We had a fully experience at Scripps College. The wonderful woman who showed us around said, “Pitzer was my first choice but I really like Scripps”. A couple people then pealed off to visit Pitzer. I cannot remember much of the tour but the guide was fantastically entertaining and could be a stand up comic.
When I was at UCDavis 1979-1982, there were quite a few 4-legged animals on campus, including a cow that you could see some of it’s insides (though I never looked). There was also a pigpen with pigs on campus, right between the law school and grad school dorm. When the wind blew the wrong way, it was VERY fragrant! When I visited 30+ years later with S, the campus had really grown and undergone a lot of renovations. Never did look to see whether the livestock was still on campus (they do have a vet school).
Here’s a funny and insightful article about what it takes to be a Cal tour guide – the poor girl had to complete an application, audition, and interview, and then she still didn’t “pass” the first time. She actually had to work with a mentor before passing the second time. Then she had to go through an intensive training program – lots of memorizing factoids. Oh, and never ever ever say “um.” I wonder how many other Unis put their guide through such a grueling process? When I actually get around to taking the tour of campus, I’ll be expecting greatness, lol.
Our tour guide at Wesleyan could only sing praises of the African Dance classes and kept saying “If you’re queer, you’ll like it here!”. I couldn’t believe my ears. The tour group dwindled by the minute.
Union (worst tour ever and I have multiple children who I have accompanied on college tours so that is saying a lot)
Best Tour by Far: Brandeis. I think the tour guide, who had everyone laughing, probably got 90% of the kids on the tour to apply.
Best Info Session (but ironically not a good tour as the guide was too impressed with herself): Muhlenberg
Should have ditched at Brown because we got a parking ticket. I refilled the meter but apparently, you can’t do that. Two hours really is two hours. Live and learn.
Ducked out of the U Mass Amherst tour with D2 as we had the most long-winded guide ever. He droned on and on and on. D2 was bored beyond belief so we went into the student union building and had awesome gelato while D1 and my husband finished up the tour. The gelato is reason enough to return.
Was tempted to ditch the Amherst College tour because our guide was snooty and only made an effort to talk to the obviously wealthy families. But we stuck it out and had a good laugh about it afterwards. Palatial dorms.
Also tempted to ditch at Tufts because our guide was inarticulate. Not a good ambassador for the school. But the info session was well done.
Best tour guide at Vassar. Relaxed, down to earth, informative, funny, clearly loved her school and showed it well.
Our Amherst guide seemed very nice, but he had a bad habit of following around a guy on a lawn mower (or vise versa). Closest we came to bailing was at Columbia. After an impersonal video and rote orientation speech from an admissions officer, our guide basically stopped at each of the four corners of the quad and yacked for 10 minutes. Like @mamaedefamilia S’s favorite was at Vassar. I thought she talked way too fast, but she took us to her favorite places on campus and S said she was the first guide (out of about 20 at that point) who was “real.” When S returned for an overnight and found that everybody else he met was just as genuine, he decided that’s where he wanted to go.
Tours we left early:
University of San Diego: we left within the first 10 minutes and felt bad as our tour guide was nice. @Agentninetynine D thought it was a gorgeous campus, but she was immediately turned off by the very strong religious aspect. We snuck away as the tour guide pointed out a coffee shop, where we proceeded to get coffee and hightailed out of there.
Boston University: We missed the info session and left 10 minutes into the tour. It was pouring rain and we had already done another tour in the morning - D was wet, cold and tired. D said she already got the full vibe, researched online and it remained a top choice for her.
Tours we wanted to sneak out of but stuck it out:
Rutgers New Brunswick: worst tour by far, the guide was knowledgeable, but the bus tour was torture, as were the visits to the classrooms and dorms - very dark colors and depressing looking. Unfortunate really - it’s our state school and has a great reputation otherwise.
University of CA, San Diego: D was turned off immediately during the information session when they congratulated a few kids in the audience that had already been accepted and said “Congratulations, you should feel extremely honored to have been accepted here.” That was a huge turnoff for her. (I insisted we stay on this tour and thought it was decent otherwise.)
What did you expect? It is a religious school.
@twoinanddone Yes, of course, but some don’t have crosses at the top of every building.
We visited 20 schools during last year, and ditched three tour guides.
Rochester Institute of Technology: Underwhelming, unattractive campus with little green space and huge parking lots. Tour guide had just completed freshman year and was absolutely clueless about most aspects of the school (couldn’t tell us the purpose of any of the labs we passed, and at one point she had to look for a directory/sign since she wasn’t sure which building we were entering and what was housed in there). She was unable to answer all but the most basic questions. Most of our group took off about midway through the tour.
Bucknell: Our tour group was enormous (over 80 people) and we never got inside any of the buildings except the student center, which was packed because it was peak lunch time. Couldn’t hear much of the narration due to group size. Campus wasn’t overly appealing to us… D had registered to have lunch with a student and an interview… and the admissions office did not have her name on their list. That one should have been a drive-by for us!
Goucher: Info session led by an AO with zero knowledge of the 3+2 Engineering program with JHU that was touted on admissions office poster. Could not really speak to questions raised about STEM classes/majors. Tour led by a guide we refer to as the ‘anti-ambassador’. Told us all about the lack of things to do on weekends, lack of research opportunities, lack of good study spaces and lack of school spirit at athletic events. Lots of raised eyebrows from tour group, especially the parents. We were about 3/4 of the way through when D spied our parked car from a pathway, and we made a beeline for it.
Best Tour Ever: University of Vermont. Delightful, charming, well-informed guide, she engaged with everyone in the group and was able to answer every single question, most before they were even asked. She really ‘sold the school’ to us. Very impressive. We loved the campus, too.
LaSalle - We were all uncomfortable with the surrounding neighborhood (FWIW our S eventually ended up at Fordham in the Bronx).
Fairfield - We didn’t especially love the tour guide we had (was a bit too impressed with himself) on our first visit plus the tour was 70 or so people so my S was turned off by the school. We don’t live far so I convinced him to go back and give it another chance – but wouldn’t you know we were given the same guide and had another huge tour group so we left very quickly.
I’m taken aback by so many of these comments, where parents say, in essence, the speaker/adcom/tour guide was so boring, they crossed the school of their list, and ran out and got ice cream. The speakers presenting the information were committing the cardinal sin of our age, failure to be entertaining. You have to expect the immaturity from the students, it’s too bad it isn’t tempered by more parents , who seem uncomfortable stepping up and being parents and trying to learn what they can while discouraging their own children from being so shallow.
This is an old thread resurrected but for us it was Bates…totally right school for me…totally wrong school for #2, ditched out of the tour and moved on.
I am going to echo a little of what @CTDadof2 said – I really do not understand the posts that say they pull into the parking lot of a school and their child “will not get out the car.” So a parent sets aside a whole afternoon or day to visit a school and they won’t even get out of the car? What can you tell about a school from the parking lot?
I would be pretty irritated with my child if they did that to me. I would most likely insist that we at least walk around the campus and sit in for part of the presentation. We have declined to stay for tours if we pretty much knew the school was a “no go” but we always went to all or part of the presentation and strolled around the campus.
@HarvestMoon1 seems to me that scenario could be avoided if enough research was done before the visit. Most college websites have video tours or at least photos as well as tons of other information as to why or why not a school might be a good match. I’ve started making a list of schools for S19 that includes all types of info (location, cost, number of students, etc) and I also include my two cents on why it’s on the list. I also have S19 take some time on the school website before we book a tour. There really shouldn’t be any surprises that warrant not gettIng out of the car!
That being said, I get this thread. We went to University of Chicago last week and I totally wanted to ditch our tour guide. She was using some weird performance voice that she probably used in debate competitions and was trying to be funny but wasn’t. Plus, according to her, Chicago was perfect in every way. She told the group that, the minute you get to campus, you automatically have 100 new friends in your dorm who become your new family. Ugh. I just felt like I wanted a tour guide who was more honest and down to earth. I felt like we were out with a car salesman. We didn’t want to leave but I wanted to jump into another tour group for sure. She ended our tour by saying “if you liked my tour, that’s great. If not, now is your time to celebrate because it’s over!” Double ugh.
The internet is wonderful about researching first and getting a decent line on the school. Helps to narrow it down an then you can visit to get a better feel of the student body.
If the fit is not right,then just walk out. We did that after visiting WPI in MA. The place was just not it for my son. Why waste your time.
We enjoyed all our tours, but we left before or during some information sessions… and halfway through our trips, we decided to sign up only for tours and not for information sessions for the remainder of the trips. Some info sessions were better than others, with students speaking about their experiences, or other highlights… but the majority of every info session was spent with someone telling us what we had learned already from the college’s website and mailed materials. Tours, however, we all consider great fun!
I agree that a bad tour guide should not be the sole reason to cross a school off the list. And what’s bad for one could be great for another. There have been times when I think the tour guide was great, but D does not.
We had the absolute worst tour guide and info session at Lafayette. But despite that, there was still a lot to like about the school. We had a great info session and a fabulous tour guide at American, but the school came off the list immediately as not a fit.