<p>So, I have a question - what do you all want out of your tours? What would you really like to see and hear on a tour of Tufts, what can make a tour stand out? This is a question both for alumni/current students and prospective students.</p>
<p>I know that when I took my tour of Tufts, I thought I was getting all the information necessary about the college. But only having lived here for over a year has really given me a sense of what it's like here. Is there any way a tour guide can better convey what being a Tufts student is really like? Is there anything you feel should be included in the tours, but isn't?</p>
<p>I'm probably not your target audience in that I'm a parent, but after all the helpful info you've written here on CC figured I might offer my two cents-- Plus, I spent a lot of time on the road with S. this past year visiting colleges.
Tufts was S's favorite school on paper and so was one of the first we visited. By about the 4th school visit we decided to explore on our own, because the tours started to seem a bit repetitive. Our guide at Tufts was excellent - she was friendly, upbeat and obviously loved the school (it probably didn't hurt either that she was very pretty!). She never seemed at a loss for information. She kept the tour moving briskly, covered a lot of ground, and-- very importantly! -- spoke loud enough for everyone to hear (often that wasn't the case). She offered a lot of personal anecdotes, which I think the HS students appreciated. S. was esp interested in her experiences with the Tufts group that trains for the Boston marathon. I think the only things he might have liked to see that weren't covered were the sports facilities and maybe seeing the inside of a dorm. The latter can work both ways, though. When they DO show you a dorm room, you feel like you're intruding, and at one school we were shown two different rooms - both of which looked like bombs had hit them, with food/garbage on the floor, and an amazing number of empty beer and vodka bottles. Perhaps not entirely surprising, but still....<br>
S. just threw in his two cents as well -- says one of the best things about all the visits was eating in the dining halls-</p>
<p>
[quote]
When they DO show you a dorm room, you feel like you're intruding, and at one school we were shown two different rooms - both of which looked like bombs had hit them, with food/garbage on the floor, and an amazing number of empty beer and vodka bottles. Perhaps not entirely surprising, but still....
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That's irresponsible and very surprising that the students would not tidy up prior to having guests - especially if they are representatives of the school.</p>
<p>"That's irresponsible and very surprising that the students would not tidy up prior to having guests"</p>
<p>Well, last year I was walking down the hall when a whole kennel of prospective students, their parents and the tour guide approached me and asked if they could take a peek into my room. Trouble is my room was on the entire otherside of the building and this whole business occured when I was literally half way out the door of the building, obviously off to do something. </p>
<p>That's how well these tours are planned. Regardless I thought I'd do the tour guide a favor since she was obviously quite lost at that point so I led the entire procession of folks to the complete other side of the builiding where my room was.</p>
<p>It just so happens neither I nor my roomate had tidied the place up in quite some time. There were several 40oz bottles at the foot of his bed and on top of this the walls on my side of the room were decked out with frightening posters of folks like NWA, Mobb Deep and the like which undoutedly conjured up many long suppressed images that some of the adults had of ganster rap, the LA Riots and so on. </p>
<p>It was quite the spectacle especially since I was able to simultaneously dissapoint about 25 people in a very instantaneous and a very deep sort of way. I'd also say that out of those 25 about 23 were also racists. But again that is just a rough estimate.</p>
<p>I don't think they show rooms at all, I think the tour guides often apologize for this. I think the dorm they're showing is South, but they don't get to see rooms. Since I live in South this year, if I get accepted as a tour guide, I'll just show them my room, it's pretty nice and is also a corner room, so it's bigger than average.</p>
<p>The dorm that they tour is definitely south, but I don't know that they tour an actual dorm room at all. I think they wander through the hallway and peek into open rooms, which is a much better idea than actually doing into a dorm room. This way, they get a spectrum of rooms with different personalities, and you're not intruding because their door's open and all you're doing is looking in briefly from the hallway. And it's less awkward if they're messy :)</p>
<p>I'm reviving this thread because I think at some point this year I'm going to hijack an unsuspecting tour group. Perhaps I can conspire with "Duffman" to have him hand over one of his tours to the evil tour-stealer (me)?</p>
<p>So since I'm going to hijack a tour, it doesn't have to be an official Tufts tour. I can say anything I want, MWA-HA-HA!.......ahem. uh, kidding. Imagine me yelling at the top of my lungs about Naked Quad Run and how everyone starts drinking for Spring Fling at around 9 am...ahh, good times.</p>
<p>Yeah, one time I was in South giving a tour and some kid just decided to be completely naked walking around past the tour, it was just great, lol.</p>
<p>On our Tufts tour last summer, we were all turned off by our tour guide who said at least 3 times either "this sucks" or "this doesn't suck". Not a good first impression of the student body, their level of respect or their ability to communicate. Several families left the tour in the middle, never finishing.</p>
<p>The info session, conducted by an admissions officer, was boring and she came off as somewhat arrogant. There were no visual aids. She just droned on and on, putting several parents to sleep (literally). The repeated message was that Tufts was important to the global community and that the school would change our children from who they were by molding them into better people.</p>
<p>Me neither. What was that tour guide's name? I vote Ben uses his admissions contacts, gets that guy fired, and installs me as a replacement. I have quite an admirable verbal lexicon at my disposal!</p>
<p>See, my take on the tour situation is that we're droning on about random statistics that anyone on the tour probably should have researched on the Tufts website before they get to the campus. When I get shown South Hall, I don't really care that "This is where the Residential Life office is located." How often does a regular Tufts student actually GO to ResLife? I want to hear, "ResLife is on the bottom floor, they run housing and the RAs. I was really excellent friends with my RA last year, and he was a senior and always answered my Tufts-related questions. Even though I was a freshman he'd come to dinner in the dining halls with us and crack us up with Seinfeld quotes. He works in admissions now, which comforts me because I can think of no other person that I would want reading my application. I like that Tufts applications are read by Tufts students who would understand better how the applicant would fit on campus."</p>
<p>Like, instead of "Tufts' median SAT scores are," I want to hear a profile of what Tufts kids are really like. Instead of, "The Olin Center is where languages are taught," how about, "In keeping with Tufts' theme of branching out globally, we have a requirement of six semesters of language, and I think it's really useful to be able to communicate with non-English-speakers. I've taken Russian and Spanish classes, and I really like the way language programs are structured, with the right balance of vocab, grammar, videos, movies, stories, and written assignments. It's a really well-rounded approach to increasing language proficiency." See, someone would say to me, "But that kind of talk would discourage the kids who don't LIKE a strong language requirement." I would answer that I am trying to DISTINGUISH TUFTS FROM THE FIVE OTHER BOSTON-AREA SCHOOLS THAT THE FAMILY IS VISITING THIS WEEK. And if you are opposed to the strong language requirement, then you should consider that when deciding which school is a good fit for you. Because honestly, I heard the same statistics from every school I went to, and was presented with an assortment of buildings, but they weren't differentiated enough. I ended up walking away with "Harvard is pretty but tourist-swamped, BC is homogeneous, so is Brandeis, Tufts is on a hill, BU has no campus," etc. I would like to actually illustrate what sets Tufts apart and attract students that would benefit from such an environment.</p>
<p>I completely agree with blurinka. On my kid's big college trip, we went from Brown to Tufts--both New England schools on hills. When the tourguide started talking about the language requirements at Tufts, my kid turned to me and said, "Thank god, a place with an opinion about what you should learn." Others might not have the same reaction. And that's good.</p>
<p>LOL...I didn't even apply to Brown. The idea of no requirements was scary. But some people really respond to that, which is GOOD! It sets Brown apart from the rest.</p>
<p>This is what boggles my mind when people are like "I'm applying to all the Ivies. I want to go to an Ivy." Well, were you aware that Brown has no requirements, while Columbia has extensive requirements? That Yale, Brown, Penn, Columbia and Harvard are in cities, while Cornell and Dartmouth are in the middle of nowhere?</p>