We visited Mudd last summer — not too much going on when we were there. Didn’t seem like a good git really. Caltech tour & info session were very informative. My S liked it much but I kept hearing the tour guide talk about collaboration among students as a “misery loves company thing.” Best tour and experience (including sitting in on 2 classes & visiting the design kitchen) so far was Rice and second was GA Tech - good info, gen. tour & engineering tour and what a great innovation studio!
LOL at “school of arts & crafts.”
I wasn’t on a tour, but one day I was walking around Stanford and got stuck behind a tour group for about two minutes. Yes, the tour guide was walking backwards, But the thing I remember most were the guide’s multiple insults directed at Cal, which I wasn’t impressed with.
Mudd’s secret weapon. 
@CA1543, he must have been busy the day you were there!
I’m glad to hear all this praise for Muhlenberg; I’ll be there on Tuesday. I’m looking forward to seeing what you all have seen!
UC Davis was huge, couldn’t hear guide even though she was facing us but we were so many and her megaphone was pointed the wrong way. Everyone ended up spaced out. There were “Fire Katehi!” posters and chalked notices all over campus with a request: Ask your tour guide about Katehi. My son did (a different tour guide, we switched) and she said a few things which boiled down to, students had the right to be heard. We liked her answer. UC Davis is a gorgeous campus.
Lawrence University, great tour! Physics professor came out and spoke with us, impromptu. Friendly, smart guide, pretty campus. UCSC also good. They walked, stopped, talked.
Wow. Never been on a tour with megaphone before but the majority of the schools we toured were on the smaller side.
University of Wisconsin- I was annoyed right away when I had to pay for parking. Then the tour guide actually stopped next to a man jackhammering and asked if there were any questions. The topper though was when we asked about the engineering school, the guide vaguely waved about and said it’s somewhere over there. U of W was also a school with a pre-decorated room- Go Badgers! I (and my wallet) was glad when my dd whispered, “I don’t want to go here.” And we had a crummy lunch on top of it all.
Goucher. It was an absolutely frigid day, and with windchill it was about 7F. We spent too much time outside. The first stop was the science building. I am sorry to say the bio lab was much worse than the one at kid’s high school. There were construction paper cut out letters on the walls so it felt like primary school. I truly wondered why this was the place they chose to try and impress potential students. We were shown into a quad dorm room which was smelly and messy. The guide was a sweet girl, but she couldn’t make up for the rest of it. We got our lunch (actually,that was very good) and left.
I think the only tour we took where the guides had microphones was U Oregon.
Speaking of jackhammers, our tour at Dartmouth was fabulous. The guide took us across the lawn while a facilities employee was mowing. He stopped the mower until we passed by. After the tour, the cafeteria staff was extremely friendly when they found out my niece was a prospective freshman. Left a great impression. Things I liked about that tour were learning about afternoon tea and the Dr. Suess room.
We ran into a film school professor on our tour of Hampshire. The guide was really laid back, but the prof started quizzing the kids on the tour about life, the universe and everything. They all reacted like deer in the headlights. Our guide later shrugged saying, “yeah, he can be kinda intense.”
@Onward I’m with you on the pay for parking thing. Same at SUNY Stony Brook. Irritated me from the second I arrived. I know its small potatoes compared to the bigger picture, but to charge me $8 to park for a mediocre 2 hour info session and tour - just irritating. Won’t be going back.
@STEM2017 you had to pay for parking at Stony Brook? I just visited and it was free! Where did you park? That is so bizarre #-o
I think I paid for parking at almost of the urban schools.
We cut out of WUSTL because we didn’t like the neighborhood. It just seemed nasty without any of the benefits of other urban schools.
@fishgill We parked in the covered garage next to the Admin building. The “nice” lady at the desk said the school doesn’t validate tickets. Then it took me 15 minutes to find a pay station to pay my $8. Oh well.
WUSTL has Jackson Park, the zoo, an art museum, and ‘the Loop’ (?) is a nearby funky artsy neighborhood. Too bad. Good info session.
I visited Earlham for an Accepted Students event this weekend and it had its ups and downs. All of the students and teachers were very friendly and helpful. However many of the tour guides talked about drinking and Hash (HASH?), the latter is an event dedicated to day drinking. Though obviously all campuses will have some substance use it was a little odd that the tour guides were so open and vocal about it. It just seemed kinda tacky for them to be going on and on about how wasted they get :-S
Most of the tours we took at urban schools sent us parking passes prior to our arrival - perhaps you missed that @stem2017 @materS? Easy to overlook but definitely good to have if you are driving. We flew most of the time and then took cabs so haven’t needed them…
My D and I will be making our first campus visits during the last week of April. Gotta say, if a tour guide spends their time talking about drinking and/or recreational drug use as highlights of campus life, my D will be pretty unimpressed.