Special Visit Day

Now that you know the essence of the BIG visit, time to fill you in on the SPECIAL visit. Special visits are still bigger than most weekends. The difference between them and the BIG visit is that the SPECIAL visit is geared toward a select group. In this case, the select group were high-ability students at schools across the state. That's why this specific special visit is called Scholar's Day.

Scholar's Day is truly a sight to see and probably OU Undergraduate Admissions at its finest when it comes to recruiting. First off, when the students come in, they come into the beautiful Baker Ballroom. It is quite the setting, with round tables with white tablecloths, making for an intimate setting. Like the big visit, it begins with a short speech from President Roderick McDavis. Once he's gotten the crowd excited and interested, it's time for the Dean of the Honors Tutorial College to explain how great the college is and the many awards the students within the college have garnered. After a brief video chronicling great professors and students, they show "The Promise" spots. And then, yours truly and one other student give a quick 2-3 minute speech about how we were able to discover our promise at Ohio University.

The day only gets better because after an information session with admissions and then an appropriate academic college, it's lunchtime and let me tell you, this is the best food OU can offer. Ham and turkey croissants, potato salad, potato chips, iced tea and to top it all off, ho-ho cake. Now on big visits, there are too many families to feed them all. But for these special visits, especially something as important as Scholar's Day, anything you can do to impress them to get them to choose OU is worth the extra money.

Once lunch is finished, it's time for a question and answer session with a panel featuring students and staff members representing everything from financial aid to the Global Learning Community. The Q+A is very productive as the students and parents ask very good questions. After the Q+A, it's time for...you guessed it, a tour of the campus. With the limited amount of students, the great thing is that instead of groups of 25-30 people during a big visit, the groups are around 10-15, making the groups more intimate and allowing for a more personalized tour. In the end, the evaluations look good and the day goes well. Now the hope is that ALL of them choose OU.

So that's it...the end of the Fall Quarter tour guide events. Through this blog, you have truly received the tour guide experience. There are ups and downs as you can see by the stories. It is a physically and mentally challenging job as seen by the tour guide route and amount of families that come through. You've also gotten a feel for how admissions runs big visits and special visits. Hopefully now, you can see all the hard work done by the Tour Guides and the Office of Undergraduate Admissions. So the next time you see that OU has a bigger incoming freshman class with better grades and test scores, just remember all the hard work and hours spent by the tour guides and the Office of Undergraduate Admissions that makes it all happen.