Great info sessions / tours were ate BC, UVA, Wake Forest, William & Mary, UNC, Lehigh
All were very engaging and informative. They went way beyond the info you could glean off the website. Very friendly, excited kids that obviously love their schools. Other schools were just Ok or disappointing so they’ll remain nameless.
I tried to convince my kids that tour guide personalities didn’t have that much to do with the quality of the school. I didn’t really have that much success 
Admissions offices should read threads like this.
Earlham. Smart, warm, knowledgeable. Maybe our favorite. But the Denison guide gave him a run for his money.
Bates, guide was meh, but students who did info session were awesome.
Colby, totally awesome, funny, knowledgeable guide. Students who did info session, meh.
Parents were both totally charmed by the earnest, informative theater major who gave our tour at Bard. Kid - much less so - just didn’t relate.
Our very first tour with D1, was at College of the Holy Cross and it set a high bar that was never exceeded at 30+ additional tours spanning 2 kids. Great melodious speaking voice, perfect mix of humor and seriousness, well informed, warm, personable, extremely articulate with both scripted and off the cuff remarks - he was straight out of tour guide central casting and spoke without ever using the words - ‘like’, ‘um’, like um’, ‘cool’, ‘awesome’, ‘um’, ‘and so on’ etc. Turns out he would become his class valedictorian. Since my D was super interested in the school, we went back another time for a visit. This time the tour guide was fine, but nothing to write home about. I once wondered if we had the 2nd tour guide, for the 1st visit, if we would have felt as strongly about the school. But moot point now, because my D is enrolled there and we all couldn’t be more pleased with her experience!
@rickle1 that made me happy because my D is a tour guide at one of the schools you mentioned.
The student run info sessions at Bates and St Olaf showcased very impressive students.
My D fell in love with Elon, and I think the tour guide had something to do with it. He was very outgoing and enthusiastic and while walking around the campus he was greeted by many students. It just made it seem like a very friendly place.
I wasn’t there for the Middlebury tour, but my H and D18 said it was top notch, and a standout among standouts on their NE stretch.
Among the ones I did attend, the standouts were Furman, the first time we visited Davidson, and St. Olaf.
“Some schools do a poor job of selecting and training tour guides”
Very much this. There was a fairly large variance and although I think I was able to separate my feelings about the guides from the content, the problem is that they are sometimes linked. It wouldn’t have even registered if a guide were oddly dressed for example, but the poorly spoken ones not only gave a poor personal impression but delivered less meaningful content. Pretty sure it was a coincidence and a fluke, but one of the top 20 colleges we toured just fell on its face in multiple ways. Disorganized check in, unimpressive info talk, disorganized process to separate people into tour groups (and although they had 10 different guides, none were STEM majors), and the tour guide came across like the sweet but hopelessly dorky little sister from a comedy sketch. Snorting through her nose, slurping through her braces and talking about all the extra “help” she receives. Again, nice person but we were all left wondering how she even was admitted much less was giving tours. But then again, the huge group info session featured a similarly unimpressive student speaker for the Q&A parts, so we really wondered if the admissions office felt these two were representative students… puzzling.
Clemson.
Went with D15 and our tour guide was about to graduate and we were her last tour. She was charming, knowledgable, funny and engaging. Her love of the school was evident and both the kids and parents were swept up in her enthusiasm. My husband turned to S18 who was along for the trip and said, ‘Now that is the type of girl you have my permission to marry’. We still talk about her.
Two standouts. McGill. It was five degrees out…frozen mounds of snow everywhere…and the tour guide knew the school well and gave my son a great sense of what it would be like. Heck, she sold all of us on the school without selling at all. Brown is the other standout. The tour guide was a gay professional dancer from Mumbai studying biology and economics. Intelligent, articulate, down to earth, and just a great kid. He was just so genuinely connected to so many different parts of the Brown community that you really got the sense of the diversity of the school. Both my boys were instantly smitten with Brown.
@AnAsmom
That’s great to hear! I told my son he should try to get a job as a campus tour guide and he responded with, “no! You have to be very outgoing, enthusiastic and have so much knowledge about everything!”. A girl on his team is one and she is amazing so I can see how admin probably painstakingly chooses their guides. Best foot forward
Agree with @wisteria100 . @lookingforward If you’re not going to name a school, might be best to not even bring it up!
I hope your D has a great time at Plattsburgh. My D, who was a tour guide and a student ambassador, loved her time there and so did my middle son.
My experience with a Freshman Tour Guide redeemed GWU. It was the senior student presenting the information session that was a train wreck. I kept thinking this is not the outcome I want for DS! I think you are spot on with #1, but schools should carefully select and train their ambassadors. A tour can really make or break a visit.
@compmom, I bet you admissions officers DO read threads like these. They all seem very aware of the popularity of College Confidential and they are all very interested in how their school appears to prospective students and families (so hello, Powers That Be!).
UChicago, it was a real students giving a real tour. Princeton was strange in that all the tour guides seemed to have Ray-ban mirrored sunglasses, attractive, wearing prep school clothes and it was clear that half were from the LGBT community (which was fine just seemed like they over recruited them to be tour guides). The whole thing seemed to be like a sequel to the Stepford wives… I was just waiting for one of them to remove their face.
I should mention Lehigh University. I did not tour it, but my son went with a group of students on a trip that visited many colleges and universities including Yale, Harvard etc. Lehigh was, surprisingly, the highest rated among the group. I don’t know what their tour guide did that sold the school, but several students (including my son) decided to apply there.
Tour guides may be doing work study, at least at some of the schools I am familiar with. Not sure what the selection process is but that is a subset of students on federal financial aid if they at eligible for work study.