On one tour, this aspect turned my kid off - not so much the tour guide (who I remember as bland but not terrible for that one), but by the other prospective students. I’m not going to say specifically why so that I don’t inadvertently offend anyone here whose kid might fall into that grouping haha, but they gave off a distinctly different vibe than what she was looking for. Beautiful campus, a reach and not likely anyway, but her overall feeling was “ I don’t want to be in classes with these people”.
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But COVID was kind of extreme. My own alma mater didn’t even allow visitors to self-tour. I remember advising people to “wear a mask and just keep to the public sidewalks.” You probably would have missed all the classes being conducted under outdoor tents. A self-tour under normal circumstances will catch people walking between classes, people seated in the student center, the library. True Story: a classmate of mine and I were just browsing the art work in Olin Library one morning and stumbled upon a completely refurbished room behind a door neither of us could recall existing and when we opened it, the student inside immediately offered to vacate the room in order to let us walk around in private. We declined the offer but were impressed by his kindness.
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I have said this several times before in other posts, but we stopped doing formal tours with tour guides with our oldest, and we never did them with our younger two. If a school otherwise checks most boxes, it’s beyond a shame to have a “bad vibe” from one tour guide ruin your kid’s interest in an otherwise great choice. Do self-guided tours (you can still check in at admissions, get maps, etc.), research/watch videos online, talk with students while your there, reach out to a department, etc. Your kid is not going to “vibe” with every student at every school; it would be creepy if they did. Too much is at stake for otherwise great matches, to let one (well-meaning or not) tour guide ruin it.
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I think this is wise. Or at least have a frank discussion with your child (before!) about tours and what they are good for (and what they are not). I really wish I had done this with my kids. The tours we went on had an outsized influence on what schools they liked.
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I especially hate the attitude, “But they (the tour guides) are being paid to be entertaining.” Really? Have things become that transactional in today’s society?
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I mean, they are “marketing” the school - so it’s obvious and typically have a corny joke. But I do find they answer you honestly.
But a school would be dumb to hire someone not entertaining - but yes they do.
These are typically work-study jobs. Consider the students who are required to pay for college through work-study. I give them a pass, if they’re not quite ready for SNL.
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But there are often buildings you can’t access without a guide, including dorms for those schools that show them on a general tour (I know some only do dorms for admitted students day). If my kid is interested in architecture, they want to see the studio and facilities, not just the outside of the building. I assume the same for those interested in lab science, etc.
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Yeah, there’re obviously some advantages from the institution’s POV, too. Organized tours represent a way to exert some control over who’s on campus. You don’t want a gazillion people a day trying doorknobs and worming their way into places they don’t belong all under the rubric of “trying things on for size” like it was sale day at Filene’s basement.
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Many tours/schools don’t tour inside dorms, and it’s hit or miss on a given tour if you’ll go inside specific buildings, labs, etc. For my older two we hit those things on admitted students day if my kid was becoming more serious about a school, and was accepted.
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My kid got pretty good at separating the school from the tour guide, so I think it’s doable. At one school we visited the tour guide mentioned, more than once, his religiously affiliated club and the events he does with his religious organization. It was different from our faith, and not something that appealed to me kid, and he got past it and didn’t attribute that particular characteristic to the campus in general.
Not to say he didn’t make some generally snap judgments - like one school we visited everyone was in some version of vineyard vines button down shirts and khakis, my kid is a hoodie and sweats kid. It wasn’t just the tour guide, it was the vibe of everyone we saw. It was enough for him to decide that the campus didn’t “feel” like him. At the other end of the spectrum, one of the schools he did apply to he went back and forth because “there was a large proportion of people with blue hair and lip rings”. I called him on it because no, no there weren’t. Did we see a group of students that fit that description, yes we did. But it was one group, not a large number of students. And that particular school also had the vineyard vines and khakis people as well as the hoodies and sweats people. It was a really diverse group, which is a good goal to have in a student body - there’s something there for everyone.
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When I was touring with D19 we went inside a number of buildings on all our tours, dorms at I’d say about half of the colleges, and there are often tours available for specific departments as well to check out things like labs or studios or particular buildings. Funnily enough I was talking to D19 last night about potentially doing a self guided tour or two with C26 and her immediate reaction was don’t, because you don’t see nearly as much stuff. For D19, some colleges were crossed off the list before even applying from those factors. YMMV but given how close to each other and inflexible admitted student tours tend to be I’d rather do tours before - and go back if necessary- if possible.
Looking up Olin Library, I knew there’s a lot of Olin Libraries, but didn’t realize there’s so many! WashU, Rollins, Cornell, Wesleyan, Northeastern, Drury, Kenyon, MiIlls, Colby…I guess different Olins (John, Stephen, Franklin).
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Thank you!!! Yes, this. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Should be pinned with the amount of play we get here on the “just couldn’t get over the horrible tour guide!” posts.
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I’m talking about the adults! They’re the worst. Based on the posts I’ve read here, they seem to overreact to this as much or more than the kids. And they are the very people who should be helping their darling children not draw broad and sweeping conclusions from every stupid little thing, like random other people not being their cup of tea.
As for deep thinking, I wouldn’t paint the whole population with that brush. Many are pretty darn thoughtful based on my travels.
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When D24 toured USC, we enjoyed our tour guide…Kevin. He was quirky but funny at the same time. He added to our experience! If Kevin reads this…”Fight on, Kevin!”
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Counterpoint: The kids are alright.
Striking a college from the list because of a tour guide having an off day is no less substantive than a rejective college striking someone off the admit list because they play the oboe and not the bassoon.
You have to trim the list somehow, so who actually even cares if some of the reasons don’t hold up to purely rational scrutiny in the eyes of parents or other outside observers?
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Davis and SLO often attract the same type of student.
Have you spent any time in the SLO threads? Food and lack of diversity are both frequent topics of discussion.
Not sure if your daughter has plans this summer. SLO’s EPIC Engineering camp for HS students is well done. Davis also has some residential camp programs.
Thanks for the suggestions!
We did maybe three formal tours with younger D before she declared that she refused to do another one. Most tours are to convince the parents. You can tell by the subject matter (food, safety, library and requisite jokes about how this might be the only time your kid sees the inside of it).
The formal tours we did do were at schools that I visited with older D six years earlier and I could swear the spiel was exactly the same. We mostly looked at big publics so the admission sessions were reiterations of stuff from their admissions websites. No secret info on the key to admission and none tracked interest except the one private college we visited which she ruled out right away.
Someone upthread mentioned kids needing to picture themselves among the current students at a college and that was my younger D. She needed to pick up the right vibe - and she felt she could do that with informal visits and by talking to students she already knew there.
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