<p>hey guys in a couple of weeks I'll be traveling to the east coast to look at some colleges. Im a rising junior and Im not exactly sure what to ask them.
A few questions that I can think of off the top of my head are:
-What do you like the most/least at (insert college name)?
-What they think about the teachers
and some of those basic questions but I'm wondering, do people usually ask the tour guides some of their stats from hs (ex: gpa, sat scores etc) or is this not done usually?</p>
<p>thanks for your time</p>
<p>i’m a college tour guide! please ask us questions. answering questions is much easier than talking into space for an hour.
that being said, please ask good questions. the best questions to ask are ones that let us talk about our own experiences or student life. or ones that provide a segue into something we’re supposed to talk about.
like ask
“how is the food?”
“how much sleep do you get a night?”
“what classes do people have to take? what are they?”
“how are the parties?”
“how is the academic atmosphere? are people serious about studying? is it super-competitive?”
“how is the social life? do people know people? is there a lot to do around campus? what kind of clubs are there?”
“what is there to do off campus?”</p>
<p>but try to keep the questions topical,
like ask about food when you get to the dining hall,
and ask about academics when you’re near the classrooms</p>
<p>and don’t ask things like “who built this building” or “when was x college founded”
because at least at caltech,
they don’t teach tour guides that stuff
all we have to do to be a tour guide
is go on two tours</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>this is a good question, and pretty standard
tour guides usually have an answer prepared for this because we get asked it a lot
another question we always get is “why did you choose caltech over other schools”
which i guess is a pretty good question,
because it lets us elaborate on our school’s strengths
my answer to that is always “i did research here in high school and fell in love with the place”</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>this is a pretty good question,
but all of us have some excellent teachers and some horrible ones.
maybe a better question is,
ask about the coursework
“how much do you study?”</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>EVERYONE asks me what my gpa and sat scores are,
i get that on every tour.
but it’s annoying because (a) it’s irrelevant to student life (which is what we’re supposed to talk about)
and (b) i’m probably in the top 25% of my class here,
so my stats intimidate people unnecessarily,
and probably give the impression that it’s harder to get into caltech than it is</p>
<p>another common question is “what did you do to get into caltech”
and most of us don’t know what we did
so we just smile and blush and say “i don’t know”</p>
<p>and thank you for asking,
we need more people on tours who actually ask questions :)</p>
<p>^ yea i agree with fizix2. today i went on a college tour to nyu and this kid asked stupid questions. indeed asking about the gpa and overall admissions process is significant but whats CC and collegeboard for? ask about the college experience in general! the clubs, the student life, etc.</p>