The Commons

“We’re walking, we’re walking…”:  Anyone who has been through the rigors of a multi-college campus tour knows that Bonnie Hunt must have modeled her character in the movie Dave by shadowing a college campus tour guide. The backwards-walking, über-perky tour guide that can rattle off anecdotes that date to the 1800s has reached the level of cliché in pop culture. Only recently have there been signs that colleges are finally ready to remake the campus tour so that a very important communication channel (our research shows it is #1 among information influences ranked by high-achieving seniors) is no longer relegated to joke status.

We decided to do a little reconnaissance of our own to uncover how institutions can improve their tours.

We interviewed a campus tour guide from a prominent, top-ranked public university and uncovered that the cliché is alive and well. Our insider crafted the following top ten ideas to improve  a university’s tour-guiding game:

1.    Be consistent with the institution’s brand or help defy stereotypes
2.    Remember what students care about
3.    Make it interactive
4.    Keep it punchy
5.    Save the cheese for the dining halls
6.    Tailor the tour
7.    Tell stories
8.    … but don’t narrate novels
9.    Prompt questions
10.  Be honest

Check out the full interview.

Tags: admissions, campus tour, higher education, interactive, nonprofit communications, trends, yield