| 1. Please speak loudly. Even walking backwards, if it's a large group those at the back cannot hear you. You have to speak more loudly than you think you do.
2. I like the idea of encouraging the prospective students to walk around campus afterwards and to ask current students questions when the occasion arises. That is a great way -- maybe the best way -- to get a feel for the place.
3. Show a dorm room! On our tours more times than not, a dorm room was shown. Obviously the tour guide has permission and a key to enter the room. In most cases an occupant of the room was present. Where dorm rooms were not part of the tour, it raised questions in our minds about why they were not shown.
4. Have packets of the campus newspaper, some of the typical brochures and flyers circulating around campus, etc., for the tour participants. On one tour, we were able to pick up this kind of material, and it was a great way to learn fun things about the school and assess fit and feel. I don't mean official brochures, but one was a page on a trip to New York, when the bus was leaving, one was an informational sheet on the environmentally friendly cafeteria practices, one was an announcement for a student activity, etc. It was nice to see those.
5. In our experience most of the tours tried to pack too much into the available time, making for high speed and, frankly, boredom. I more than once thought that a short anecdote about each location would mean more than the standard tour-speak.
6. I would love to have had tours assigned by area of interest. All the art students together, all the science students in another group, etc. To organize the appointments in that way would allow for more time in appropriate areas of interest and less time speeding through everything. |