<p>Went on a dorm tour at one southern school. This was open house weekend for prospective students not just a weekday tour. The resident advisor had mistakenly taken off with the keys to the model room, so the tour guide showed us his own room instead. First, we tromped up several flights of outside stairs instead of taking the elevator. Then we all had to stand out in the sun on a balcony, while he “ran in and cleaned up a bit.” Unfortunately, during his clean-up tirade, he forgot to take down the notebook paper sign on his bedroom door which read “Entering the love nest.” Not a good impression!</p>
<p>When we were touring Berkeley, the tour guide’s friends and/or roommates kept intercepting the group at various spots along the route and were laughing and clowning around, apparently trying to make the guide laugh and throw him off his game. I developed a low opinion of the roommates, but the guide did an admirable job of hanging in there and carrying on despite the distractions.</p>
<p>loslobos - you commented that the experience in my post “sounds like Nova”. You would be correct in that assumption. </p>
<p>Interestingly, of all the schools we looked at Villanova had by far the greatest disparity in opinions among people I spoke to who had some experience with it. Many very favorable views, and many "highly unfavorable. Arrogance was the most cited negative point, and it sure came through on our visit. Perhaps a bad day, but it only takes one.</p>
<p>Going on a tour in August, in 90 plus degree heat and 100% humidity at Duke and being told that it rarely gets hot enough to need air conditioning in the dorm rooms. Being NC natives we know how silly this is (the lack of AC at Duke is a well known drawback in our area)</p>
<p>LOL!! Thank you for that image of the heavy girl dancing! What a bizarre thing to do!</p>
<p>^^^ yeah, np :P</p>
<p>hvcc–i’m not surprised. I live in the area, a few minutes away. We never send anyone to Nova. I actually just heard a lot of bad stuff about the b-school. Supposedly they go around bragging about their businessweek ranking. It’s not supposed to be that good of a business school anyway. I love the Wildcats, but you couldnt pay me to go there. My friend’s mom is actually the president though. He got in solely because of that 
Overall, your impression sounds pretty spot on.</p>
<p>The dancing girl made me laugh too - not because of her weight, but rather how silly and how out of place, how very odd. </p>
<p>This didn’t turn me off, but, I may have turned off other parents and prospective students by accident - we were on a tour of a college in an area that is just at sea level, and, the tour guide pointed out a series of restaurants etc., saying, “there’s a Starbucks, and a Pizza Hut, and a Subway, and a…” etc. This very nice mother from New Jersey asked “where does the subway go” and some of the students started laughing, and, I started laughing and just couldn’t stop, throughout the entire tour. The tour guide patiently explained that Subway is a place to buy things to eat. Perhaps I was just tired or perhaps just the visual concept of a subway train running through the ocean, perhaps in some sort of contained, waterproof tube, perhaps to Cuba (???). Anyway, I did my best - stayed in the back of the group and choked down the giggles, oh well, hopefully she didn’t really notice me…</p>
<p>That’s classic.</p>
<p>At first I disliked many tour guides everywhere, objecting later to my own kids privately on this point: the word “like” should not be a placeholder every fifth word, if the student represents a respectable college. Somehow I thought the colleges would beat it out of them. </p>
<p>My kids wore me out, saying that if I felt that way I couldn’t possibly enjoy the entire next generation and I should just get over it.</p>
<p>I’m like trying but it’s still like so hard…</p>
<p>latetoschool: That’s so funny. I love it. </p>
<p>paying3tuitions: I’m, like, definitely with you on that. ;)</p>
<p>this isn’t really irrational but at one school in the northeast, my tour guide who happened to be from my town (i didn’t know her though), told my group that we probably wouldn’t fit in unless we had northface jackets, listened coldplay and jack johnson, and talked as she did.
another school didn’t show us the dorms because “they all looked so different, there was no point in showing us one”. at the same school like the tour guide told me she didn’t like me because i laughed at something she said that wasn’t supposed to be funny.
my mom didn’t like another school because the tour guide had a potty mouth and one info session person took someones cell phone when it rang and started talking on it.
ugh i’m not even done with this yet.</p>
<p>I have concluded that students at EVERY school wear North Face jackets! Our minister just graduated from Duke divinity school last year, and even she has one … but I guess even NC is cold to a young lady from LA … I’m assuming she got it there, because hers isn’t heavy enough for our MI winters!</p>
<p>One thing that irked my sister-in-law & I was when the guide wasn’t able to project to the back of the small group he was leading (mumbled mostly). He also didn’t face the group when he talked.</p>
<p>S rejected a school out-of-hand, saying it was “too small,” (tho I don’t think it was touring the campus as much as having spoken with a dissatisfied student about the school the prior summer who also said, “too small.”</p>
<p>I wonder if Colleges and Universities realize how damaging their student tour guides can be to their institutions. Do they do any sort of training to prepare their guides to convey a positive image to prospects? Some of the stories in this thread really make you wonder. Maybe Dean J can address this from his own perspective.</p>
<p>I do think schools try to pick the students they feel will best represent the school because tyey realize that it is a very high-profile position. As superficial as it is, I think it’s widely recognized that 1st impressions to make a difference. Awful tour guides can definitely make students & families reconsider, as can wonderful tour guides.
I think most folks who have been on a sampling of tours will run into some from each category with a lot in the middle.</p>
<p>I think the negative has more of an effect. I had some very good tour guides (probably my two best) at UConn and American and I didnt apply.</p>
<p>
All tour guides get training and at many schools, they have to follow a certain number of tours before they’re allowed to become an official tour guide. Many programs will also make a new guide team up with a veteran for the first few weeks.</p>
<p>The selection process varies from school to school. Some tour guides are paid student workers in the Office of Admission and some are volunteers selected by a committee or by an election.</p>
<p>As 17-21 year olds, tour guides aren’t going to be perfect - they may try a joke that goes over like a led balloon or they may blurt something out that will make some people laugh and others recoil. Other than making every single tour guide stick to a specific script, there’s no way to control that. I doubt many students would be interested in being guides if every moment of the tour was prescribed to them (they are loosely scripted, but encouraged to add their own stories and examples). I would hope that no one would completely write off an entire institution because one student didnt give them the best tour. I hope most people explore each school a little more than a one hour tour.</p>
<p>I will address “the look” comments. It’s my opinion that in this day and age, the vast majority of teenagers look alike. When I visit a high school in LA, kids are dressed almost exactly like their peers in Atlanta and Chicago and Boston. I’m no longer alarmed by things like North Face jackets, Rainbow flip flops, and polo shirts with popped collars, or baseball hats worn with the brim off center (though I think some of those things look silly). Thats just the way many students dress these days.</p>
<p>I could pull out the psych books and talk about teenagers craving acceptance and adhering to group standards, but I think I’ll blame the conformity on one thing: mall chains. It seems as though kids shop at the same places. Abercombie, Hollister, A&E, Gap you know those and the others on the list. They are literally everywhere.</p>
<p>Beyond that, I’ve started looking at is this way: students seem to adopt a uniform, the same way adults do in the workplace. One school could be preppy and another could be crunchy, just as one office could be formal and another business casual. Just as you can’t lump everyone in an office in a group based on their clothing, you can’t draw conclusions about a student population because they seem to dress in a similar style, nor does it makes sense to be alarmed by that style anymore.</p>
<p>Great answer, Dean J. Just as with life, you’re going to come across people you instantly like, and others that instantly turn you off. It doesn’t mean the former is better then the latter, they’re just different types of people. Kids should learn early in life that they’re going to have to get along with everyone, whether they personally “like” them or they don’t.</p>
<p>led = lead </p>
<p>Darn spell checkers don’t know context. :)</p>
<p>At accepted students’ day the first speaker let us know that the school is full of Yankee fans, and Red Sox Fans,which audience members verified by hooting and hollering for their favorite. Our family was not a member of either group. And that was the most interesting moment in the 2 hours of lecturing from the podium that ensued.</p>
<p>The school built a 60 million dollar Ice Hockey/Basketball facility, but students are housed in triples and quads in the dorms. </p>
<p>The “honors” program reception was disorganized and uninformative. And without exception each of the four students representing the program said they were thinking about transfering to a different school after freshman year until they were accepted into the honors program. </p>
<p>The surrounding town was dominated by big box stores and chain restaurants.
Besides going to restaurants, bars or clothes shopping, the only off campus activity that was mentioned was bowling. </p>
<p>But the campus is gorgeous, I’ll give it that.</p>