<p>When I was a student at McGill, I worked as a tour guide for a semester and a summer. Tours of McGill have an added wrinkle: there are separate tours given in English and French. Most of the student guides are bilingual and the language of the particular tour is clearly indicated at the start. When conducting a tour in French, I often received rude comments from parents who wanted me to speak in English, they didn’t want to wait the extra half hour for a tour in English. I would politely tell them, in English, that if they have an aversion to hearing French spoken, McGill may not be a good choice for their student. (Their kids, the prospective students, would be mortified.) This came mostly from Canadian tour members, the occasional American family who took a French tour thought it “exotic”, their student was able to understand me based on high school French classes.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I don’t think most people have the time or resources to do what roshke suggests, though it definitely is a great idea to stay after and ask questions, etc. We’ve always either had a second college to visit, or have needed to hurry away and begin the long drive home so as to avoid a hotel stay.</p>
<p>I do think the onus is on the college to make this work. There’s no reason they can’t anticipate when will be their busiest times. And if they do get caught unawares, then they should have a back-up plan such as on-call guides, larger meeting rooms, etc. I recall one school commenting on how they always get a lot of visitors on Martin Luther King, Jr. day since many high schools aren’t in session, yet they weren’t prepared for the large group that indeed arrived that day. </p>
<p>I also think the tour guide can gently control the flow of questions in kind of the same way teachers do on back-to-school nights. Explain to the parents that this time is for general questions about the school and its programs, and that any specific questions which pertain to their specific child should be directed to such-and-such a person at this phone/e-mail, etc. Dumb questions are hard to avoid completely, however the suggestion of referring people to the website or whatever for those silly general ones any dingbat should know the answer to, is a good idea. The queries that really bother me are the self-absorbed ones like “Should my little Edward take AP Stat next year or AP Calculus? And if darling Edward attends XYZ premier science program, will it help him get into your school?”</p>
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<p>Interesting … we went during HS spring break in the northeast (a very busy college visit week) … and had small tour groups at Yale and Columbia … and a pretty big but OK group at Penn. </p>
<p>I wonder if we just define “small tour group” differently … in our groups everyone could not hear the tour guide and couldn’t be heard fif they asked question … however lots of people purposely hung back and didn’t ask questions … we were never in a group where those who wanted to be near the guide wasn’t and who wanted to ask question couldn’t (no matter how big the groups were).</p>
<p>PS - I agree with the comment about pushy/rude parents … any issues we had on tours were parents. And I do not recommend the info sessions because, in our experience, 2-3-4 people (typically parents) will hog the questions and even worse asking questions that either are common knowledge from the web-site (how many SAT subject tests are required) or very specific to the student and not of general interest.</p>
<p>^^ the common knowledge questions are the worst…
:rolleyes:
and these are to be the best/brightest?
Sure they can text–can they look at the web site?</p>
<p>minimom–wow, that WAS pretty rude. Cattle call.</p>
<p>3togo–For a “horde” of visitors they need a “hoard” of tour guides that they can call on short notice. ;)</p>
<p>At the other end of the spectrum–we decided relatively last minute to visit Purdue over winter break, on a snowy/icy day. Virtually no one showed up for the tour so we had the guide & admissions person all to ourselves. :)</p>
<p>“if they do get caught unawares, then they should have a back-up plan such as on-call guides … I also think the tour guide can gently control the flow of questions. Explain to the parents that this time is for general questions about the school and its programs, and that any specific questions which pertain to their specific child should be directed to such-and-such a person at this phone/e-mail, etc.”</p>
<p>In a perfect world, I agree with all of this. But you can probably see where these two goals conflict. Tactfully deflecting out-of-place questions is a difficult task that takes both talent and practice. Doubling the number of tour guides will necessarily dilute the quality of the tours, no matter what training you provide. </p>
<p>At schools like Harvard, where there are so many other kinds of jobs and activities competing for students’ time, it’s no small feat to recruit and retain the number of quality guides they do (especially in the summer, when most students leave and admissions visits rise). In my first summer, we had a couple of guides who were pretty mediocre, and only one of them was asked to leave, because we were drowning in visitors. It’s an open question whether it’s better to accommodate 100 visitors with 2 great guides or with 2 great ones and two crummy ones.</p>
<p>Sorry, Hanna, but this is HARVARD you are talking about–the most selective university in the country. Surely you don’t mean to suggest that culling double the number of tour guides from this uber elite crop of brilliant young people will dilute the quality of the service? Quite frankly, if at least 80% of the student body isn’t capable of being a tour guide, then Harvard is not what it is cracked up to be. Or is it the school’s administration which can’t be trusted to successfully train double the number of guides?</p>
<p>PS. I do understand the difficulty the summer months might present, however while it is not ideal, colleges sometimes employ graduate students who are on campus doing research as guides.</p>
<p>“Surely you don’t mean to suggest that culling double the number of tour guides from this uber elite crop of brilliant young people will dilute the quality of the service?”</p>
<p>That’s exactly what I mean. It might be that 80% are capable of making it through a semester as a tour guide. But capable of being an *excellent *tour guide – the kind who is enthusiastic, approachable, and charismatic, who has a loud, clear speaking voice with an accent crowds of Midwesterners can understand, who has the tact to quiet obnoxious jerks without offending them, and most importantly who ENJOYS meeting crowds of random strangers every day? The kind of tour guide who won’t prompt dismissive threads on CC about how much the Harvard visit sucked? Hell no, 80% of Harvard undergrads can’t perform at that level.</p>
<p>Anyway, out of the group that can, how many want to spend the summer at the Hague, in Rwanda, in summer stock, in a senator’s office in D.C., at Goldman Sachs, or on a ten-week world tour singing with the Krokodiloes or Din & Tonics? During the school year, how many would rather be a tour guide than spend that time editing the Lampoon, working in a chemistry lab, interning at a hedge fund? I adored being a guide, it was the most fun job I’ve ever had, but I couldn’t do it during the year because my a cappella group was too important to me.</p>
<p>Almost all of the best guides I worked with were actors, singers, or both. It wouldn’t surprise me if 80% of the Juilliard or Emerson student body could do this well. But Harvard has plenty of introverts and sardonic types who’d rather eat glass than take a public-relations job, and would be crummy at it if they tried.</p>
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Sounds like Harvard needs to adjust its admissions standards to get a few more quality people like you or risk having the reputation of being full of “introverts and sardonic types who’d rather eat glass than take a public-relations job” ;)</p>
<p>Glad to hear your realistic viewpoint on the job and the people who need to fill it.</p>
<p>Best admission visit we made was to DePaul, and the tour guide there dealt very nicely with a pushy parent. For most of the tour she would ask “Do any of you students have any questions?” At certain points she would ask “Does anybody have any questions?” There was one parent who kept jumping in to ask questions ahead of students. Finally, when he asked about the dorms she answered, “Well, most non-trads don’t live in the dorms…” when the man asked what she meant, she said (very sweetly) “Oh, you’re not a returning student?” He said, “No, I’m a parent.” And she responded “Let’s get some student questions.” It may have made him mad, but the rest of the tour thought it was great.</p>
<p>In response to the OP - I signed up for tours at three colleges. Two out of three lost my registration, which happens frequently. Yes, busy tours are not fun, but honestly, what is a college to do. For reference, one was an Ivy and another a top 10 LAC.</p>
<p>To Hanna’s point - I think good tour guides are worth “rewarding.” Our Georgetown, Bryn Mawr and Mt Holyoke tour guides were all outstanding, and I made it a point to seek out whoever appeared to be in charge at the admissions office to tell them how well XXX did his / her job and how well it reflected upon the school. We also pointed out to our kids some of the things that made the tour guides so good - in terms of responsiveness, personalization, humor, etc.</p>
<p>PG & Hanna, ita with your statements regarding the differences in tour guides.</p>
<p>It’s been 7 years since we toured Tufts, and my daughter still remembers the tour guide by name. She continues to talk about how the tour guide really sold the school and helped her to see the school in a new light.</p>
<p>Now at Brandies, all of the warm cookies in the world could not hide the fact that the tour guide was not enthusiastic about the and really was not good at engaging with the group.</p>
<p>One of my client families is on their college tour this week, and crossed a school off the list because the tour guide gushed about all the foreign lands the students are from: “Nigeria, Dubai, Hawaii!”</p>
<p>Oh, dear. I smacked my own forehead on behalf of that guide’s boss when I heard that. The school wasn’t right for this family anyway, but all it takes is one foot-in-mouth moment from the guide, and it’s all over. I’m sure I had my share!</p>
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<p>What? Did they hire a “birther” as a tour guide? LOL</p>
<p>My son LOVED the Brandeis tourguide - cool dude from NYC. He just couldn’t get past the office park architecture. We also mistimed it and the campus had already emptied out for Passover. We’ve had a lot of tourguides from the drama department.</p>
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<p>Last week we had the opposite - a not-so-great Tufts guide (though S liked the place nonetheless) and a Brandeis guide who was Personality Plus! </p>
<p>We still refer to the Bryn Mawr guide as “the girl with the purple hair that we loved.” </p>
<p>I also think it smart when the guides pass out cards with their emails and/or send followups. </p>
<p>OTOH, I think we all think more negatively of Haverford than we want to (if that makes sense) because of a really unimpressive tour guide, which is a shame.</p>
<p>Ditto to post #50. I guess if the hiring strategy for tour guides involves finding the tiny minority who aren’t like the vast majority of the school’s students, because the latter would give people a poor impression of the school, well then I can see how this would present a problem for any college. I feel bad for the poor kids who come to Harvard expecting to find classmates like that wonderful, sweet tour guide Hanna and instead find the sardonic, glass-eating types, lol. Aha! The reason for Harvard’s lower happiness ratings…</p>
<p>Anyway, making college decisions based on tour experiences is very dangerous IMO. Your impression of a school could vary drastically depending on your luck of the draw for the guide. A guide I might like, another visitor in the tour group might detest, and yet objectively the guide could be informative and competent, AND had we both chosen a different tour group it might have meant the other guy would decide to apply to the school instead of me. Read the thread about stupid reasons kids rejected a school and you’ll see things like they didn’t like the tour guide’s shoes or they were annoyed by the guide’s repetitive use of a certain word. Yet you can’t unobserve or unfeel what you did on the visit despite knowing it’s kind of silly to be bothered by that kind of stuff. I choose to believe that the seeming unpredictability and randomness of what small details your child is exposed to as a visiting prospective student, is simply part of a divine plan (or some orderly force in the universe if you prefer) to ensure that said child selects the right school for him or her.</p>
<p>do you want to go to school for 4 years at some place where they can’t even run a functional and beneficial tour? (speaking of the administration)</p>
<p>I guess some of the schools just don’t care… they figure they get enough applications anyway.</p>