<p>Right. I don’t get the mentality of going to the website, seeing that it requires reservations, knowing you’ll be visiting on X date and X time, and then not following through and making the reservation. You don’t know that they can accommodate walk-Ins and if you’re traveling a distance, why take that chance?</p>
<p>S also made reservations for two schools for a trip we had to postpone, so he called and informed them we wouldn’t be coming. Isn’t that just common courtesy?</p>
<p>I was reminded of this thread yesterday when I looked at the Princeton website - “Campus tours and admission information sessions are offered year-round, and reservations are not necessary for individuals and groups of fewer than 15.”</p>
<p>We make reservations when asked, but many places don’t ask! I think the blame should be on the schools, not the students/parents.</p>
<p>How do I know? I know because I was a gate crasher on some of those situations. Also on the one tour that caused me so much trouble, some folks came right out and said they just happened to be in the area and were not on the list. I heard them which made me a bit warm since I did go through the trouble of rearranging my schedule so that I would not do what they were doing. The school was well prepared for them with extra materials right on hand, had them sign the roster and was ever so cordial. Not a problem at all if you just show up. But if you call and ask,and the list is full, they will tell you not to come. Personal experience just a month and a half ago when we hit 6 colleges in 3 days. By gatecrashing and squeezing in that third college on DAy2, we were able to get home before rush hour on Day 3 when we just visited one school en route to home. But I flushed a school originally on the list to make the DAy 1 schedule work. </p>
<p>I will call and make the reservations, yes, I,not my son, because I will be dragged along and can’t stand having half cocked plans. I go over the plans and explain so that he can see how I am planning this and can take those cues when he does his own stuff without me involved. I don’t think many adults could have done the scheduling I have done for some of these college tours. arranging stuff in the most efficient and economic way. Also having to regroup and make alternate plans when something did not pan out like that one college tour that I should have just crashed for the trouble it caused me to reschedule. </p>
<p>And yes, it is common courtesy to call and tell the schools you are not coming, but few people do it. I asked the college that said they were full if I could be on a wait list, and they said they don’t have one because people don’t call and cancel, so they have an average no show number built into their planning. What she did not tell me was that they also have a gate crashing number built into their schedules, because telling me would have skewed the results.</p>
<p>I call it the Barney mentality…people that sing inside their heads “I’m so special so veeerrry special.” Common courtesy is common courtesy. Manners are manners. So veeerrry special sometimes is really a lack of class. Being gratious has always been classy. I more often feel sorry than angry for/with people that are oblivious to the potential turmoil and the rolling of eyeballs behind their backs.</p>
<p>Hmm, very interesting. D didn’t have any of these issues during her college tours. Looking through the posts, I think it may be regional in nature. The schools that have been named are in the Northeast. I am a NJ native and the difference in daily interactions between NJ & TN when it comes to common courtesy is like night and day (please understand that I am not saying that all people in the NE are rude, and all people in the South are polite & genteel; just that expectation of what is common courtesy can be quite different.)</p>
<p>The only rude person we encountered during our touring was the woman manning the desk at undergraduate admissions at Princeton. We had gotten used to being welcomed warmly for our tours & we were obviously bothering the woman when we went to check in. At Vanderbilt Black & Gold Days, it was a large crowd & D said that if she hadn’t known the school well, she wouldn’t have been interested in the school after the tour. </p>
<p>And the few times we had to cancel tours, we always called as soon as we knew we wouldn’t make it.</p>
<p>Just being the way I am, I would not gate crash as a matter of course. Not just because it is rude, which it is, but because I just feel that there is that risk that you get cut. I gate crashed on Day 2 of our tours because I was at Pitt which was a stone’s throw away from CMU which was on the list for the first school to visit on Day 3. We had arrived at Pitt so early that we were swept into an earlier tour which gave us plenty of time in the Oakland area of Pittsburgh. So we just showed up at CMU, but fully prepared to be turned away if there were any objections. There were not. Just like at Dickinson, there were extra materials, we were greeted warmly and welcomed and signed the list just like the scheduled folks. I then rescheduled the Bucknell tour for the morning for Day 3, which, thank goodness was available. If they had said no, I would have called Penn State or Villanova to see if they had space, because I would not risk gate crashing and being turned away in that neck of the woods and ending up with a day empty of tours. </p>
<p>By not gate crashing Dickinson, I had to go there first, then to Gettysburg, which was a pain since I was enroute to Pittsburgh. The other way around which was preferable or going to Villanova and then to Dickinson which was my initial plan, would have saved me more than an hour from the backtracking. But I asked, was turned down, so went with the agenda. Didn’t ask next time, but then did not have anything to really lose. </p>
<p>And though I agree that it is rude not to cancel, it is a pain to call with all of the changes. I must have made two dozen calls with reschedules, cancellations, etc just in a morning, as plans changed. Yeah, I was tempted not to cancel. And I would not have, had I thought there was a possibility that a change might make that appointment a good one to keep. I can understand why folks don’t call to cancel or don’t call for appointments. If kids were given the responsibility to make the schedule , I could really see how they would just look at the times of the tours, write them down and fly by the seat of their pants and the whims of the day. Would have made it easier for me. Even with all the planning, we gate crashed and had to change plans.</p>
<p>I think the NE has another issue in that there are so many schools close to each other … on my grand tour with my oldest we ended up skipping 3 of the original tours on which we had planned on attending and instead showed up unannounced at school B. A can imagine for a school on the Boston-DC corridor … if they take 30 reservations for a tour there are 10 no-shows … and there are 15 folks who drop-in and want to joint the tour. I could easily see where tryiing to keep reservations for tour is an admit hassle which adds very-very little value to the process … frankly, askins a math or stats student to develop some confidence intervals or predictive model might be more helpful</p>