Have you had any eye-opening campus visits where a parent or the student’s opinion was very strongly swayed in one direction or another? What happened during the visit that wasn’t evident before?
Thanks.
Virginia Tech and William & Mary were the eye opening ones for our son…
William & Mary- we didn’t even make it on the tour…we were in the info session which was so hilariously staged that our son looked at us in the middle of it and said “I want nothing to do with this school…”
Virginia Tech—the tour included no actual stops inside any buildings…and it felt like our guide hadn’t even attended the school…
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Our William & Mary info session was disrupted by a protest. My son was upset by it and a little intimidated I think, many people got up and left. I know W&M is a great school but he was all done after that.
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Oberlin. My DD so much disliked presentation, admin, and school that we did not even finish tour.
My othet DD had similar experience with Northeastern. Tour guides were not vocal and confused. Lab that was shown as very interesting and advanced on the tour DD completed in 8th grade.
Both did not apply to Oberlin or Northeastern after those trips.
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We visited McGill over February break. Having lived in Montreal for 15 years, if you include the wind chill it turned out to be the coldest day that I have ever witnessed in Montreal.
By chance, not a good time at all to visit McGill.
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We had similar experience with open house at UMD. Walking only outside.
Also very boring presentations by admins. We attended students’ pannel. What one student said during panel from the stage to over 500 people made us pause… Smth in line like:" I was very surprised in my class that white students can be open minded and capable to listen…"
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Johns Hopkins. It was a blindingly hot day in July. There were barrels filled with ice and chilled water bottles along the major pathways through campus; “fill your own” chilled water stations in the entrance ways to most buildings, a nice assortment of snacks set out in the admissions lobby. A “symposium” instead of an admissions presentation- five professors from completely different disciplines with a moderator-- they each addressed a current issue from their own scholarly research and perspective.
We’d been told that JHU doesn’t try too hard with prospective students- “we’re famous, you should be lucky to get admitted” but that was not the vibe AT ALL. And instead of the vacuous student tour guide bragging about the parties, the sports scene, or whatever, it was a student who answered every question thoughtfully and kept the focus on academics and not “Oh we have a great tradition when the team wins a home game” kind of stuff.
The entire family was ready to move in immediately! Probably the best organization/presentation/“best foot forward” of any college we visited.
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In 2005, we toured University of South Carolina. They took us into a high rise women’s dorm. Oddly, my husband noticed there was no sprinkler system, and he didn’t see alarms either. He designed such systems as part of his job…and was shocked to see neither…and this wasn’t long after the horrible Seton Hall fire. So…he asked…and the poor tour guide looked up and noticed the same.
As we were walking out of the dorm, another father thanked my husband for asking the question…that father was a Columbia SC fireman!
We told DD the school was fine…but she would NOT be permitted to reside in that dorm (which is where many freshmen women resided).
South Carolina was our DDs second choice college. But this eye opening thing on the tour would have put my husband in high gear if she had chosen this college.
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U of Oklahoma gave my son a private tour and drove us to the meteorology campus a Mike or two away. It was fantastic. He didn’t apply but well done.
Elon gave my daughter a 1:1 tour because of covid. I was impressed as was my daughter who did not apply but that was due to its remoteness.
College of Charleston found us at the info session, took us aside. Had planned a lunch and meeting with Hillel. We were unaware up front. Blew my daughter away.
I was impressed by the prof at American in the SIS who acknowledged, yes you should have a second, more marketable major in combination with an SIS major. I asked in front of all the parents because I had a ‘non salable’ major myself. I appreciated her honesty.
We did not have anything at W&L (self tour visit) but a professor was on campus with his family, stopped us to ask if we had questions, and talked to us for 30 minutes. Very impressed (was dad).
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Very off-putting visit to Brandeis with D19 (we visited as we know a couple people who went and loved it). It was snowing in April, yay Boston. The uber driver dropped us somewhere in campus, we didn’t know where to go from there, it was freezing and snowing and deserted with no-one to ask - the only other people we saw were another parent/kid also looking for the admissions presentation. D19 thought everything about it looked and felt like high school, including the student tour leader. She would have left immediately actually but as it was our first tour I made her do the whole thing, which just solidified her dislike. We then waited around half an hour for the train back into Boston - which underpinned that it felt too far from the city for her - in the cold and again everything was totally deserted. It just felt all very odd. (And a complete contrast to our tour that afternoon at BU where they were offering hot chocolate to everyone in a warm and bustling admissions center, which made an immediate good first impression!)
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Rutgers.
Took all the kids to the tour for the oldest and it was such an infamously bad tour that it took 8 years before the youngest kid became the third of 3 to apply, despite it being the logical in-state safety for them.
It’s still talked about.
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UChicago for my daughter and me. Went to the info session and the group was peppered with little questions by the AO about ourselves and then started asking what would have almost felt like trivia questions. “Can anyone name a famous telescope?” My daughter pops her hand because she’s vaguely overzealous with this type of stuff and answers, “Hubble”. AO is pleased to get an answer he wanted and then describes how the Hubble was designed by a professor there (or something to this effect, I don’t recall the details). At the end of the whole trivia thing, the AO says, “This is how we do things at UChicago. We use the Socratic method and we expect discussions in class.” My daughter was floored. She loved that she could get a little feel for what the school might be really like and how it might be different from every other session she had seen. Then the student tour guides did a great job of following that up with much more “real” examples of things they liked, didn’t like, etc. It was one of the few sessions and tours we’ve come away from saying, “I get exactly what this place is about.”
On the opposite side of this was the tour at Northwestern. The tour was so perfunctory and just not inspriring at all. I asked a question about Greek life, and immediately got the, “Oh, it’s not a big deal here, you don’t have to participate, blah blah blah.” Even though the guy giving the tour was in a fraternity! Man, you’re doing it, you should sell it! It doesn’t have to be bad thing. My daughter came up from that tour saying “absolutely not, they seem boring.”
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UNM (Univ of New Mexico):
After dark, all of the areas around the outskirts of campus (i.e., just off campus) were super duper mega dark. ON campus was well lit. But dark as heck immediately off campus. That + Albuquerque’s much higher crime rate compared to where we live put it in the “Heck no” category for our daughter. It’s a great school with some great programs, but D24 didn’t feel safe there. Others’ mileage may vary. 
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UW-Madison
We went and were surprised there were no student run tours- rather you were given a map and told to “go see what interests you.” During the info session in the large auditorium, the lady speaking about how great the advising is - made a huge point that “employers just DO NOT care what you major in” so just major in whatever interests you. She then listed off some of their most obscure majors. Fast forward 4 years and my kid is now a senior (not at UW-Madison), and based upon the experience of her friends and their job search outcomes - this could not be further from the truth! In fact, I feel it is almost criminally bad advice to be giving to impressionable teenagers. My gut is this is a way to promote some of the super small departments to try to keep them viable, rather than being honest with students about the current reality. This may have been OK advice decades ago when any college degree could lead to a job, but it is terrible advice today IMHO.
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I contacted U Wisc Madison and although the Kohl Center was closed, they let us in and let us walk around the arena. They were so friendly and nice, my son applied 4 years later! Although I got a parking ticket, I wasn’t too bothered by it because the people at the school were really friendly.
University of Portland was a special place when we visited. Never heard of it before we toured and the student leaders and ambassadors as well as the admission staff were very friendly and went out of their way to show us around (pretty much 1:1) the campus and made us feel at home. Met my son and gave him a nice shirt at the end of the meeting. That sold my son!
Seattle U. And their administration also were so helpful, giving us a parking pass late at night and opening the admissions office for us after hours to get us the parking pass where we could park over night for free while we were at the Silver Cloud hotel right next door.
Baylor with their students and faculty/staff went out of their way to meet with us and talk to us about their business school made a great impression on us. When we were lost, a student took notice and walked us to our car even though it was across campus. An associate dean met with us for half an hour when we were not able to attend the business school meeting which was very generous of her.
Daughter toured UVA on our own and she fell in love with the campus and the possibility of living in the dorm next to Edgar Allen Poe. That gave me a bit of the creeps, but didn’t bother her much at all!
She also fell in love with USC (LA), BC, architecture, and the campus and how beautiful it is and how relatively close BC is to Boston that she had it as one of her top choices. Same with UCSD. Although the architecture is a bit eclectic, there is something about the school that my D liked about it.
Daughter also appreciated Williams and the modernity of some of the buildings. She enjoyed the campus, but it was maybe a bit too small for her.
Some college tours that turned us off were Holy Cross because we were shown the dorms that were without AC in near 90 degree heat! That and the small campus with the small circular lawn filled with about 200 students made the school appear a bit too small for her taste. Same for Georgetown. We self toured late at night and saw a couple rats not only scurrying around outside but also inside Healy Hall. The building is a bit scary itself at night when no one is around without mice running across the hallways and rooms!
University of Hawaii also turned us off since the buildings are older and some are falling apart and are in disrepair. My kids were not interested in applying even though family lives nearby.
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We had a similarly bad experience at Maryland. My spouse and I both went there for undergrad, so we know how stunningly beautiful of a campus it is, but the tour seemed designed to avoid all the prettiest parts of the campus, and yeah, it was blazing hot and so not going inside any buildings at all is a bad move.
It made the spouse and me kind of sad, and gave C23 and C25 absolutely no reason to ever want to consider applying there, no matter how often their parents insisted it’s a good university.
On the positive side, Hofstra was only toured because we were going to be on Long Island anyway so why not, and it turned out to be much more pleasant than expected. We got to see a solid chunk of the campus, attention was paid to making sure that we were in the shade when we stopped outside, we were shown multiple types of classrooms, we saw lab facilities that C25 would never use but were impressive nonetheless, and the whole admissions staff that were there that day (not just the tour guide) hung around after the tour ended to chat for a while with anyone who wanted to stick around. Without the positive tour experience I doubt C25 would have applied.
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St. Olaf - I forced S23 to visit as we were driving from UMN to Iowa State and I wanted him to visit a small school (and the reputation for great food might have had something to do with it as well). While he didn’t apply because they did not have his major and he wanted the big State U experience after attending a small boarding school, he was shocked with how personal it was and the sense of community. He was particularly enamored with the honor code that extended beyond academics. In his words it was “everything he was hoping for in a boarding school. But, he had already been there and done that”.
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Same here recently for Northeastern. My daughter looked at me and said “let’s get out of here.” My son (a couple years ago) asked to leave the New School tour.
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We went into The New School admissions office to ask some questions and see about joining a tour. They literally pointed at the brochures behind them and continued their private conversation. Did not apply
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My D22 knew that Macalester was definitely not the right fit after spending the day there for admitted student activities (presentation, tour, lunch with students, sit in on a class).
Admissions was so kind to us, but my D did not vibe with the students she met. We spent an awkward lunch with two students who intensely debated each other about which was the harder major—linguistics or computer science. My daughter was interested in Political Science, and the other girl with the tour group was interested in English. As well, the food was inedible—the worst of any of the college campuses we ate at (even the basic pasta/tomato sauce was bad). There were other things she didn’t love but that lunch sealed the deal.
The next day, we spent at Kenyon (a school I asked her to apply to). What a change. Same lovely, welcoming admissions team. But the tour guide was a student majoring in Political Science and active on the student paper (basically my daughter’s profile at the time). The panel discussion with students spanned all kinds of relevant topics, and my daughter said she could imagine being friends with them. She loved tiny, charming Gambier and that the publishing house took undergrad interns. She went from “no way” to “top 3” that afternoon.
This experience is where I really understood that liberal arts colleges in particular can be very “hit or miss” and you’ve got to spend some time there before committing. What looks amazing on paper can feel very different IRL. And what seems like it’s not for you can be an unexpected delight.
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