| I wish that Cal took reservations for student tours and kept student tour groups to smaller sizes. There were about 35 people on the tour that I took, with about 1/4 of them tourists. It would have been nice to have about half that number of people, or at least 20 or less. While it is great that Cal allows tourists on their tour (why not? it is a wonderful place to visit), it felt a bit strange asking questions as a prospective student around them.
Try to go inside some buildings. Two tours I took led us into some buildings to explain what to find there, two did not. If taking the entire tour into a building is unwieldy, then point out which buildings are open to the public and encourage prospective students to visit them after the tour.
If the school allows prospective students to visit classes, let them know. Perhaps give a list of classes for the day that can be visited, and give the students a sheet of rules to follow when visiting classes. Or, allow prospective students to arrange class visits before the tour.
Definitely, highlight things that are different for your school. I like to know about traditions and strange, past occurrences. "Tradition" is one reason why I chose Cal, but if I had heard a lot more about the traditions of other schools, I might have been swayed in another direction. At the same time, know your school. At one school, I asked "what does the mascot look like?" and the tour guide answered "he doesn't wear a lot of clothes." This same tour guide showed us some steps that had chalk writing on them and said "those are the free speech steps, which is kind of obvious," but didn't say how or why they became known as the free speech steps. Okkkk...
One tour I attended offered a one hour information session given by an admissions administrator, which was nice because then the tour guide could simply focus on student life, building location, traditions, etc. |