Making Campus Tours Better

[DHRBC07]

I would like to reflect on this post. I am a former tour guide at a university that receives a lot of tour traffic and a huge number of applications. My little sister has also just finished her senior year of high school so the application process is fresh in my brain.

Here is some information that I think parents and students should know before going on a tour.

1. You should ask if the tour guide program is volunteer or not. Some places it is a work-study job which may change the tone of the tour. If the guide is a volunteer or had to audition (as we did at my university) then you should expect true excellence.

2. Dress appropriately. We are expected to look neat, collegiate, and appropriate, you should wear clothing that you would not be embarrassed to be seen if you happen to run into your admissions rep., that is appropriate for the weather, and that you can walk in.

3. Be understanding. Rules vary by schools with regards to showing dorms. At my university they were very far away, occupied to the max, and when we did let people in we had a huge incidence of theft. The decision was made to nix the dorms. Ask when you would be able to see a dorm or where you can go. Chances are you will be able to see one on an admitted student day or you can wander up to the freshman dorms and see if a student will let you in.

4. Do not answer your cell phone, make out with your boyfriend, or breastfeed for the duration of the tour (this all happened on one of my tours two summers ago)

5. If you don't want to hear what is in the view books, don't ask. Most tour guides don't want to talk about retention rates or the number of chemistry majors, they are usually prompted.

6. Think about intelligent ways to ask questions. Again, you don't have to impress the tour guide, but he or she will be more likely to engage you in a discussion after the tour if you seem like you mean business. "What is your favorite dining hall meal?" sounds a lot different then "how's the food?"

7. Listen to what the tour guide has to say. They are not trying to sell the school to you, they are usually speaking from the heart. If they intentionally misrepresent the school then they will end up with underclassmen who hate it, and no one wants that.

8. If you honestly don't connect with your tour guide, take another tour. Make sure it is the school you didn't like, not the guide.

[sharonohio]

I just want to make a brief comment about access to dorm rooms. For the most part I don't think its that essential to see the actual room but it would be nice. HOWEVER, what I would find very very helpful is to understand how many students are in a room, what the room looks like furnished (could easily be done with a floor layout showing the furniture with all the dimensions), whether the bathrooms are shared, whether the bathrooms need to be cleaned by the students or are cleaned by others, other facilities and their location relative to the dorm room (laundry, cooking, bicycle storage, recreational). I would truly appreciate getting a handout with the above layouts on them. Also, walking to the dorm building area is helpful or at a minimum being told, "it takes x minutes to get to class without running" especially if the campus is quite large would be helpful. For some students, that's not an issue, for others it might be.

If there are multiple types of buildings it would also be nice to have a brief description of each and an understanding of how the selection process works.

Without the above information, I do think its possible that there is information which is being withheld from the student (I speak from personal experience here).

[Descartesz]

Keep the tours limited to 6 prospects or fewer (with families). Make a point of calling the prospects in close and asking the family members to remain on the periphery. Hand out maps and refer to them as you travel.

Organize the tour so as to take the students through a typical freshman day. Start in a dorm bedroom, then to dining hall for "breakfast", out to social science building for that morning Econ 101 class (better: some class of special interest to one or more members of the group). Next some place to study or hang out, like the student center. Maybe a snack/cafe area for lunch. Another class. To the rec facilities for a workout, and then to the library for afternoon studies. Wind up at theater or auditorium as if you were seeing an evening performance.

Radical thought: Two tour guides - one leads the group while the other talks from the rear (no more walking backward!) The interplay between the two guides would also give a taste of the kind of camraderie that might be expected on campus. And, with regards to questions, two heads are better than one.

As you do this, work in anecdotes and useful information. How do I get into a dorm, pay for food, talk to a prof? How do I get involved in intramural sports or campus orchestra? How late can I work at the library? How would I get home safely at night?

Finish with some refreshments and a Q/A session.

[EliCash91]

My favorite part of any college tour I went on thus far was when our tour guide at Duke mentioned that the campus was used for the filming of the final seasons of Dawson's Creek -- it actually WAS the ivy-coated prestigious university that Joey Potter called home. Me and my dad got a good laugh out of that and it was pretty hilarious trying to recognize where certain scenes went down.

I understand that it's seemingly meaningless--but cool facts like that go a long way with me. The stories behind the secret societies at UVA had a similar impact on me.

[ilovecapezios]

A really really good-looking tour guide is key. My Northwestern tour guide was captain of the tennis team, curly-haired, really tan (goes with the tennis part). He dressed well, spoke well, was tall, was ridiculously good-looking. And that's where I've sent in my deposit.

[stevedad]

Good thoughts from everyone, including DHRBC07's rules for those on the tour! A few additional:

1. Don't denigrate particular subjects taught in the university. Vandy (delivered with a sorority sneer): "that's the math building, I don't know anything about it." WUSTL: "That building is where the engineering people go for 'their' classes." Or, if you really feel the need to do that, make sure that members of your tour group aren't primarily interested in those fields.

2. I second the point about not focusing on typical customs/pranks--but also agree that this rule is inapplicable to things that are either unique to the school or an integral part of its life (MIT, Mudd, Caltech all spring to mind).

3. Be honest about frat life and interactions with the non-pledged if it is a big deal at your school. Some kids will really want that and those that don't should be aware of it for both their sake and the school's.

4. If you are at a school with good funding and a lot of new facilities, don't pepper your talk with continuing references to how much each building cost. The attitude that they inferred from those type of comments was one of the reasons that neither of my sons even applied to Duke. (Then again, that might have been an effective filtering device!)

[huguenot]

Great list, DHRBC07! I would add to the list for parents and students:

For parents: The tour guide is not an admissions officer, stop wasting everyone's time trying to sell the tour guide on your student.

For students: Now is not the time to try to be cool and be unimpressed/unresponsive. You may be here for 4 years, you'd better ask those questions no matter how it looks.

[Wneckid99]

answer the things that arent usually talked about. ive heard the same "i like how there are no TAs and the large freshman classes are broken down so you still get the personal feel"- i get that at every school

i agree with a lot of what ppl have said--

what university are you at btw??

[FVirile]

Some things that parents and prospective students like to hear on tours:

1) The relevance of a particular building to a school's social/academic life. Apart from a few interesting historical facts about the school, no one really cares about whether a particular building was built in 1790 or not.

2) Showing the largest classroom or any live class in action without being too obtrusive is always a good idea.

3)Be honest, but also be diplomatic, about the good, the bad and the ugly aspects of the school. If you're funny it really helps deflecting akward situations.

4) Breaking the ice before the beginning of the tour is always a great idea.

5) Especially at high pressure insitutions, it's helpful to talk about how students balance their academic and social lives. Not everyone becomes one big fuzzy stressball. On the other hand, prospective students sometimes have very rosy ideas of what they can and can't do. Partially disabusing them of such notions is always helpful.

[thatgirltoo]

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.

[momtn]

[quote]Best comment by a tour guide (at Stanford!) "I don't know how I got in. I was really lucky. You don't have to have perfect stats. I didn't." Charming, funny, self-effacing guy. I know how he got in.[quote]

This made me smile because when I visited Stanford as a prospective student in 1980 my tour guide was the exact opposite - he actually told us that we would probably NOT get accepted and had an attitude that it was really a waste of his time to show us around since we weren't smart enough to get in. I did get accepted but didn't go there because the visit had left me with an impression that the students were all stuck up and arrogant.

[khsstitches]

Don't talk constantly about yourself, your friends, your major. Take us through academic buildings. Don't skip the theater b/c you don't want to walk that far across campus after 1/3 of the group said they were theater kids. Tell us what you don't like, too. Tell us why you chose that school over others. Be honest. Know your facts, don't read off of notecards. Don't say, "I don't know, it was in the tour guide book so I said it". You sound stupid. Stop and answer questions. Tour groups shouldn't be larger than 20 people. Otherwise you can't hear the tour guide in the back.

[mathmom]

Our Stanford guy was charming, but so different from our son, I'm not sure he felt like it was a place he'd belong. We visited Cal in April and it was apparently also accepted students weekend. It would have probably been better if they had separate tours for prospectives students, but it wasn't the end of the world. The tour was too big though I don't think we had any tourists. I liked the tour guide, but hated the info session afterwards, which had already started before we got there. Our tour guide took too long? Can't remember.

[MADad]

SIZE!!!! Enormous tour groups turn people off to your school. If can't hear the tour guide because you are at the back of a mob, folks get frustrated and get a bad taste in their mouth regarding your school.

If you choose to show a dorm room, show a REAL dorm room, not one artificially made up for tours. That smacks of phoniness.

[oregon101]

Ok-I just erased a rant as we went on a tour today at a school that I hoped my S would like. The tour was so bad that he wanted to leave after 20 minutes. We stayed and did most of the open house and the impression improved-but probably not enough.
SHOW the facility-we were taken into the entrance and talked at (there were only 10 in our group) in building after building. Never actually saw the new pool, the new theater, the student center. S pointed out the amount of time we stood and the guide talked at us was long enough to have walked through the facility.
If you cannot show dorm rooms-how about large pictures-
really big ones that show what different rooms look like? Juniors in HS need to see what all of this about-don't assume that they have ever seen a dorm room.
It is not a great thing but the truth is that the tour person creates the first impression that these young folks have of your school and parents often find it hard to change their minds after.