Best and worst visits

Having done something like 400+ university visits/tours I thought it might be an idea to share some ideas of best and worst practices.  I will not name names of course!!

One visit in the early days of my touring stands out as not very good.  I was with a group of counsellors at the end of a reasonably long day and we spent approximately 8 hours (well it might have been less but it certainly felt like it!) in an overheated room, with no refreshments, sitting through endless presentations by faculty who were not the most exciting nor entertaining speakers and basically read us their PowerPoint slides.  I guarantee you there were at least half of my group that were having to force themselves to stay awake.  With a student group once we had such a poor tour guide that basically if you were not right at the front when they spoke you could not hear anything.  Not great when you have a group of 20+ teenagers!

On the other hand, I have had several visits which have been excellent!  A favourite of mine is a university in the Midlands who brought in a professor to give us a hugely entertaining and interactive presentation on his course which has the students fully engaged and talking about the visit long after we had left for the next one.  Interactivity is key, whether it is for students or counsellors.  Another great tour was one which had the students making their own t-shirts (branded of course) but it allowed the students to experience the hands-on nature of the courses at the university.  I cannot help but mention a particular university where we are often allowed into their simulator room to experience their Formula 1 or flight simulators, it is always hard to get the groups to move on from there!