With campuses closed, college tours move online
Virtual coffees with college students for high school juniors. Zoom sessions between applicants and admissions officers. Student guides offering welcoming messages in video selfies and scenic views of university campuses captured by drones.
This is what spring college tour season looks like across America, where universities are going to great lengths to show off lecture halls, green space, libraries and laboratories that have all been emptied out by the pandemic, albeit online.
“When you’re doing these college visits, you go and sit somewhere on campus with your mom and dad next to you and you watch the kids. You can hear the sounds and smell the smells. You can see yourself being there,” said Sunil Samuel, an admissions officer at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.
“We’re trying the best we can to deliver that virtually.”
Many universities closed their campuses in March, prime season for accepted high school seniors deciding where they will spend the next four years, as well as juniors deciding where to apply.
Carefully planned road trips with parents have been suddenly scrapped, leaving many students to wonder how they will experience campuses’ true vibes on the internet.
“I’ve lost that face-toface aspect,” said Caroline Lopez, a junior and a tennis player at Westridge School in Pasadena, Calif., who had been looking forward to meeting not just fellow students but potential teammates and coaches at universities she had planned to tour.
“Being physically there is helpful to understand whether it’s a good fit or not,” said Ms. Lopez, who wants to major in English or journalism.
Visiting a campus in person is especially useful for students who are the first in their families to apply to college, said Dominique Jordan Turner, chief executive of Chicago Scholars, a program that helps financially struggling and first-generation students pursue higher education. For them, feeling a sense of belonging on campus is everything, she said.
“Finding their people — that is the key to their success,” she said. “So how do you replicate that in a virtual space?”
Isaiah Finley, a junior at Shaker Heights High School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, had to cancel a planned spring break road trip with two friends to visit several colleges in New York City, where he wants to pursue a career in theater.
“I’m a person big on being in the moment — when you feel something in you from being in the environment,” Mr. Finley said.