We’ve had a few tours now that didn’t include going into many buildings, but I think all of them had at least one academic building visited maybe with the notable exception of Princeton. I’ve also assumed that buildings would be locked nowadays, so I’m always a little surprised when they’re not.
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The only tours we’ve had (all at LACs) that include a dorm room have been those we’ve taken in the summer, and not all of them. I can remember just a few. More typical: library, classroom/lab space, sometimes the cafeteria, athletic facilities/gym, and maybe a few other public spaces like the career center, music practice spaces, cultural centers, and so on. Those buildings have definitely been open in the summer, but usually tour guides had to use key card entry, so if we had been self-touring, we might not have been able to see them. We’ve had relatively few tours during the school year, and they’ve included most of the above, but never dorm rooms.
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We have definitely had dorm room tours during the school year (we have had no summer visits), sometimes a “model room” and sometimes one where the students in it had agreed that theirs could be used for showing during tours. There were some schools, including NYU, where the dorm rooms were not shown during a normal tour but were shown to those students who came to admitted student days/tours.
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We toured mostly SLACs, all during the school year. I remember seeing a model dorm room at Bowdoin, but other than that, if we went into dorms, we saw common space. I’ll never forget the common room in the first-year dorm at Williams. It was small and a bit shabby, but what amused me (and seemed to upset some parents) was the poster board on the wall where the students had written in-jokes that weren’t PG. (There wasn’t anything racist or sexist, just colorful language.)
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Same. Dorm or model dorm rooms were maybe the most 50-50 for us. Maybe also whether or not we actually went into the athletic facilities, or just stopped somewhere to talk about athletics.
Otherwise, I feel like I saw almost every main library, and walked through at least one building with labs and project posters.
We visited Wake and I don’t remember it being much different, although I honestly can’t remember whether we saw a model dorm or just walked around that area. Definitely went inside some other buildings, however.
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The University of North Texas has—or at least had as of a few years ago, right as we had come out of covid lockdowns—a model dorm room not in the dorms, but attached to the university welcome center, and visitors could go look at it at their leisure before or after the tour, or even not connected with a tour.
Upon encountering this I thought that that was the best possible approach, and was surprised it isn’t a more common practice—no worry about bothering resident students, but you still get to see how the dorms are set up.
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We’ve probably done at least 20 to 25 tours total with three kids (LOL, now I want to list them) – and at every school, we’ve seen the inside of at least the library, rec center, a couple academic buildings, and yeah – about half had dorm show rooms set up, and several had students who agreed to let people see their room. At a few we didn’t see dorm rooms.
I think doing an official tour and seeing the inside of buildings helps a lot, especially if you see students hanging around and studying, etc. The only school where we visited and walked around but didn’t have an official tour was WashU, and it’s a shame, because it was so gorgeous that my D22 immediately started looking up stats to see if it was reasonable for her to get in, LOL – but she didn’t feel any connection or have a sense of what the student body was like. I don’t remember what the supplemental essays were, but if there were a “why WashU” – I think she probably couldn’t write anything compelling. She did apply but was waitlisted.
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LOL, had the upset parents not met any teenagers or young adults? 
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Now that I think back, our Wake tour also took us inside very few buildings. I’m trying to remember…my daughter and I drove five hours, did the tour, then drove five hours home the same day. And I remember listening to Ready Player One during the drive because it was one of her summer reading books that she was trying to knock out. I think I’ve blocked out that visit, LOL.
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Wake Forest probably doesn’t need to woo anyone with building and dorm tours to get them to apply. That said, as a parent doing college tours for the first time, I would like to see as many building as a I can given that I am writing the check. We visited WF with my older D and while I don’t recall seeing a dorm, we did go into a few buildings, and they even let us wait in one of them (maybe the student center?) while the kids did their interviews (do they still do those?)
With D1 (back in 2013), we saw the inside of buildings and dorms on most of our college tours. If we wandered around afterward, many public buildings were open (during the week, when classes were on) but dorms were always keycard entry (no shortage of students willing to let us in).
With D2 (2020/2021) of course the Covid shutdown severely limited how many inside spaces we could see. She almost made a decision without setting foot on campus but thankfully an older HS classmate who attended the college my D was leaning toward, offered to give us a whirlwind tour. While we didn’t see the dorms, she did get us into the library, student center and business school. For my younger D, it’s always been more about the student experience, rather than the buildings, and it speaking to this former HS classmate, sealed her decision to attend.
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Covid was tough. At Wake, we had to self tour and saw parking lots. We weren’t allowed out of the car.
I wonder how many restrictions have held over from covid - perhaps that’s why some can’t go in buildings. At my company’s plants, we still won’t give tours…covid risk…whereas we used to.
I wonder if school might have the same mindset - too many people clustered together in a hallway.or small room…it’s like being on a plane in some ways…
maybe they see it as not worth the risk.
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I am the parent who was talking about Wake and Davidson being locked up.
I wasn’t really “ticked off,” just disappointed. We flew across a continent for this.
It is a question of degree. We are veterans of 20 of these visits. We expect that schools will have less building access in the summer than during the school year. We also expect more construction in the summer. We expect dead campuses in the summer.
But when the student-led tour doesn’t even go into many buildings…it blows my mind. It makes it feel like they are hiding something.
Sure enough…the buildings at Wake and Davidson that we did get into were often (but not always) unimpressive.
Furman’s building interiors beat the pants off of Davidson and Wake. I would have never expected that.
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At Wesleyan I’m pretty sure they hit the lobby of the library, the snack bar just inside the main cafeteria and maybe the Belichick lobby of the phys-ed center. My problem with the dorms would be choosing which ones to showcase; they span about 100 years of construction and there’s no telling which one a first-year would wind up occupying.
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Just FYI – since we have not been able to visit in person - I’ve often found that the virtual visits go into a lot of buildings. You can also often find student videos of their dorm rooms. Is it the same as a campus visit? No - but it at least gives you an impression of what it is like.
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We went to look at Wake’s campus without having signed up for a formal tour. Met an extremely nice security guard who let us inside the business building. It was impressive, with expensive ergonomic chairs. Much fancier than my office chair.
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I was surprised to read that. We never toured Davidson, but I live in the area and am familiar with the campus (exterior) and town. It’s surprising given how much tuition is and how small the campus and student body are. One would think that everything would be in tip-top shape.
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This.
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I was surprised too. But if you search for “Davidson” in the “Colleges Crossed Off List or Moved Up After Visiting” thread, you will see lots of people complain about Davidson’s tired campus.
I didn’t really take those comments seriously. Now I know that they were right.
To be sure, a school’s physical condition isn’t as important as a number of things (student experience, academics, culture). But the physical condition of buildings is obvious and directly comparable to other schools.
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As an aside on the dorms discussion, has anyone noticed how uniform a lot of the dorm furniture is across different colleges? Whoever got that contract must be smiling!
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Yes! D26 noticed this. Usually when it is different, it is very old.
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