Making The Most of Campus Tours & Visits

April vacation is right around the corner and for parents of High School students, that means visiting Colleges. Most students and parents take a campus tour. Guided by bright and bubbly (and usually attractive) student tour guides, visitors get a glimpse into campus housing, facilities, cafeterias, and hear lively stories about programs and activities. This is rather like being taken on a tour of a European city, without getting to eat any delicious gelato or enjoy a world-class museum. A campus tour is marketing; its useful for getting the lay of the land and acquiring a campus map but it barely scratches the surface of an institution. Savvy visitors need to do more. Parents and students should see themselves as interviewing the school to decide if they want to apply. Ask for very specific information about majors and minors, internships and research opportunities. Not: do you have them, but how many students in a given program participate? Can they receive credit for it? What is the employment rate a year after graduation? Graduate school placement rate? Colleges will cherry-pick their best data to feed to visitors and pass it off as the norm. Find out how many students are in a given program and ask for the email of one of them to get an insider student perspective. Eat in the cafeteria and people watch. The interactions and conversations you will hear will tell you A LOT more about a school than the glossy look books and well designed website. Are the students laughing and making plans? Are they sullen and stressed? Ask to see inside an actual dorm room; strike up a conversation with students in the bookstore or library. Check out students in the gym and wander inside a building to see the classrooms. What is going on? Are they dynamic hubs of interaction and collaboration, or are students lined up in wooden desks listening to a lecture passively like in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"? In short, take on the role of detective to kick the tires, look under the hood and get beyond the marketing to evaluate the inner dynamics and offerings of a school. Many students and parents fall in love with manicured grounds, beautiful buildings, and the brand name recognition of a College. But students eat, sleep, and breathe not on the lawn but inside the academic programs, peer community, and co-curricular activities of an institution for four years. Take an active not a passive role on a campus tour and investigate critically. You'll be far less likely to buy a lemon if you do.