| I'm a tour guide at a small LAC and this is all really great, really helpful advice. Just a couple of things to note for prospective students and parents:
1) If the tours are big, at least at my LAC, we try to plan for that and get more guides for those days/weeks. Seeing as we're a small school, sometimes during HS spring break weeks, our tours get huge and we simply don't have enough guides at the right time to give you a personal/small tour. Please be understanding. We the tour guide did not choose the size of the tour, so please don't complain to us if for some weird reason on a Wednesday afternoon 50 people show up and we aren't prepared. We do our best. Personally I try to not talk as much while walking (because in big tours it's hard to be heard in the back over the foot shuffling) and talk more at stops.
2) Walking backwards and talking for an hour straight is hard. I can't walk backwards as fast as you can walk forwards. If you see that you're actually passing me on the tour (this has happened) slow down. I'm trying to give it a minute for the campus to sink in, and to allow myself to breathe.
3) If you're a prospective student - ASK QUESTIONS. We separate students and parents on our tours and still on student tours, we often have maybe 1 question during the entire tour. This is four years of your lives, guys. Ask, and we WILL answer you.
4) On that note, please don't ask me about my grades/SAT scores/how I got in. That's not really relevant to you, and frankly, is a little disconcerting. Questions on stats profiles are better directed at an admissions officer who's actually doing the deciding and seeing that information.
5) I love to get feedback after my tour - obviously positive, and also constructive. If you didn't hear enough about student organizations, tell me, and I promise I will work to include it in future tours, as well as telling you about it now.
Oh and please remember - we're human. We don't know all the answers. I can't tell you off the top of my head who the tennis coach is, or what the exact diversity breakdown is (I know its above 80% Caucasian but I don't know any more than that beyond anecdotal). If I don't have the answer to your question I'm certainly able to direct you to the people who will be able to answer it. But remember - we're just college students. And we got up out of bed at 9am (which is really early for us!) to give you a backwards tour in the rain - and it's even possible we're hungover. So have some mercy as well. If the tour wasn't that great, stick around. Walk around campus. Talk to other students. See if you maybe just caught your tour guide on a bad day, and it's not a great representation of campus. And if we do a good job, a thank you is ALWAYS appreciated. |