Basics of Being an Admissions Tour Guide
What Every New Student Admissions Volunteer Should Know
Every tour guide has his or her own unique style for the tour, regardless of whether a university has a strict tour route or more relaxed tour requirements. Either way, there are a few ground rules that every tour guide should follow to give prospective students and their parents the best possible idea of what the school is all about.
Know the School
From the number of students to the names and functions of buildings, tour guides should be prepared to describe their school and answer questions about it. A school-specific guidebook for tour guides (if available), the course catalog, student handbook, website, and print materials from the admissions office are all great resources for learning a bit more than what the average student might know about the college or university.
Know the Audience
Make the effort to learn something about each of the students in the tour group. If it's possible, talk to the families before the tour starts. At the beginning of the tour, have each student give a little bit of background information by answering three simple questions:
- What's your name?
- Where are you from?
- What subjects/activities are you interested in?
The answers to these questions will help the guide tailor the tour to students' interests or find common ground. Making as simple a connection as being from the same state or having the same major as a roommate is enough to make a prospective student feel a bit more at ease at a school.
Provide Personal Anecdotes
This, more than anything else, is probably the most important component of the tour. Bombarding the tour group with facts makes for a boring campus tour. When planning out a tour route, think of a few experiences, be they funny or poignant, that fit in with the campus location or the subject at hand.
Hearing a story from a current student is a great way to help visitors remember the school; they will go home and say something like, "That's the school where the tour guide went sledding at midnight with his roommates," or, "The tour guide at (name of university) said she and her classmates went to a professor's house for dinner at the end of the semester."
Little details like that can make a big difference to high school students when choosing the right college for them.
Final Words of Advice
Tour guiding should be fun and non-stressful. Granted, there will occasionally be the obnoxious student or parent, or the opposite, a silent crowd. But overall, a sense of humor, a couple of fun or interesting anecdotes, and preparation for a particular group will make for a great tour, one that students and their families can remember after they've left campus and go home or to another school to continue the college search process.
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