<p>wow, thats pretty scary!</p>
<p>yeah the extreme temperatures may have killed my UMass dream. towards the end of the tour, we all stood in a circle (outside) while the tour guide answered group questions and we froze our butts off. after a while, people began YELLING at those asking questions because we all wanted to finish the tour and go home.</p>
<p>My tour of UMass-Amherst was in February and it was freezing cold that day too. Luckily I’m from Boston and was well prepared for the weather haha</p>
<p>We toured a campus a few years back and the tour guide told us that the food there was so good she gained 20 lbs…didn’t fly with the princess</p>
<p>Our February tour of Hampshire was killed by the 5 degree weather with a huge wind chill as we hiked up the snowy hill from the admissions office. I don’t think any school could have convinced D to attend that day!</p>
<p>At a Wesleyan information session which was pretty packed, each student was asked to introduce themselves to the crowd. Also, the tour guides don’t walk backwards. I thought both of those seemed pretty unique.</p>
<p>Best tour BY FAR for my D was at Kansas State University. When she called the admissions office to arrange for a tour, she was expecting the usual group tour scheduling, etc. Instead, a representative spent about 15 minutes with her on the phone inquiring about her interests. When we arrived a few days later, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the admissions office had structured a visit for her based upon that conversation. There was no group tour. Everything was done on a one-to-one, face-to-face basis. She arrived at the admissions office and first spent about 15 minutes talking to an admissions rep, then another 15 minutes with a financial aid rep. From there, a student tour guide met her, gave us a tour of the campus (just my daughter and myself), and then walked us to her next appointment with the dean of her college, who walked us to her next appointment with the department head of her intended major, who gave her a coupon for an ice cream at the campus dairy bar and then walked us to the director of the orchestra, who walked us to a meeting with the equestian team coach, who walked us to another tour guide at the vet school, where we finished the day. Several days later, my daughter received hand written notes from many of the people who she met with, and a cell phone call from the student tour guide. We were blown away with the level of personal attention. Needless to say, my daughter chose K-State, where today she is an early admission scholar to the vet school with a very generous merit scholarship. Her undergraduate experience has been very much like that tour – lots of personal attention by people who really do seem to care. For her, it has been a perfect match. We really didn’t have any bad experiences with tours at other schools, but none of them – including some tours at Ivy level schools – were even close to the treatment that we received at K-State.</p>
<p>Wow, gbesq, how cool is that! I attended a conference at KSU when I was in grad school and really enjoyed it. Everyone was so friendly! Thanks for sharing your daughter’s experience. I wish more schools did that. Especially getting to talk to the department head of her major. That’s the piece that I feel has been lacking at our college visits. I guess we’ll have to go back and do that at a few schools after DS’s list has been narrowed down.</p>
<p>I wound up dating my tour guide…true story. Neither of us realized it at first. She was kind of freaked out when I figured it out. :p</p>