ANDREA PARK
Gargoyle assistant editor
Posted Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Opinions

ALTHOUGH I'M A junior, I've been acquainted with the college process since freshman year because of my older brother, Justin, who is now a freshman in college. I've seen and experienced it all: the stress of standardized testing, the never-ending flow of essays to write, and the so-called “helpful” college visits.

In fact, the summer before sophomore year, I had already been on the East Coast liberal arts college tour. The Park family went on a whirlwind tour of Vassar, Haverford, Swarthmore, Wesleyan, Amherst, Williams, and Dartmouth.

Perhaps I didn't go on this oh-so-fun “family vacation” voluntarily, but I did learn something about visiting college campuses. College tours don't really help you find the college that perfectly fits you.

The problem is that after listening to the peppy tour guide's spiel and walking around the Eden-like campuses, you want to go to all of the colleges. They all sound like fabulous and perfect places where you can “see” yourself spending the next four years.

However, the obvious truth is that not every single college is the perfect fit.

If the point of going on a campus visit is to examine the perks and flaws of that particular college, then you might as well not go on the college tours. The people who organize the tours pick unique, likeable students to lead the tours, and the student guides only focus on the positive things about their school.

At Wesleyan, a bubbly, pink-pilgrim skirt-wearing, pigtail-braided, and Coke-bottle glass-wearing girl jumped around enthusiastically emphasizing the different cafeterias' menus.

“Thursday night is sushi night, so you definitely want to come eat here,” she smartly advised.

She was the type of girl you would want to hang out with — funny, quirky, and refreshingly cute. After listening to her, Wesleyan seemed like the perfect college.

But then there was Williams. The over 6-foot-tall, skinny Texan tour guide was a bit awkward but ridiculously adorable. He was majoring in African studies and told us about the cool traditional dances he was learning and performing.

“And this place reminds me of Hogwarts,” he said while leading us into one of Williams' chapels. “I don't know why I said that …”

Williams also seemed like the perfect college.

The same thing happened at all of the colleges. The hot Italian tour guide at Haverford, the ditsy, nice sorority girl at Dartmouth, the art-loving, library-going girl at Vassar, the intellectual guy at Amherst, and the giggly duo at Swarthmore all convinced me that their school was perfect.

Now that my time has come to do “official” school visits, I am hesitant to sign up for that seemingly mandatory college-campus tour. I know that instead of helping me narrow down the list of colleges I want to apply to, the list will exponentially expand.

I see this as a flaw in the applicant-recruiting system. College tours don't actually help future applicants decide if they want to spend the next four years at that school. It is just as important to know about the negative aspects of a college as it is to know the positive. Especially if you are touring a college campus that you are already interested in, tours will only convince you further that this is your “dream school.”

So let's say you do apply to all of those wonderful schools that you visited over spring break. Being the bright, unique individual you are, you are accepted to a couple, if not a few, of them. You then give your little “Yes I Would Love to Spend the Next Four Years of My Life at Your School” reply, and pack up and ship out the following fall.

But then you get there, and it's not all it's cracked up to be. You find that a majority of the kids are snobs, the professors are distant, the dorms are practically dungeons, and the food sucks! What are you to do? Not only do you have to worry about having to possibly go through the whole admission process again, you have to deal with the disappointment of a dream turned nightmare.

This is not just a whiney complaint about something that you may think is trivial, it is also a warning to all of my peers who will spend their lovely spring breaks touring campuses. Pretty much every single college will seem like a wonderful, cool place. However, be aware that not every single school is a perfect fit.

So how do we juniors weed out the perfect from the not-so-perfect? How do we know, when applying to that dream school, that it is everything it's cracked up to be? I don't know the best answer, but I would definitely recommend staying away from those seductive college tours.

Note: An earlier version of this column appeared in the Gargoyle staff blog.

RELATED: IF YOU JUST CAN'T RESIST THOSE COLLEGE TOURS …

— College Board: Scheduling college visits

— College Board: Preparing for college visits