For many colleges and universities, admissions office space seems almost an afterthought. Too often, the office entrances are difficult to find and once found, the admissions area is hardly one of the highlights of the college tour. I’ve seen admissions officers attempt to prevent parents and students from seeing their offices by arranging meetings in open spaces on campus, or at a library or student center.

Your admissions area is your first impression, and as the old saying goes, you only have one opportunity to make a good first impression.

Let me address this question from my perspective as a student and a recent college-admissions-office-visitor. First and foremost, the admissions office is not the first impression someone has of a school when visiting. Not precisely, at least. Parents don't blindfold their kids, drive them in erratic randomized patterns, and then lead them up to the admissions office only to then 'unveil' the first impression of the entire school. There is the journey to the admissions office first, and even that little step can have a significant impact. How so?

Although I knew that there were realistic constraints for space, sometimes the positioning of an admissions office alone would seem to send a message to me. Take, for example, the University of Pennsylvania admissions office: it is very convenient and easy to find because of how central it is to campus (1 College Hall, ground floor). To get there we walked through especially nice portions of the campus and a vibrant part of Philadelphia; that was the first impression of the school. My memories of the admissions office itself are not especially great because my preoccupation at the time was coping with the 105+ degree heat wave.

The real distinction between admissions offices first and foremost is SERVICE. Yes, it was a painful heat wave at Penn and that wasn't their fault. The day before, though, the temperatures were almost as bad and I had visited both Yale and Wesleyan with my family. The biggest difference, where tour and admissions office experience was concerned (schools aside)? Wesleyan offered free bottles of water. It was also, hands down, the nicest, most accommodating, and most convincing of anywhere I visited, but that's another story. The water was part of that. I know it's not in the budgets for Penn and Yale to offer water to all the people who come and visit--they had rather bigger crowds--but those are some of the differences that we take away from tours. The little details that count.

Wesleyan-Yale isn't a very fair comparison, as I've said. So let me use another situation with slightly more even odds: Harvard vs. MIT.

I visited MIT on March 14th, 2006--it was the first school I visited. I remember the date because it was Pi Day! Anyway, I visited MIT with my friend Greta and we got slightly lost in the infinite corridor and on campus looking around for the admissions office because MIT buildings are all designated by numbers are we weren't paying that much attention since it was our spring break. Something like that. We found the office in the end and it was a messy place inhospitable to visitors--we were sent elsewhere for our tour and info talk. It felt like the reception / office ratio was off. All the same, we had a good time at MIT (read the visit report).

Compare with Harvard: we wandered over to Radcliffe yard and found the admissions office after some searching, but given Harvard's visitor volume what happened next was unfortunate. We were sent from a messy office environment to what looked like a semi-dilapidated basement auditorium where we were told about how selective Harvard was before being sent out on the worst college tour in my complete touring experience.

There were many similarities in presentation and aesthetic experience, but when I ask Greta or think myself about the MIT visit we don't think about how the office was messy. We just think about how exciting the UROP program sounded and how friendly everyone was. The aesthetic details only come into play over at Harvard when we start trying to look for something to redeem the experience.

Are aesthetics important? Sure. But they're not the most important part of the experience or 'first impression,' at least not in my mind, and it's important to remember that. I didn't see any places that were installing gold leaf in the admissions offices while cutting back on staff, but I just thought I'd share my thoughts on this all the same.

For the record, Johns Hopkins gave out free water bottles a few days later when it was equally hot.

Personally, I feel that guides like Fiske need to acknowledge the tour's importance and realize that all tour guides are not created equal. If they provided a ranking of a school's average tour quality, students would know whether or not to feel short thrifted by their tour experience. This could be done quite simply, using only one criterion: The guide's ability to walk backwards. Admission officers, listen up: This is the #1 most important "pull" that a school can exert on a student. That's right. So make sure those guides can walk backwards with confidence and authority.

Tour Guides at University Master Diplomacy and Deal with Reality
By KATE STONE LOMBARDI
July 5, 2006

[...] despite all the money that colleges and universities spend on brochures, Web sites and other marketing efforts, high school students and their parents often base their impressions of an institution on the young man or woman who has led them around campus for 45 minutes.

"We know that the campus tour has the biggest impact on whether a student decides to apply to Tufts or not," said Kerrin Damon, its assistant director of admissions.

Ms. Damon said the university had done surveys, querying those who enroll and those who do not, as well as students who visited Tufts and decided not to apply. Historically, the campus tour, which is given all year but draws heavily throughout the summer, is cited as the biggest influence on students' decisions, she said. [...]

So while Colleges and Universities are hopefully putting their best feet forward (or, backwards, as the case may be) to ensure a fine touring experience, I would still caution fellow students to think twice before becoming 100% prejudiced against a school by virtue of a bad tour experience. A sample n of 1 is not representative of the student body! Likewise, if you have a perfect tour, don't sign the Early Decision form right then. More applications means more rejections means more prestige, so colleges will be training their tour guides to be as appealing as possible. The article I just linked in fact describes the tremendous lengths colleges go to to groom their tour guides. Sometimes at the expense of full disclosure or complete honesty.

Then again, what did Oscar Wilde say? "It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances."

Always do your research!

[tags]College Admissions, College, college tours, tour guide, walking backwards, university, Fiske[/tags]