to see. And then when we finally got to the science buildings, he didn’t want to take us up to the labs or anything because “we’re running late.” Yeah, because you showed us three different theaters even though no one was interested. Sheesh.</p>
<p>A parent asked “What’s your opinion of the academics here?” The Guide answered “Actually I’m transferring.” I’m sure what she meant was ‘perhaps I’m not the best one to ask’ but the group pretty much went silent after that. “That said …”</p>
<p>Oh, on another campus I asked why the Biology and Chemistry buildings were at different ends of the campus. The reply was “Why would you ask that?” OK, perhaps I should have asked if the Health Sciences departments scheduled their Bio and Chem classes so students wouldn’t have to race the length of the campus, but still …</p>
<p>I also asked this same guide where the new science buidling, under construction, was located (the track coach had told us about it), and she looked very blank. “Oh, over there, I guess,” she said, waving her hand vaguely.</p>
<p>This thread is funny. We want them to be honest, but when they are we don’t like it. I guess, OP, it would be good if a tour guide learned to hone his/her social filter.</p>
<p>I think the worst tour guides we’ve had have been all about “me me me” and not about the school or what the people on the tour would be interested in. </p>
<p>We had a similar experience to Youdon’tsay, where a tour guide asked what people were interested in and then only talked about being a film major, showing us where he does most of his work…and skipping over everything else. </p>
<p>The best tour guides have a sense of humor and a genuine enthusiasm for the school. And please don’t be boring. Don’t just say: “that’s the library. That’s the freshman dorm” etc… tell us fun historical facts; tell us about campus traditions. </p>
<p>Tell us what makes the school special. Often we’re seeing 2 schools in a day and several over the course of a few days - tell us why your school is better and different from the other schools we’re seeing (without being directly competitive!). I don’t mean saying: “BC has much more of a nicer campus than BU”, say: “It’s so wonderful to be so close to the heart of Boston and yet have this beautiful, traditional college campus.”</p>
<p>At one of the tippy top LAC’s- our tour guide used the word “awesome” in almost every sentence, but when asked any question, replied “I don’t really know about that, it’s not my major…” She came across as inarticulate and narcissistic. Scratch that school.</p>
<p>But otherwise, it’s been amazing how much the tour guides have embodied the sterotypes of the schools. At Bowdoin in July, all the tourguides wore oxford shirts and khaki shorts. At Vassar the female wore a pink vintage sundress over ratty jeans and a black pirate scarf, while the male wore a Che Guevara t-shirt. At Wesleyan, the male tour guides were wearing ties, the females dresses and pumps. And at Sarah Lawrence we couldn’t figure out the guide’s gender.</p>
<p>“And at Sarah Lawrence we couldn’t figure out the guide’s gender.”</p>
<p>I’m confused … is that a good thing, or a bad thing?</p>
<p>Our tour guide at S2’s big state u. was great. He was a second year grad. student. He had been at the sch. for 6 years so he knew it all. He seemed to genuinely enjoy what he was doing. He was a broadcasting major so was very comfortable speaking to a group. </p>
<p>He did a good job of relating to both the students and the parents, pointing out the different clasroom buildings and what kinds of classes took place there then touring thru the new student rec. center.
He talked about the sch. bus system, the cafeterias, the dorms, campus jobs. </p>
<p>He was very “sch. spirited” wearing a sch. logo shirt and telling stories about his early years in college. As we moved along during the tour, he would always ask if anyone had any questions, making everyone more comfortable w/ asking.</p>
<p>We did the tour after S2 was accepted. Initially, S2 wasn’t very interested in doing the official tour (thinking it would be lame) but afterwards I could tell a big difference in his attitude toward his future sch.</p>
<p>Best: tour guide was polite, gracious, and interested. He answered all questions enthusiastically and stayed totally engaged in the tour and the group the entire time. Ironically, this school was added as a “we’re in the neighborhood” type thing, but it is at the top of d’s list.</p>
<p>Worst: tour guide was crude, cocky, full of himself. Made two sexist jokes. Ironically before visiting, this school was at the top of d’s list but promptly fell off the list completely after writing the admissions director, whose response was “Most people like our tour guides, I’m sorry YOU didn’t”, implying the issue was with us, not the tour guide.</p>
<p>Lol about the gender. That’s funny.</p>
<p>I think I liked to see personality traits I admired in the tour guides. Like, I felt a bad vibe from schools whose tour guide(s) were good-looking airheads and I felt a better vibe from schools with nerdy-looking over-excited people. If a student told me crazy stuff about the dean and all that, I’d probably just think of him/her as an outlier, but when I got a “normal” one with a personality I didn’t jive with, I made it a slight against the school.</p>
<p>Looking back, I can see how my own prejudices really played in. For one, I can certainly come off as an airhead myself so I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge (haha). And two, there are airheads/nerds/etc. at every school, really, so what tour guide you get shouldn’t play as big of a factor as it did. But oh, it did.</p>
<p>Parent here…but the student agreed. At Claremont McKenna…worst tour guide in 28 colleges we visited. First…dressed like she was going to a carwash. Second…kept saying “there is NOTHING like this at any other college in the country”. DD finally said to me “how would she KNOW that, she’s a freshman?” Third, didn’t really answer questions…just pontificated about how great the school was. </p>
<p>You know…if we hadn’t thought the school was great, we wouldn’t have come there for a tour. We expected the tour guide to answer questions. She didn’t. </p>
<p>My kid looked at the tour guides and asked herself “do I want to be like that student?”. Her assumption was that these students were representative of the mainstream student at that college. The CM guide was not someone my DD wanted to be like.</p>
<p>She is a tour guide/admission office person now. She says she learned a LOT about what NOT to do on the many tours she took as a high school student.</p>
<p>At her school, there IS a feedback sheet and she encourages folks to fill it out. She tells them it helps the school make their tours what the incoming folks want and need.</p>
<p>Oh…and they wear a “uniform” of sorts…khaki slacks skirt or shorts (their own), shirt with school name on it, very nice goretex hooded jacket if needed, nice armorall hoodie if needed…all given to them by the admissions office. But yes…she CAN walk backwards in flipflops.</p>
<p>Interesting… at my school they try to make the schedule so there is diversity in the group of tour guides for prospective families to choose from (an engineer, a liberal arts major, etc). We introduce ourselves and encourage families to choose a tour guide with similar interests, because our tours are supposed to be based on personal experiences (“my largest class was physics but the professor was so accessible in office hours…” vs. “our student faculty ratio is x:x”). The tour guides are selected in part to be a good cross section of the diverse student body, so I can see how going with the “wrong” guide could affect someone.</p>