<p>Open Houses are marketing events. Of course the colleges are going to put themselves in the best possible light; they want customers. This is not “lying.”</p>
<p>Figures are easy to manipulate without a great deal of detailed knowledge. One example: many colleges will tout their high rate of acceptance to medical school, but what they don’t tell you is that that don’t allow all interested students to apply because they will not provide recommendations to those not endorsed by a pre-med committee. Are those college “lying”? Not exactly. Another thing to consider is that attrition rates, etc. vary from class to class, year to year. So do employment rates and grad acceptance rates. Often, colleges don’t really know what their grads are doing. Collecting that information is harder than it may seem; many grads don’t respond to surveys and inquiries.</p>
<p>You can learn some interesting things on tours.</p>
<p>For example, at one college that shall remain nameless, I was horrified by the speed with which cyclists whizzed around the campus, which was crowded with pedestrians.</p>
<p>Then, during the tour, someone asked about the blue light emergency phones. The tour guide said that they are almost never used for their intended purpose. Instead, they’re used to get medical help for people who have been injured in bicycle/pedestrian crashes. </p>
<p>amtc - glad to hear they adjusted their open house. We all know they do their best to look good during those open houses, and even admitted student days. It is often better to tour at other times, when they’re not putting so much emphasis on prospective students. We had to opposite experience at Wellesley a week ago. They had so many prospective students that the dining service was overwhelmed. D hasn’t knocked them out, but did learn that the alternative options like the vegetarian dining hall won’t work for her - she’s picky. Not that food should be the top consideration, but I don’t want her to eat ice cream for dinner too often.</p>
<p>What’s great is if you get a pessimistic tour guide. Following a glowing info session during which the campus safety, wonderful course options and dorms were touted, the tour guide we had dispelled (or maybe balanced?) the reality.</p>
<p>Someone asked her which dorm was the best for Freshman. “Oh, XX dorm is the best. But almost no one gets it. I didn’t.” </p>
<p>Is there a roommate matchmaking process, someone wanted to know. “Yes, but it is terrible. My roommate was crazy, but they wouldn’t let me switch dorms.”</p>
<p>Wow, those seminar classes sounded great, someone asked. “If you can ever get into one,” was her answer. </p>
<p>What about nearby off-campus housing? “As long as you never go south or east of campus, there aren’t too many assaults.”</p>
<p>How about that new rec center? “It’s always closed during the times I could go.”</p>
<p>Not exactly a lie, but at the end of CMU info session they listed famous alumni and it seemed like more then half the pictures they showed where of people who had received honorary degrees and not attended the school.</p>
<p>The Yale rep who came to our school said, "“SAT scores don’t matter as much as you think, but they matter more than we like to admit.” I think that was pretty honest.</p>
<p>I think info sessions often present an overly rosy picture (that’s their job after all), but I’ve never heard any intentional dishonesty. </p>
<p>Tufts did say something like it’s easy to study abroad and almost half the school does spend some time abroad. They don’t tell you that if it’s not a Tufts program there’s a lot of red tape getting courses accepted and that the IR department (!) is particularly persnickety in that regard.</p>
<p>I can also answer, that no, we weren’t. “Lie” is an awfully strong word.
Of course there was some puffery going on from both sides. They wanted to present their best image to prospective student, and student wanted to do the same.
Perhaps some of it depends on expectations? Student(and support family) were aware that a college is a service for sale, and student is a prospective buyer of the service. Similarly, if student desires scholarships/grants then he is “selling” his value to the school.</p>
<p>Re: #22
If anything, it sounds like the tour guide was being candid about a problem more or less specific to that campus. So the example doesn’t seem to illustrate a propensity to lie at open houses and tours.</p>
<p>Of course, your point is well taken about the opportunity to learn interesting things on tours and other campus visits. When we visited, we did take note of little things we thought might reflect on the campus atmosphere and conditions. However, I wouldn’t call the admissions rep a liar for not volunteering information about surly cafeteria help, inadequate campus parking, the rate of bike thefts, how many students get expelled each year for drinking, etc. Nor would I necessarily spend too much energy trying to ferret this information out. Instead, I’d look for signs that student morale is reasonably high, that the campus has the kind of atmosphere you want, and that processes are in place to address any special concerns you have for your kid.</p>
<p>That was our Haverford tour guide. If I didn’t feel sorry for the kid insofar as I knew it was his way of paying for college, I seriously would have complained to the admissions office. He was Eeyore. It was all negative and bad and “I’m supposed to tell you this so I will.” OTOH, our Georgetown and Bryn Mawr guides were out of this world fabulous, poised and professional.</p>
<p>But “lie” - again, that’s a REALLY strong word. Presenting something in the best light isn’t “lying.”</p>
<p>Yes, it sounds like a problem of selection bias. People who just “love, love, love” the school so much that they would volunteer to be a tour guide might be somewhat similar in that they had a great experience, didn’t have financial problems, had the good fortune to get into most of the classes they wanted to take, got into the “good dorm”, etc. </p>
<p>I’ve been surprised to the degree which the tour guides often don’t seem brilliant, even though they’re giving tours of schools where stratospheric SAT scores are presented as necessary. We’ve had a few who seemed kind of silly and immature. I figure that the group of tour guides self-selects,with extroverts who love meeting new people choosing to be tour guides rather than, say, research assistants, library book shelvers or test tube washers in the lab.</p>
<p>I will admit that what I find off-putting is a tour guide who’s a third or fourth generation legacy, who attended fancy-schmancy prep schools, etc. I figure he or she probably is having a qualitatively different experience at many universities than my own child might – seeing as we can’t afford expensive vacations, tutors, fraternity or eating club fees, or the more expensive dorm in the places where they charge different prices.</p>
<p>My legacy son is interested in being a tour guide at his university. He’s in a fraternity and has been to Europe and Israel. He went to public schools, though, and there aren’t any trust funds. He’s enthusiastic about the school and as he grows / matures in terms of presenting himself in public settings (which he’s had to do as president of a particular campus organization), I think he’d make a fine choice. </p>
<p>Our Mt Holyoke tour guide was clearly to the manor born (or is it manner? I never know). Clearly old-school, moneyed prep / High Wasp. She was a legacy as well. But I didn’t take away that everyone at Mt Holyoke was like that, and it was clear from looking around that there was quite a mix.</p>
<p>But “lie” - again, that’s a REALLY strong word. Presenting something in the best light isn’t “lying.”</p>
<p>I entirely agree, it’s not really lying. That said, many representatives got a bit “over the line” when presenting their college in the best possible light. We found these exuberances very helpful in assessing colleges. (You really should be collecting information from multiple sources.)</p>
<p>Admissions reps are often wrong. They do not work in the registrar’s office and cannot know everything that transfers and what it transfers as. They are not members of every single department and do not know sequencing for every course, prequisites, and when things are offered. Tour guides are students. They have student perscpectives. </p>
<p>So, while I have encountered misinformation, I do not believe I have ever been deliberately lied to. It is possible, also, that I, myself, misunderstand.</p>
<p>In most cases, I think the tour guides, who are usually students, were very honest on all our tours. If they made mistakes in their facts and figures (25% vs 30% of students study abroad, for example), they were just that, mistakes. </p>
<p>The only time I felt uncomfortable with the information we were given was at UC Berkeley, where we had a rather incompetent admissions rep give us the info session. Really, it was quite shocking for a world class university. The woman could not answer a single question (maybe it was her first week on the job, but she shouldn’t have been sent out to field questions from mostly out of state parents who were being asked to pay full tuition.) When a parent asked how the state budget cuts had affected the school, she replied, “not at all.” People looked at her in disbelief, and then, later, the student tour guide gave us a bit more info, pointing out which libraries and offices had shortened hours due to budget cuts, etc. As the flagship, Cal may not be as affected as the other UCs, but clearly, no state school is immune and the admissions rep should have used her common sense even if she didn’t yet know precisely what was affected.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I am so glad my daughter did not have a tour guide like that when we visited Mount Holyoke. Ours was down to earth, honest, and very direct. (And I know she was honest because I graduated from MHC myself, with lots of debt!)</p>
<p>My experience is that graduate schools do enage in a lot of misrepresentation. In particular, they make everythin possible to put the “employment after graduation” stories in the best possible (or should I say unrealistc) light. I have personal expereience with MBA and Law Schools and know they are huge offenders. In particular schools down the toten pole select the on outlier person from their program who had huge success and try to paint that picture that they were typical graduates of the program.</p>
<p>I know this thread is really about college, not graduate school, but I just wanted to make this information available as a word of caution.</p>
<p>Wow, Massmom, were we at the same info session at Berkeley? We were there in June. When the admissions rep was asked about whether students could graduate on time from Berkeley due to budgets cuts, she said something about students not wanting to take 8 AM classes, and that’s why they couldn’t graduate on time. We didn’t believe that for a minute. All in all the admissions rep made a very poor impression, Daughter decided not to apply, even thought she liked the tour and many other things about Berkeley.</p>
<p>Overall though, admissions reps and tour guides try their best to be truthful. We did get some wrong answers, but we felt that the guides sometimes tried to guess when they didn’t know.</p>