<p>Villanova came off my friend’s list when the Dean of Admissions didn’t recognize the name of her dds private school in NJ and said loudly “What??! Never heard of it!” Of course to a 17 yr old girl, this was embarassing because he said it loudly in front of a tour group. We are across the river in NJ - not in Montana somewhere (no offense to Montana!), and her well-known school has placed many kids there…even though their Dean is less informed. Made for a very obnoxious impression. I understand the idea that tour guides may not make the best impressions but I would expect the Deans to be a bit more tactful and gracious.</p>
<p>^Works the other way too. My son was doing his accepted students revisit at Princeton last April and one of the admissions people asked him what school he was from. He attended a very small high school which few people have heard of. The admissions person said to him “That’s a such a great school!” My son was proud and grinning from ear to ear. I was wondering whether or not he said the same thing to every student.</p>
<p>
I think a bad or uninformed tour guide sends a bad message, but I would also like to echo the point that the tour guide may not be representative of the school in terms of clothing, accent, etc. My son and I did a tour of Columbia a few years ago, and the tour guide was an extremely flamboyantly gay guy. He was a good tour guide, and we had a positive impression. I just went back for another tour with my daughter, and this time the tour guide was a sorority girl who looked like Sarah Jessica Parker. Again, a good guide, but I don’t think you can extrapolate the entire student body from either of them.</p>
<p>^Right. I agree, Hunt. I’m only saying that kids DO often tend to extrapolate. People shouldn’t … their conclusions wouldn’t be accurate … but people do. It happens all the time. With kids more than parents.</p>
<p>I am kind of surprised that the Dean of Admissions of Villanova has not heard of all 490 High Schools in the State of NJ.</p>
<p>^^ditto: and how rude of that Dean of admissions…</p>
<p>reminds me of 2008 when my daughter attended an admitted students day at one of her (then) top choices; a dean of faculty in one of the schools laughed at my daughter when she was asked what she planned to major in…</p>
<p>no, she did not attend that school…</p>
<p>I think my comment was misinterpreted by Fendrock…I never said Wesleyan had no housing options after freshman year. I said pretty clearly that the tour guide relayed that info. I wish the tour guide had known what Fendrock relayed – sounds like Wesleyan has a good housing system after all!</p>
<p>And to the poster who pretty much said it’s “stupid” to rely on a tour guide for your impression of a school – I wouldn’t have used that word, but I agree – people (adults and students) make subjective, perhaps uninformed decisions based on feelings and responses. What I should have added was that while we were taking the tour, D and I were getting other impressions of the school based on the students walking around, the campus, the setting, and the tour guide did not do anything to change our minds.</p>
<p>“Otherwise, why did the school pick this tour guide to represent the school?”</p>
<p>Because there are tons of other work-study, extracurricular, and volunteer options, and the school has to work with the available talent pool.</p>
<p>Also because the school is diverse and has many types of kids, and thus one tour guide has green hair and another is a miniature investment banker.</p>
<p>I’m troubled by the amount of effort that people expect schools to put into marketing themselves. Tour guides are salespeople, plain and simple. Money that goes into making the school look better is money that doesn’t go into making it BE better. Yes, schools need to deal with marketplace realities and communicate their message effectively if they want students with lots of choices to enroll, but it behooves families to talk to their teenagers in advance about the difference between marketing and substance. It’s a critical skill for an educated person.</p>
<p>It is really, really hard to get a large staff of salespeople to give great customer service to every visitor every day. I just got back from Disney World – which probably invests more in achieving that goal than any other employer on the planet – and we still ran into a few duds.</p>
<p>^Oh, Hanna. I was explaining my interpretation of what goes on the minds of the kids when they extrapolate from one, single tour guide to the entire student body. I was saying that THAT’S what kids often think (and parents, too, sometimes) when they observe a certain tour guide. </p>
<p>I GET IT. I get that people shouldn’t do it. I get that it isn’t logical to extrapolate. I get each of your points as to why the schools pick the tour guides to represent the school, and I agree with you …</p>
<p>The only thing I don’t really get is why my post was misunderstood. I thought I was making it clear that I was describing what’s going through the minds of the kids – whether it’s right, or logical, or not.</p>
<p>I come down on the side of “dump the school for the bad guide”. On a global level you’ve got a 17-year old who is essentially clueless about what they want to study and where they want to not study it. Now we give them a list of 3,000 options that they, through some adolescent magic cut down to 20 or 50 or 100. With nothing more than some web site visits, guidance counselor advice and parental nudging, we all trot off to various campuses. To the kid it’s all the same: Dorms - great every school has them. Caring accessible professors - I’ll make a donation to the first school that says you can’t get near our profs and if you do don’t waste your time because they don’t give a rat’s rump about you. Food - C’mon everybody eats. </p>
<p>For better or worse the tour guide is the school and you have to eliminate most of the schools on your list somehow so how is a gut reaction to the tour guide any better or worse than saying campus is too hilly or they have a lousy football team?</p>
<p>Besides, as anyone who’s gone on a bad blind date knows, there’s no going back no matter how much your friends tell you, “she’s really a great girl, give her another chance”.</p>
<p>The tour guide is the school?? That’s a really ridiculous statement. If you don’t spend any time going around and talking to a few random students yourself and just rely on the tour guide to cement your impressions you are the one who needs to be dumped. Personally I think most tours are pretty dumb and you could better spend a few hours with the campus map and see what you want to see. Most campus buildings are wide open during the day. If you have questions go back to admissions and talk with somebody there after you walk around.</p>
<p>What fascinates/intrigues/frustrates me about this process is that your child may reject a perfectly good school based on something purely subjective but you know they would be happy there. I guess what I’m wondering is this: have any parents tried to create an emotional climate whereby their child’s response will be a positive one? Perhaps by seeing a school first you know they won’t like, so that when they see the “target” school, their response will be positive by comparison?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I like this. 
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Now I’m wondering if I can use this kind of approach with my daughters and dating. If they first go out with a real loser, they’ll be more receptive when they see the “target” guy, right?</p>
<p>What? You mean it doesn’t work that way? And you over there, you’re saying that sometimes they actually CHOOSE the loser in the end? :eek: </p>
<p>;) 
;)</p>
<p>Classof2015, on a serious note–sure. A little stage management never hurts, and does sometimes work.</p>
<p>How do people think about Lewis & Clark in Portland, OR? Anybody visited?</p>
<p>As for schools to cross off:</p>
<p>Harvard - You would think the name recognition could blind me from any flaws, but when I visited, I was simply disgusted. Terrible campus, filled with visitors, environment did not seem conducive to learning.</p>
<p>MIT - Terribly ugly campus, nothing else needs to be said.</p>
<p>They might like the school you don’t. </p>
<p>Frankly, since I don’t have to go to the school I am leaving it all up to my son. I also don’t care what his reasons for not liking the school are since there are so many schools to choose from. </p>
<p>Both my husband and I let our son lead the way and we had no restrictions on where he could look and where he goes is up to him, too.</p>
<p>^I come down heavily on the side of trying to influence the 17 or 18 year old. College is too big of an investment to leave these teens unguided in making choices. The school my son is now at and LOVING he almost ruled out because kids at school told him it was too “preppy” and “elitist”. We have the benefit of both our age and our knowledge of our children to be very useful. I say use whatever tools we have to help them wade through the mess that this process is.</p>
<p>Both my kids quickly bagged the info sessions and went off to investigate the campus themselves (usually going to classes). DH or I did the info session. Oh, heavens, it’s repetitive. The guys generally did the campus tour, though.</p>
<p>Neither of mine crossed off a school due to the tour or refused to get out of the car. They had done enough legwork prior to visiting that the school had a significant chance of being on the list.</p>
<p>While I’m here, another way for kids to get to know a school is for them to really pay attention when they are on campus for a debate tournament, band competition, etc. S2 did this with several schools he considered when he was there for MUN tournaments. I did it when I attended a yearbook workshop back in the dark ages. Little did I know my future husband migrated south for the summer from the Bronx and was on campus on a NSF grant! (We didn’t meet til four years later at a MUN conference in NYC.)</p>
<p>This thread is so great- is there a way on CC to extract or export the entire thread?
So as not the need to copy and paste?</p>
<p>“have any parents tried to create an emotional climate whereby their child’s response will be a positive one?”</p>
<p>The most effective thing parents can do, in my experience, is not attend the visit. When the child goes alone, or with another adult who’s not as close to the student, you avoid a lot of trouble. The student sees the mom looks thrilled when they visit Whassamatta U – the student is in the process of separation, rebellion, furtive independence – the next thing you know, the student hates Whassamatta U BECAUSE mom likes it. I’ve heard moms say something as innocent as “What gorgeous trees” and the student says “Too many trees! Let’s go home!”</p>
<p>This doesn’t ensure that the student response will be positive; just that it won’t be colored by the relationship with the parent. If logistics require the parent to attend the tour, the less the parent says, the better, as far as the student’s likely response to the school is concerned. The parent’s advice is critical, but it should come after the trip.</p>
<p>Of course, this doesn’t apply to every family. But it is a pretty common pattern.</p>
<p>We left UChicago halfway through an Open House Day–it was my twin sister’s top choice until she visited and one of the main reasons for our family vacation to Chicago. We threw in a visit to Northwestern the next day, more of just to check it out instead of any real interest (I knew almost nothing about it until we visited campus) and now it’s tied with Tufts and Penn for my top choice school.</p>
<p>The afternoon after my visit to Tufts, I was supposed to check out Boston College and we ended up leaving before the tour. Gut instinct was the campus and buildings were just too big and too impersonal for me, and the reality of what a Jesuit education really means hit me as soon as I saw the decor. Kind of regret leaving now, especially because I realize it wasn’t so much of a gut reaction to BC more of a delayed reaction of how much I adored Tufts.</p>
<p>In retrospect though, I probably should have stayed for the full tours at both of those schools/not let such surface feelings affect me. Campus tours depend on a lot of factors, and while gut feelings are important, so is information about the campus. I feel like a lot of students will cross schools off their list for such frivolous reasons.</p>