That is great to hear! I will pass it on!
Her preferences are like a game of musical chairs. I am betting I won’t know for sure until application day!
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@lollylolly Just chiming in to say great tour recap! This may be my favorite CC topic, appreciate your contribution!
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@lollylolly I loved your recap and we looked at a lot of the same schools! My son ultimately chose SCHC, and UGA probably was his second choice. We loved Wake also, but he decided not to apply, partly because it is so much more expensive. If he liked those three, another one we absolutely loved was TCU (merit $$ made cost comparable to UGA). You are welcome to message me. My son is having a truly fantastic experience at SCHC so far. It really is the best of worlds - big SEC sports/Greek life in a fun city, but every single class he has 1st semester is capped at 20 students!
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Is it me, or wouldn’t a tour guide going on and on about their personal experiences while standing in front of a building you’re not going to see inside, just make the tour longer than necessary? Similarly, politely answering, “I don’t know the answer to that” and moving on would have been music to my ears on a hot day like the ones we’re experiencing right now.
A walking tour, IMO, is just to give an idea of the physical layout of the college and an opportunity to see where the child will be spending most of their hang-out time. The student guide isn’t an expert on every aspect of the school and different guides bring different levels of familiarity with a complicated enterprise like Wesleyan University and willingness to get personal with a few dozen strangers. Sounds like a lot of these questions should have been asked at the info session or during a panel discussion involving students; not when you’re trying to cover a hundred acres of physical plant (which is literally the case at Wesleyan) with two or three groups following close behind.
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We had a similar experience touring a couple years ago - Wesleyan’s tour was bland and was just what you said - a tour of the campus. We did attend the info session too and found that other schools had a bit more personality and energy on the tours and Wes’s tour was just that - a tour. Different schools do it different ways and overall we felt Wes’s tour was one of the weakest and didn’t show off the school to its advantage. Again - just our opinion 
and similar to @cacmom
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One thing I’ve noticed is that Wesleyan’s tours are often broken up into groups of a couple dozen each. It’s not unusual to see them crossing campus in convoys during the busy season. Like I said, two or three at a time. Maybe that has something to do with it.
Other schools i know prefer to form a larger group that stops and puts on much more of a dog and pony show.
I think it depends on the turnout.
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It’s funny - we had the exact opposite take! Wesleyan’s info session and tour were our family’s favorite. It was the only info session we attended that had a professor (in this case, Econ) on the panel, which I found to be a very thoughtful addition. Afterward DD said that while she had no interest in Econ before the info session (she loves history, English and art), she found his comments so interesting that she’d take any class he taught. Our tour guide was wonderful too. She had lots to say about her personal experience, and despite it being a drizzly Saturday, there was a great energy on campus. DD is considering applying ED.
Wes was not the prettiest campus we saw (Swarthmore FTW), or the most exciting surroundings (can’t compete with NYC or Boston), BUT the people, the academics, the arts, the size, the vibe resonated 100%. There’s a lid for every pot!
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I’ve been on many college tours- and usually the tour guide has the answers to the very basic questions high schoolers are asking. They are paid by the admissions office to know about the school, and in some sense, to sell it to prospective students. We unfortunately just had a not-so-great tour guide that day. The info session was better, but it’s still the tour that really makes the biggest impression. We were the last tour of the day, with only 3 families, so it wasn’t a case of being rushed or in a big group. Just a bummer, as I hoped my kiddo would really love Wesleyan.
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Honestly, I (and at least most of my kids) prefer the more personal bits—it’s easy enough to find out where the math department is from googling, but the tour guide’s experience as a student? Not as available, and that’s what we just flew 6,000 miles to see.
(I agree that doing so while standing around in blazing hot sun isn’t great, sure. But that’s a different issue than content.)
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And to tell at least one ridiculously corny joke.
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I totally agree with you. I’m sorry it was such a bad tour. 
That is so surprising. I have toured Wes a few times and they have been some of the best tours/guides we have had.
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On a more positive note, I was also very impressed with Smith when I visited with D24 last year. A senior studio art professor gave D24 and me an hour-long private tour of the department. Another professor spotted us and stopped to chat about Smith for 20 minutes. So, in addition to all the other wonderful things about Smith, I left with a very favorable impression of the professors and their accessibility.
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Love it - you are so right - a lid for every pot 
I have twins and for the schools they both visited (not a lot of their lists overlapped) they both walked away with very different impressions and then add mine to the mix and we had 3 different ones!
I find this topic and the original thread to be so fun and informative to read for that exact reason - all different lids and respect for different opinions. One of my daughters is a tour guide at her college and fun to hear her thoughts on the “audience” too.
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Sorry, that didn’t work for you.
Any famous people tour or a particularly funny story?
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If Virginia isn’t too far, check out Virginia Tech. They have a great forestry program! Also they have a large variety of natural resources related majors, so students can be exposed to many study options under the same “umbrella”. (I work in natural resources management in Virginia and got my M.S. at Tech!)
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There were a few colleges that I toured with D19 where we had this (we were touring in spring break so I guess it was busy season). I don’t remember it as a negative and would definitely rather have that than being in one too big group.
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That’s probably my favorite “Child Crossed Off The List” description of the Wesleyan campus. It’s fair; it’s accurate. Doesn’t have to be “sold”. And it was concurrent with a “bad” tour guide which makes it even better.
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So far we have been concentrating on the midwest (Michigan Tech) and out west. I know that some southern schools like VA Tech and NC State have excellent forestry programs, but we haven’t gotten there yet.
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