Contacting the Admissions Office

NYSkins1
Thu, 16 Aug 2007 10:19:24 +0000

mixer:

If Rice is the school you want to go to for sure, then arrange for a tour/visit. We just showed up and they were very helpful. But we did call and let them know we were coming down in advance. Forget about the “pre arranged” tours, just tell them you want to do your own thing (walk around, meet briefly with an admissions person, see some dorms, the library…etc. Ask what time of day or week would be best for them. They hooked us up with a junior that took us all over and showed us the “real” Rice. It was great.



I don’t understand this advice. You take a tour/go to classes in order to find out if you want to go to a school, not just if you absolutely want to go.

Also, as a tour guide (a volunteer who is in no way influenced by the admissions office), I am kind of put off by the fact that you wouldn’t want to go on the campus tours. We really strive to make them as informative and honest as possible, and we also really enjoy giving them. I do highly recommend walking around the campus after the tour, so you can see things that weren’t covered or kind of brushed over on the tour (since we only have an hour).

Also, the tour guides are generally better informed about policies and history of the university than other students. Taking a single student’s advice as gospel truth is never a good idea, but the tour guides’ advice is slightly more reliable than anyone else, since we’ve been oriented to the school more (I’m sorry if this sounds pompous and arrogant).

Also, if the admissions office set you up with a student on your visit, that student probably was a tour guide who volunteered his time to take you around privately. The admissions office does not have contact with every single student; they often send the tour guides e-mails asking us to give “special” tours. So if you think that a tour guide’s perspective is sugar-coated (which it isn’t), it’s reasonably safe to assume that the “special” guide’s perspective was just as sugar-coated.