Ivy League tours: hiding something?

[TheGFG]

Do the Ivies usually only show you the outsides of their buildings in order to conceal shabby interiors? These schools are quite old, so are the administrations banking on the prestige factor to counteract any negatives in terms of out-dated facilities? The only building Ivies seem to take you in is their most historical one, which is usually one where no student will ever spend any time once he gets there (eg. the cannon ball room at Yale). Penn does take you in their Wharton building, but that's quite new. Some schools will just show you the large ornate foyers of buildings, but no more. None of them ever show you any dorms (they claim that there's too much variety among them and they wouldn't want to give anyone a false impression of what they're like, or say there are no rooms they can show because they're all occupied--a problem that doesn't stop other schools from showing theirs), most show you small trendy cafes but not the larger or freshman cafeterias (at Harvard the reason given is because of the card-swiping Nazi cafeteria lady; we did go in Yale's on our own--it took some maneuvering and begging--and it was very dark and gloomy IMO), they only sometimes take you in the main library (on our first Yale tour we got to enter, but not the second time around), we've never seen any indoor athletic facilities on an official tour, and how is it that a school like Harvard doesn't even have a student center? They hang out in the science center???? Princeton always seems to have a lot of construction going on so they are obviously doing work on their buildings, but the dorm D stayed in while at camp at Princeton was pretty awful. So do I have reason to be concerned about Ivy dorms and classrooms?

[JHS]

I think the issue is time and disruption, not trying to hide anything. I know the Princeton tour goes into Albert Einstein's classroom whenever possible (it's still in use sometimes), and classrooms don't get much shabbier and out-of-date than that one. Dorm rooms tend to have students living in them, and not always in a state they or anyone else would like a bunch of strangers to see.

And, yes, Harvard has never felt enough of a need for a student center to build one. Same with Yale, and others, too, probably. The Houses/Residential Colleges at those schools have beautiful common rooms that do fine as hang-out space, and people use clubs or the lounges in the libraries for that purpose, too.

[TheGFG]

Hmm. I went on 2 Princeton tours and never saw the Einstein classroom. Does Princeton also have hstorical tours for people in the community, as opposed to admission tours?

I understand the issue with dorm rooms, but at many other schools the guide shows his or hers, or a friend's room. At NYU I think it was, they had a sample room furnished by BB&B just for tours.

[dsultemeier]

My D and I toured Harvard last March and the students almost seemed like animals in a zoo to me. There were visitors and tourists everywhere taking pictures. So I can understand that they want to give the students some privacy.

We toured about 10 colleges on that particular trip but I only recall touring 1 actual dorm room at Swarthmore which belonged to our tour guide. Olin had a "model" dorm room that was unoccupied that they showed people. My D saw some other dorm rooms through people she knew attending there. She spent the night with a friend at Harvard and said the dorm room was really nice.

[oldfort]

Would you not send your kid to an Ivy because of shabby interior or subpar dorm rooms?

[JHS]

I saw the Einstein classroom on two prospective-student Princeton tours, one 4-1/2 and one 2-1/2 years ago.

I saw the NYU Potemkin dorm room, too. That was the single funniest moment on any tour I took -- it had an immediately recognizable -- for parents, not so much for high school students, who had never lived anywhere where that was possible yet -- "baked-in" odor. It was easily worth thousands of words about drug use in the dorms.

I don't remember seeing actual dorm rooms anywhere. I thought the issue was bringing troops of visitors through dorm security and up and down hallways, without any real control over who was in the group and were they all still together. And, yes, I felt bad for all the Harvard students who get stuck playing the role of "Harvard Student" for a steady stream of tourists.

[TheGFG]

Well, considering that the Ivies aren't the cheapest institutions around, I'd at least want to go in with a complete picture of what my money was paying for. We visited a very expensive, competitive LAC recently that did not have either an outdoor or indoor track. The athletes have to travel to the campus of another college nearby, and I'd imagine at off-peak times because the other college's own athletes would have priority. Considering my D's a runner, that pretty much disqualified the school. Would we maybe put up with that if the school were $20,000 cheaper? Yes.

So, I would definitely take everything into consideration, but I wouldn't say it would be a deal-breaker necessarily. If my child had bad allergies, it might be more of an issue.

[riverrunner]

By far the best way to see inside classrooms and dorms is to encourage your child to use her friend network to find a current student. D1 visited rooms and attended classes at almost every campus on our tour. In exchange, we take the host to lunch/dinner/coffee or send a gift card. And now she's paying it back as pre-frosh drop in.

Our experience has been that colleges protect the privacy of students in their bedrooms and classrooms, not due to embarrassment over the quality facilities.

PM me for pictures of Yale dorm/dining room interiors, GFG. She's the envy of her friends at other schools. (except for the bathroom-lots of vintage white porcelain, sometimes leaky)

[mystery2me]

Off-topic for this thread because it doesn't pertain specifically to the Ivy League, but the OP's comment that Penn shows its Wharton building struck a chord: tours are marketing events everywhere (even in the Ivy League, where showing the historical buildings is marketing their tradition.) As a business prof, I became greatly amused at the very high percentage of business buildings we saw at both public and private schools while taking college tours with my children. In general business buildings tend to be relatively new and to have the most technologically advanced and well-designed classrooms, while the bulk of non-Science LAS classes may still be taught in old buildings with student armchair desks that haven't been replaced in 30 years and only a whiteboard and a projector with a plug-in for the professor's laptop to use the oft-dreaded Powerpoint. I second the advice to try to get outside the official tour.

[coureur]

>>...most show you small trendy cafes but not the larger or freshman cafeterias (at Harvard the reason given is because of the card-swiping Nazi cafeteria lady.<<

Our Harvard tour group did manage to sneak into the Annenberg Hall, the frosh cafeteria, last summer, and they did chase us back out again. And Domna, the line and ID monitor in Annenberg is an institution around Harvard. Every student has Domna stories. She even got mentioned in Latin the 2008 Commencement ceremonies during the Latin oration.

Actually, of all the buildings on campus, the Annenberg Hall cafeteria is among the most impressive. They really are keeping tours out of there for efficiency, crowd control, and student privacy reasons rather than to hide shabby interiors. Here's a pic: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~memhall/images2/annen1.jpg Not too shabby.

One thing about Harvard is that it is already a major tourist destination. Tour groups, both official and unofficial, plus dozens of just random families and individuals are constantly trooping through the middle of campus. It's already an issue for the students. If they upped the intrusion by taking tours though the dorms or more classrooms it would be totally out of control.

[Hanna]

Ten years ago, I saw dorm rooms on a tour at Haverford. More recently, I saw model rooms at Vanderbilt and Emory.

It was frustrating for me, as a Harvard tour guide, that we could not go into many of the most beautiful rooms. Sometimes in the summer we would be allowed to take morning tours into Annenberg Hall. Definitely nothing to hide there! http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~memhall/images2/annen1.jpg

It made my job very easy -- we walked into that room, and everyone in the group decided to apply. But during the school year, it's extremely disruptive and intrusive to have people taking pictures of you when you're trying to eat. Tough as it is to explain this to a tour group, it's the right call to keep the visitors out.

[TheGFG]

Wow--Annenburg IS nice!

Hanna, what about the dorms? Are they comfortable? Thanks for your perspective.

[hikids]

Are you making your decision based on what rooms look like, or the appropriateness of the institution for providing the education you need? Some very old and beautiful buildings on old campuses (not just ivies) cannot stand up to massive traffic.

[DocT]

I'm not that fond of the dorms at Harvard compared to some other schools. I can tell you the number of tourists trampling through the campus and taking pictures of the students is quite irksome to a lot of students.

[ec1234]

At princeton they don't show you the class rooms during the school year because most of the time they are in use. It would be very difficult to find a schedule and have all of the tour guides remember which classroom is empty at a particular time. Also the buildings that are shown on the tour are generally set up in entryways, meaning that there really aren't hallways etc. that you could walk a tour group through. On your own you can walk through the buildings and peek in on classrooms. During the summer I used to take tours to see a couple different class rooms.

with regard to dorm rooms, it would be hard for the tour guide to show their own, as the princeton tour only covers a small portion of campus. It would be difficult to manage to take a tour to most of the dorms while still doing the normal tour and also finishing in an hour.