College tour guides have a big responsibility to sell, and they know it. According to experts in the field, the college visit is the single most important factor in a student’s decision about whether to apply to a school, and often it is the guide who seals it one way or another.</p>
<p>Knowing this, it’s little wonder that many parents and prospective applicants may ask themselves: Are we being bamboozled? Is this tour guide really this happy here? How much have they been “told” what to say, and how much of this is their own opinion?</p>
<p>As we enter the last few weeks of frenetic college touring before the winter application deadlines, we talked to a few tour guides and their coordinators to get their insights. First, however, it’s important to know that colleges, for the most part, think much more carefully about those first impressions than they did a decade ago.</p>
<p>“In the past, I think most colleges deemed campus-visit programs as, I guess, kind of a necessary evil - as something you had to do because people were showing up on your campus,” said Troy Selk, who is president of the 11-year-old Collegiate Information and Visitor Services Association. “Now it’s become more of a profession, more of a real necessity on campus…It’s become much more than, `Come check out our sports facilities.'”
As a result, many colleges have invested in a well-appointed visitors center and have turned volunteer tour guide positions into paid ones that are much sought after and require involved training programs, interviews to assess personality and their love of the school, written tests and audition tours.
So when you show up on campus, bear in mind, you're probably not getting a "typical" student; you're getting a student of a particular caliber with a well-articulated and deep love of the school. And more often than not, he or she is being paid.
They are ready for questions like: What's your least favorite aspect of campus life?
Neil Chatari, the head tour guide at Yale College, said tour guides learn the art of turning the negative question into a positive. In this case, he'll say the "worst" part of Yale is that there is just so much to do, you might not wind up with enough sleep.
And they are prepared for: Is the campus safe? Or how much drinking and partying is there?
On the safety issue, Jared Hoffman, a senior at Trinity College says he tells parents and kids that it's a safe campus but that, as you would anywhere, students need to be careful when they are walking at night.
Jared, who comes from Snow Hill, Md., says he might say, "Of course, you have to be smart. At home, I don't go walking in a cornfield by myself at night."
On the partying and drinking questions, which often come from worried parents, Vanessa Lee said she talks about her own experience, emphasizing that while there are kids who may party or drink, there is no pressure to do so, and there are plenty of other wonderful entertainment options, from theater to coffee houses to movies, etc.
At the University of Connecticut, Meg Malmborg said staffers of the visitors program observed similar programs at schools in the South because of the region's reputation for hospitality. "Southern hospitality isn't just a myth," said Malmborg, who manages the visitors center. "Visitors centers at colleges in New England were a little bit behind the curve....Marketing for public schools has not always been a top priority."
In 2000, the university opened the Lodewick Visitors Center, which, Malmborg said, feels comfortable and homey. The visits from prospective applicants have been well thought-out and choreographed, with an informational session that intersperses presentations from students with clips from a DVD about the university.
But it is the tour that really brings the college experience to life, Malmborg said. The guides are carefully selected for the paid positions and receive four full days of training. They take a 100-question test, a tour route test and a presentation test.
Trinity, Yale and Quinnipiac University also have similarly high standards for tour guides. At Trinity College, Mary Dumas, senior associate director of admissions, said, "We pay [tour guides]. They are employees, which means we have higher expectations. Volunteers can not show up; they can do a bad job, there are no repercussions."
Dumas said she looks for students who are able to establish rapport with people of all different backgrounds, students with good speaking skills, sophistication, enthusiasm and a sense of responsibility.
"Everyone who applies does an interview," said Dumas. "After 30 to 45 minutes, you can tell who would be the face of Trinity, who is a good ambassador for the college."
At Yale, Chatari, the head tour guide, said he has about 180 applicants each year for about 15 tour guide positions. The applicants are given fact sheets from which they develop their own tours, lacing it with interesting personal information and, especially important, good jokes. Eventually, the field is narrowed to 30 applicants - all of whom give "audition" tours. The best 15 are picked from that pool.
At every college consulted, tour guides and supervisory staff alike said the guides are never pressured to hide problems or to lie about their experiences. However, if there is something they feel negatively about, they might be asked to speak diplomatically about it or around it.
For instance, Malmborg said, if a student really doesn't like the dining hall food and is asked about the quality of the food, they might answer that there are lots of options for students to choose from. "Even if you hate it [the food]," said Malmborg, "you don't have to go on and on about how you hate it....You can say, `While I don't spend a lot of time in the dining hall, there are a lot of choices.'...No one is losing any weight on campus."</p>
<p>“We tell them,” said Malmborg, “always have an answer, but always answer honestly.”</p>
<p>In general, the tour guides interviewed said it was very easy to be honest. They love their schools, so being honest is a simple matter.</p>
<p>Said Vanessa Lee of Trinity, “The only pressure I feel is to convey how much I like it.”</p>
<p>And she wasn’t kidding.