I always assumed that tour guides had the job because of work study part of financial aid.
My daughter is a tour guide and loves it. They are like one big family and they do a lot of admissions activities together. The process was grueling- she had a 15 page application, 3 essays, 3 interviews, and a mock tour. After she was “accepted,” she had to shadow a tour guide for about 2 months before being allowed to go out on her own. She also had to memorize several pages of school “facts.” There are set buildings that the tour guides are told to visit, but she also has the freedom of taking her families to areas not required by the school. She does not get paid, however there are families that have offered to pay her…(she did not take the money).
We went on a tour for Fordham and our guide was a theatre major. Nice enough, but really gave out some wrong school history. There were some other things I mentally flagged as questionable. I dropped a note to admissions later. No need to cause a fuss at that moment.
I think almost every tour we went on included temps above 95 degrees. Thank goodness for morning tours and bottles of water. About half the campuses have those water bottle fountains.
Our worst by far was at American. Admissions played the cheesiest video during the info session. I mean really over the top. Shouldn’t have stayed for the tour but did, and wound up (subtly) leaving before it was over. It felt rude but we literally couldn’t wait to hit the road.
Work-study students still get paid; it’s not like indentured servitude. Well, hopefully not. 
@ClaremontMom, at Mudd they took our tour by Art Benjamin’s (math prof) office, and he came out to talk to us. He is one of the best profs at Mudd, I think it was intentional that he is available for tours. We also saw students in a lab trying to get a robot to see who talked about their work.
Worst experience was Harvard. Tour was good other than not being able to go into buildings as previously noted. But a fire alarm when off during the info session and we had to evacuated the building. There was plenty room in the courtyard to convene outside and continue the brief but apparently that required too much flexibility. After 30 minutes the host said there was no time to continue the session but it was no big deal, we didn’t miss much. Not as if people hadn’t paid real money to travel to attend the session and not have flexibility to reschedule.
“@ClaremontMom, at Mudd they took our tour by Art Benjamin’s (math prof) office, and he came out to talk to us. He is one of the best profs at Mudd, I think it was intentional that he is available for tours. We also saw students in a lab trying to get a robot to see who talked about their work.”
@intparent - slightly OT but Art Benjamin is awesome! I’ve seen his mathemagic show 2x and the 2nd time I got to drive him to his hotel afterward. I felt like a weirdo fangirl for being so excited about a math professor. Nice guy.
@washugrad - We saw him perform at the Admitted Student’s Program last year. Great show!
UF has a competitive process for being a tour guide so they are well trained and lets you choose your guide based on their major. I really like that aspect. In addition to the film done by the university was also a student film which was very funny about life on the campus. Very welcoming.
I hate when guides walk backward. I spend more time watching for uneven ground worrying they are going to fall than listening. And it makes it so slow–especially in the heat. I always wanted to say “I’ll go meet you up there ahead under that shade.” So in my opinion some of the best guides would usher us from cool spot to cool spot before giving their spiel.
Though most of the time it wasn’t an issue, I generally agree that I’d rather just walk to the next spot than have the guide talking while walking. The other problem with this method was with really big groups it’s hard to hear in the back. At least when we stopped we could gather closer together to hear.
Walked out on U of Delaware. D16 said the campus is not her thing. Asked D18 if she wanted to stick it out, she said “Your kidding, right? I never wanted to be here in the first place”. I really liked the campus.
D18 walked out on our February 5*F campus tour at Marquette (where D16 will be matriculating) and took Dad with her…“If I want to be frozen, I’ll have a Disney animator draw me into the Frozen sequel”. D18 is gonna be a hard sell.
We left in the middle of a UCB tour. The guide was a freshman and after hearing her repeatedly answer pretty basic questions with: “I don’t know, I haven’t experienced that yet” we decided to make our exit.
My D just became a tour guide at her school. She had interviews for it, yet they also seem to base their selection on how well they know the student through student life activities. It’s a relatively small school… She had training for it, then followed someone else’s tour. They get paid, but I bet my D would volunteer for it. D loves her school and talking about the college application/audition process (she’s a musical theatre major), and she’s very friendly, so it doesn’t surprise me that she is excited about this. I wish I could tag along on her tour sometime!
We haven’t left any tours, but I can imagine wanting to skip out on some of the intro sessions; they should be short and sweet!
When my kids were in Kindergarten, 1st grade, and preschool, we visited my cousin at college. She was a tour guide so she took us on a typical college tour for fun. At the end of the tour she asked the kids if she had convinced them to attend. The kindergartner said yes and then bought a piggy bank at the bookstore so she could start saving up.
The next week was the scholastic book fair at school. I sent the kids in with money to choose a book or two. K came home without having spent any money. “Mom, I’m saving it all so I can go to X college.” and put it in her piggy bank.
Fast forward to today. D is attending X college in the fall. So that was an impressive tour. I wonder what happened to the piggy bank.
Worst tour experiences for us:
- []Utah: We toured on a whim, since we were in Salt Lake City. The tour they told us would be 60 to 90 minutes was actually a half hour info session followed by a two-hour tour of walking up and down steep slopes (plus a 10-minute or so bus ride near the beginning to get us to the far end of the campus).
[]Kansas: We got to walk around in a upper-90s Midwestern heat wave around the outside of all the beautiful buildings in the campus core—and people kind of strung out behind the tour guide, what with being wiped out by the heat and all, but the tour guide didn’t wait for people to catch up before she started talking to everyone. The only respite from the heat? A too-brief foray into the basement of the one ugly (brutalist) building in the core to see a classroom.
[]Earlham: The tour guide really had no clue how to lead a tour. We walked through buildings without any real explanation, he showed us his own (incredibly messy!) dorm room, and then we were done.
[]Ohio State: The tour itself was good (solid, but IMO not as fabulous as others on the thread are saying), but the design info session afterward we booked for the trailing younger sibling? Basically, a recitation of “Here’s why we’re better than you are, and you can’t get into our majors so don’t even try anyway.” The older sibling had already realized she’s not a big state school sort of girl, but the younger one is—but she decided that if she’s going to Ohio State she’s certainly not majoring in design.
[]Macalester: The tour was decent, but the info session? Please, if you’ve said everything you’re going to say in ten minutes, don’t stretch it out to the full scheduled time.
[]Miami (Ohio): The tour was excellent despite the rain, but afterward there was a cattle-call chance to speak to admissions reps. My daughter was interested in what’s a new major there, and with the major being new the rep (understandably) didn’t know much about it, but she said she’d get us information. We waited around for twenty minutes for her return and she came back bearing…a printout of the web homepage for the major.
And a few best experiences:
- []Kansas: After the tour, my daughter had decided she never wanted to go there. Then, though, she met with a faculty member and bonded amazingly—and it remains on her list as, yes, a safety, but as a safety she’d be incredibly happy attending.
[]Earlham: After the tour, she met with a few students in her field of interest, and (a few minutes in, after my daughter had essentially demonstrated her STEM bona fides) got to experience some real geek-out moments that totally sold her on what she could do there.
[]Muhlenberg: The only college with a memorable (in a positive way) info session. It was amazing—hilarious, and yet still informative and a good sales job. Seriously, the guy who does them should do standup.
[]St Thomas (Minnesota): We went in looking at it as a possible safety, and my daughter won’t be attending there for a couple reasons that quite emphatically don’t include the tour experience. The tour was solid but not spectacular, but the discussion with the admissions rep? Really, amazingly well conducted.
Observant readers will note that there are a couple schools simultaneously on my best and worst lists, and that the “best” parts of those involved personal connections rather than the tours themselves. Given my experiences to this point, there is something to be gleaned from that, I think.
Dartmouth. Terrible. this supposed medical sciences focused tour consisted of two football players loading us into an auditorium and asking if we had any questions about the program. Never saw a lab. No structure. Very aloof. also, there were 50 people in the tour group. You couldn’t see or hear. Food for lunch was free though.
Unlike the others, I’d rather the guide not talk and walk. Stop and talk, then walk. We are terrified you are going to fall. And we can’t hear you thirty feet in front of us.
UIUC, DD said the state school felt like a factory. And they charged $10 a head for lunch in the cafeteria. We ditched to attend a class (of 300) and said nope. Plus the facilities outside of engineering were super run down and depressing.
Kenyon was the BEST tour. The guide was a theater major and frankly was funny and interesting. I was ready to enroll!
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Oh I forgot the tour at Lake Forest college. We toured the gloomiest dorm room, I mean no attention to any attempt to make it attractive. Peeling paint, doors missing half the veneer. The floors were all co ed and as we left a 6’4 football player built guy was leaving the room next door wearing barely a towel. My DD said let’s go home.
At UVa we made our way none too happily or easily to an auditorium which was under renovation. Like push the plastic aside, brush the dust off and take a seat… Wondering if we were even in the right spot, It was like following detour signs on bad roads. In rushes a disheveled lady 15-20 minutes late who honestly couldn’t care less (and in so many words said --“you aren’t getting in anyway so why are we even here so save yourselves the trouble and go home now” was her message) She turned on some generic movie.
Not a good start! But the actual campus tour was fun and informative which saved that first horrible impression.
After being on some of these tours I think it is in the school’s best interest to have good tours whether a student decides to attend or not. I don’t care if you are the most prestigious school in the world with a waiting list of a million students. It’s still marketing. The waiting list can disappear quickly by word of mouth. People still need to know why it is a good reason to attend the school.
@gouf78 That cracks me up because my daughter was pleased by the overall vibe of “We are a great school and if you are great too than you can come here if you want to and if not there are plenty of other good schools” She felt like other schools were trying too hard.