The Future of the Campus Tour

Jul 31

High school students and transfers who visit a college campus are more likely to apply and enroll to that campus.

Pre-pandemic, most colleges offered multiple tours and information sessions Monday through Friday, and sometimes on Saturdays. Now, for those institutions currently with tours, the offerings are much smaller than before Covid-19 and are mostly outside. Yet, with a recent surge in Covid cases and fear associated with the Delta variant, the manner in which colleges showcase their campuses and programs might have to be temporarily scaled back or eliminated altogether - again. It’s like deja vu for those in college admissions.

Colleges are customizing their approach to campus tours and adjusting to changing times:

Holy Cross has tours every day, but each tour is limited to three potential students and their family members. Twenty people over all can be on a tour. Pre-registration is required and tours leave on the hour. This new format is compared to pre-pandemic norms with tours four times a day that formerly attracted up to 100 visitors per tour.

At the University of Rochester, officials decided to resume small, one-hour tours of the campus this summer. Masks are required. In what the university says is "an abundance of caution," Rochester is only taking reservations for the tours one month in advance -- in case conditions change.

Beginning in the summer of 2020, Baylor University offers private (one family only) in-person tours. In April and May, Baylor let two families visit at the same time. Recently, they are allowed 12 people to visit at a time. Even though fewer potential applicants visited Baylor in 2020 than 2019 because of the pandemic, the application rate among visitors rose and the rate of enrollment of visitors more than doubled. Campus tours are back even though they differ from pre-Covid times. They are smaller, and officials believe that's making them more personalized.

If there's a topic that worries admissions leaders today, it is the Delta variant, a highly contagious form of coronavirus that strikes widely among the unvaccinated but also affects some people who have been vaccinated. Colleges are meeting often to monitor Delta statistics and consider how and if they should respond.

Uniformly, almost all colleges now prompte expanded virtual tour options couples with virtual information sessions and regular chat rooms for curious applicants. Some institutions such as Washington University in St. Louis are also offering online interviews. Virtual engagement and events have become a big business as colleges scramble to dazzle increasing online audiences even though many universities resumed in-person events.