<p>I appreciate reading about others' experiences and insights. We did this summer's tour as a first step toward helping my junior daughter start to sort out her preferences and priorities; we know that visits are more useful if students are on campus and more time is devoted to each campus visit, but practically speaking we couldn't swing that, yet. Seeing these places has helped clarify what my daughter considers important, but I'm a little worried that based on her initial impressions, she'll eliminate some schools from her list that deserve further consideration, just because she didn't like the looks of the buildings from the outside or because of a throw-away comment of a tour guide. </p>
<p>I think the information sessions were useful for my daughter because she now knows about all the aspects of the application process to keep in mind as she enters her junior year. I didn't hear anything new, but she did - she's never looked at any college guidebooks or websites and would prefer not to think about college quite yet. Tours/info sessions were a relatively stress-free way to get her into the planning mode a bit.</p>
<p>As far as whether dorm rooms are on the tour or not, I can understand how disruptive multiple tour groups tromping through would be during the school year, but I don't see why this should cause problems during the summer when summer school has ended. Likewise, it shouldn't cause problems to take a group into a theater or lecture hall during the summer. </p>
<p>Some of the schools had multiple tour guides and divided the visitors up into smaller groups. I liked it when the guides told us a bit about themselves including their majors and extracurricular interests, and then let us decide whose tour to join. We were able to ask questions of some of them during the walks from one spot to another. With others there was no chance - I am impressed by their ability to talk (yell) and walk backward so charmingly and efficiently.</p>
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<p>but I'm a little worried that based on her initial impressions, she'll eliminate some schools from her list that deserve further consideration, just because she didn't like the looks of the buildings from the outside or because of a throw-away comment of a tour guide.<<</p>
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<p>There is always a risk of this. I've heard instances of kids forming immovable low opinions of schools based on some seemingly trivial things, like what the guide was wearing or some such thing. But in the end having the student get a "feel" for the place is one of the key parts of a tour. So I wonder that perhaps many of those rejected for dumb reasons are really rejected for vague but perhaps legitimate reasons that are hard to express - and the dumb reason is seized on as an excuse. My D was underwhelmed with Princeton (which I thought was wonderful), but she never could quite say why.</p>
<p>While we did do the tour/info sessions at each college our son visited, we also took enough time to strike out on our own. Having spent 40+ years of my life on college campuses, our family felt comfortable doing this.</p>
<p>What exactly did we do? At each college we visited the building housing the compsci department, looking over department bulletin boards, poster board displays, and visiting the department office to ask if they had any info that might be helpful. They almost always had something, items like department course offerings, sample schedules, listings of faculty publications, department annual reports, etc. Seeing what lab facilities, student lounges, complabs, etc were available for their students. We checked to see notices posted for open seminars and guest lectures sponsored by the department.</p>
<p>And at many colleges we were greeted by faculty. At Case we were invited to a department picnic that noon(attended), at Rochester our son was taken around to the department labs by a faculty member, at Rensselaer he was shown around some of the department facilities by Prof Krishnamourthy, and at Allegheny he got a scheduled interview with a department professor which was nice. He also sat in on a Calc 2 class at Rensselaer, emailing the prof ahead of time to get an okay. He had set up the same at Case but decided on the picnic instead.</p>
<p>But doing these extra things he felt that he got a better feel for each college, far more than the packaged tour and polished info session.</p>
<p>I agree with Coureur -- while the decision might seem arbitrary to me, I put great stock in my S' intuition and general gut reaction to a school. It may not be one explainable thing, but just the totality of a number of things that aren't easily explained other than the "feel" was wrong. </p>
<p>It hasn't happened to us yet, but I've also heard of parents pulling up to a school only to have the student flat out refuse to get out of the car! LOL. Not sure what I would do if I ran into that situation after driving for 6 hours!</p>
<p>We had occasion to tour several schools on two different occasions.</p>
<p>Different tour guide personalities made a huge difference. Also learned the most from how a guide handled a question he/she hadn't prepared for. Thought about would D like having this person in class, living on her hall corridor. Most impressed by those who seemed least scripted and most relaxed while remaining articulate. Very good experiences at Columbia, Bryn Mawr, Brandeis-- at some other places we walked around unguided and addressed random students with questions-- also useful to gain a sense of what it would be like to live there. A few places ended up with random chats with faculty members--in the bookstore or in the library elevator-- also good for giving a friendly impression. Eavesdropping on students in the Cafeteria was interesting too. Odd impression at Sarah Lawrence--several students sitting separately alone in the snack bar eating--not one was reading anything--between classes. Mount Holyoke had students nestled in a variety of comfortable looking corners reading (thick) books. Drew had a lot of Wall Street Journal readers. A table full of Brandeis kids were discussing a lab experiment. Many campuses feature kids wandering around talking to themselves (until you notice the headset for the cell phone). Several women in the Barnard cafeteria were having lunch alone but chatting animatedly into their cell phones.</p>
<p>I think there can be value to tours, but they need to be viewed as just another piece of the puzzle of information you are putting together and typically I find them to best serve to get questions answered that you might not be able to glean by "touring" the school on your own. To this end, some tours are very scripted (what the school wants you to know/hear, others are a little more "freelance" question and answer sort of thing (you get what the particular guide knows/feels).</p>
<p>Just some experiences:
One of the worst tours I went on was at Stanford. The admissions officer (a former Stanford student) spent most of the time telling us how wonderful she was. The tour guide (current student) then told us how wonderful she was. then we saw the outside of a bunch of buildings. A close second was a tour at Claremont McKenna where the student guide spent most of his time trashing the other Claremont schools. The absolute worst was USC, which mostly told you about their sports program and had the band play for about 1/2 hr. You then were basically left to scatter for yourself around the school and (a Saturday) there was practically nothing open on the campus.</p>
<p>Tours of Pomona, UCLA and Cal Poly SLO were excellent, very informative and well run.</p>
<p>Again, though, i think tours are just another part of fact finding, but with that, don't discount the purely subjective. As a post above notes, some people will just see a campus and not want to even get out of the car. Sometimes your "gut" feeling in determing whether a place is right or not can be as (more) important than all the objective facts in the world.</p>
<p>I found the info sessions and tours to be quite helpful. Reality never fully matches the gloss but can approach it.</p>
<p>I found that most schools provide better tours of their schools and info sessions than the Ivy league schools. Cangel believes that it is because they receive so many applications. I think otherwise. Most state schools receive more applications than any of the Ivy league schools. Further, NYU, BU, BC and USC all receive more applications than any Ivy league school.</p>
<p>I believe that schools at the top of the USNews rankings do not feel the competition as much as those trying to improve their standing. Thus they try harder, kind of an Avis syndrome. I think this is a good thing because they will provide more focus on the things that may matter in order to improve their ranking, i.e. more classes with less than 20 students.</p>
<p>Sorry for the diversion, back to the original topic, my observation is that students like the tours better than the info sessions, the parents like the info sessions better. Some schools do not show dorms because they claim that they are all different, others show them to give you a feel. I prefer to see them to see how the school maintains them.</p>
<p>I agree about the dorms. Some are in great need of repair and I don't like seeing a "sample room" that is neat and empty. I remember at Fordham, seeing a couple of very messy and crowded rooms, but the students seemed comfortable enough. They were honest enough to say these were the worst you would get if you came, in size anyway. One funny offshoot of the dorm tour was, I remember a mom peeking in a room and she started to bend and caught herself. She said to me, slightly horrified, "I almost picked up that girls shirt!". Her son just rolled his eyes in that "you never run out of ways to embarrass me look".</p>
<p>We found that at the most selective schools we visited, the adcoms struggle to put forth a highly positive picture of their school while also being realistic about chances of getting admitted. Some of it may come through as arrogance. One dean of admission started out by saying that her college was one of the most difficult to get into. Students and parents could not help but be intimidated by such a beginning and every positive thing that was said by the college just reinforced the view that a. the college deserved to be selective and b. it would be really hard to get admitted. </p>
<p>Colleges that don't feel the need to depress expectations have an easier time selling themselves to prospective students, so to speak.</p>
<p>As someone said, you REALLY have to take the tours with a grain of salt and just focus on the facilities. I got the feeling that some tour guides are given the job due to financial work- study needs; thus, the college found them a job. They should no more be tour guides than I at that school. This was the situation at Carnegie Mellon. I found that the same was true at Pratt Institute. Some, however, use trained admission's officers who are very skilled. Thus, just focus on the facilites and on what was said,but don't judge the college by the quality of the tour guide.</p>
<p>It does vary, although we thought the student guides were pretty good, for the most part. The girl we had at Amherst was hysterical. I would have paid to take another tour with her. At Dartmouth (which actually had one of the few interesting and useful information sessions) our student guide was such a dud that we snuck off into another group which had a leader with a pulse.</p>
<p>If the schools understood how much of an impact the tour guides have on the potential students they may make sure that they get better consistency in who they put in those roles.</p>
<p>Marite,</p>
<p>I have seen the difficulty you describe at some of the very select schools also. Where others are better at delivering the sales message on why their school is where you want to be, Williams comes to mind. Though perhaps we just liked the tour guide. ;-)</p>
<p>Eagle79 notes,"If the schools understood how much of an impact the tour guides have on the potential students they may make sure that they get better consistency in who they put in those roles."</p>
<p>Response: You are exactly right. I am amazed that schools don't take tour guides a lot more seriously by selecting those with good personalities and giving them solid training. Probably the best tour guides are trained admission reps. I guess not all schools are good at marketing, or some schools just don't care due to the large number of applications that they receive.</p>
<p>In fact, there should be two tours: a general tour of the college and a tour of the specific school ( major) that the guest would be interested in. RIT does this very well as does a few other schools. However, this doesn't seem to be the rule.</p>
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<p>I am amazed that schools don't take tour guides a lot more seriously by selecting those with good personalities and giving them solid training. Probably the best tour guides are trained admission reps<<</p>
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<p>The pattern I saw over and over again was the info session was done by admissions reps and the tours were guided by students of varying degrees of talent - almost always sophomores. The one exeception I can remember was Harvard. The guide there was a senior and she was excellent.</p>
<p>Coureur notes,"The pattern I saw over and over again was the info session was done by admissions reps and the tours were guided by students of varying degrees of talent - almost always sophomores"</p>
<p>Response: I have seen the same trend,but who says that it is the right thing to do? My dad's favorite saying was, "you never get a second chance to make a first impression." Tours are usually the first and last impression that kids and parents get about a school, which is why I don't understand how colleges can't take them very seriously.</p>
<p>Our tour guide at Princeton was so poor (very valley girl, couldn't answer questions with anything other than "I don't know, that's not my major") that my daughter asked to leave half-way through the tour saying "If this is the intellect that comes to Princeton, then I don't want to be here." This after a 2 hr train ride. Sigh.</p>
<p>Actually, I think that colleges do take very seriously the impression that guides give. At least some subject potential guides to a fairly rigourous selection process and do not pay them anything.</p>
<p>OP here, enjoying the discussion. Thanks, all. </p>
<p>Point well taken about the value of intuitive responses, no matter how trivially based they may seem to be to the parent. After flying, driving, and hoteling to see a place, though, there's no chance that we would skip a tour because of a reaction at the curbside. </p>
<p>We found it useful to see some dorm rooms, even if not at each college we toured, just because my daughter has since decided that the size of the dorm rooms doesn't matter to her. She may live to regret that, but it's good to hone in on priorities one way or another.</p>
<p>The one thing we found uniformly true at the Ivies we visited was that these were the only places where you weren't asked to sign in - in fact you couldn't even if you wanted to. A sure sign of the strength of their seller's market.</p>
<p>Our impression is that it's all about the tour guide. Get a good, personable tour guide and you get a favorable impression of the school. Get a tour guide without personality, or an annoying personality, and you get a less favorable impression of the school. Our first info session at Harvard (Jr. year), both the adcom and the student were cold and our impression was poor. Went back Sr. year and got the opposite impression with a really cool tour guide that answered every question and relieved much anxiety. Yale and Rice had the nicest admissions office personel of any schools we encountered (both years).</p>