Helping Campus Visitors Feel Connected

Of all the experiences I’ve had in three decades of working in the admission counseling profession, visiting colleges is my favorite. I was in peak visit mode during my nine years as a college counselor, and I’ve continued to look for any excuse possible to stroll through a campus since leaving the high school setting.

As it turns out, parenthood is the best excuse of all.

My wife and I recently spent a week touring colleges with our younger son, a high school junior. I need to acknowledge up front that I’m keenly aware of the privilege that allows us to make such a trip. That’s the jarring reality that hits when you work for an organization whose mission is centered on equity and access. It’s also why the innovative ways colleges found to connect virtually with students over the past two years need to continue even as in-person visits resume.

That ability to make connections, whether in person or remotely, is critical. It sets the tone, it maintains interest and it closes the deal. Here are some of the ways the colleges we visited and the tour guides we met tried to connect and how their approaches worked—or, in some cases, didn’t.

Helpful directions. The visit experience begins before a family even sets foot on campus. The confirmation emails my son received were a mixed bag. All of them did a fine job of outlining when we needed to arrive and where we needed to go. But finding parking and then getting from the lot to the visitor’s center? That’s where things got dicey.

The best arrival experience came from a college that emailed precise instructions—complete with photos—about where to enter the garage and then put up directional signs at every exit. We followed those signs like bread crumbs right to the check-in desk.

On the opposite end of the spectrum was the college that directed us to a vast and muddled expanse of faculty, staff, student and visitor parking, which, depending on the spot we found, may or may not have been close to where we needed to go. The greeting for visitors might as well have been “Welcome—and good luck!”

A sense of place. All the colleges we visited were on the larger side, in terms of both student population and campus acreage. Personally, I find that any unfamiliar space tends to feel larger than it is until I get a handle on how things fit together. That’s why my family and I found the approach of two colleges especially appealing.

At the first one, the tour began at a visitors’ center that, on our arrival, felt like it was in the campus hinterlands. That we needed to take a bus to get to the starting point of the walking tour simply reinforced this impression. The tour was preceded by an information session which very smartly ended with a huge campus map. “Before we set out,” the admission officer said, “we want to show you where you’ll be going.” Up on the map popped a little animated bus icon, and he used it to trace our tour route, explaining what we’d be seeing and passing along the way. The strategy was ingenious and instantly made a very big campus feel quite manageable.

On the other campus, our first tour stop overlooked a grassy expanse that sloped down toward the library. Our guide explained that the campus was set up like a series of concentric rings: library in the middle, academic buildings around it, residential and student service buildings around those, and athletic facilities flanking them all. We couldn’t immediately see everything from our perch, but as we made our way around the campus, we knew almost instinctively how all the spaces related to one another.

Personal conversations. Forget the culture wars—the most polarizing issue on a college campus is whether tour guides should walk backward. There is no middle ground. Period.

I don’t particularly care what direction my tour guide faces as long as I can hear what they are saying—but here’s something we had never experienced before. On two of our tours, our front-facing guides started off by explicitly stating that they would not be walking backward because it limits whom they get to talk to. Instead, they planned to use the time in between tour stops to converse individually with as many prospective students as possible. And they did, linking up with a different student after each stop, introducing themselves and asking about their interests and their questions. It was a simple gesture that proved unexpectedly personal and effective in a large group.

Storytelling. Years ago, when I was an admission officer, I had a standard shtick in my presentation repertoire. I’d say, “If you’ve visited any colleges already, you’ve probably learned two things. The first is that we all like to tell you how unique we are. The second is that we’re all unique in the same way.”

The line wasn’t especially funny, as the polite and weary parental laughter reminded me each time. But it was true. Nearly three decades later, it still is: colleges can struggle to distinguish themselves from one another.

Students are a powerful antidote to this homogeneity. Their stories are rich, their personalities vibrant and their experiences diverse. When guides lean in to these stories, campuses come alive.

One guide shared that he failed his first calculus exam and used it as motivation to take advantage of his professor’s office hours. He got an A in the class. A sportsphobic guide recruited some friends to be the unofficial cheerleaders for their dorm’s intramural contests, uniforms and all, so they could be part of the fun and the community-building experience. A third guide explained how he felt left out after missing all of first-year orientation due to a family wedding until a random guy down the hall came into his room, plopped in a chair and started talking. That random guy is now one of his best friends.

The goal of any campus visit experience, whether it’s in person or virtual, is to help prospective students answer a single question: “Can I see myself here?” The key to answering that question will lie in how connected they feel. Colleges can lay the groundwork with clear previsit communications, a welcoming arrival experience and a tour program that invites personal stories and one-on-one interactions. On our tours, when our son felt connected as a visitor, he easily believed he would feel connected as a student.

So did his parents.