Campus Tour Ons/Offs

LINYMOM
Sun, 04 Jul 2010 10:49:07 +0000

The tour guides play a ridiculously huge role in admissions. Collge adcomms should take heed.

Our two best:

UDel - Awesome personality, engineering major who played trumpet in the marching band, which had just marched at Obama’s inauguration parade. Great guy, excellent tour.

Brandeis - Classic overachiever, participated in everything, completely dramatic so a very entertaining tour (school was clearly too cerebral for my D!). Someone asked what he didn’t like about Brandeis: only negative for him was that he was Republican, which was really difficult there dring the last election.

Worst: UMass. Felt like cattle. No reservations and not enough tour guides, even though it was President’s Day and they had to know there would be a lot of HS students there. We spent the entire time trying to keep up with the tour guide so we could hear something… anything. Complete turn-off. I’m sure the campus isn’t as bad as the impression that D got (she didn’t apply).

Funniest dorm experience: Binghamton tour guide took us into her suite to show us a dorm room (she was in the nicest residence hall we saw on all our college tours). However, it was a Sunday and we had to step over her various sleeping roommates. We all laughed about that!

Best description of a large campus from a tour guide: UConn. It’s like a tootsie pop. Academic buildings in the middle, then residence halls around the next circle and athletic facilities on the outside. I’ll never forget this.

Good marketing: Univ of Maryland, as they parade you through the arena where the Final Four has been held. Makes you want to play basketball, even if you’ve never played before. Then go rub the terrapin’s nose for good luck in admissions! Forget academics. My D left that campus with a list of sports she wanted to play there.