Boston University’s Virtual Campus Tour was among the best in the country for the month of October, according to CampusTours, a website that lists virtual college tours of more than 850 colleges and universities. The online tour was awarded CampusTour’s Four-Star Award for the month.
‘In my perspective, in particular BU’s audio portion stood out. Students are drawn to presentations where it looks like a movie, rather than just pictures and texts,’ said Chris Carson, tour director of CampusTours. ‘It also uses the student’s perspective, making them think they are actually taking a tour.’
CampusTours chooses a different tour for the award each month based upon the decisions of a seven-person committee made up of students, admissions counselors and high school guidance counselors. The reviewers found BU’s site to be ‘a top-class engaging tour,’ and thought the freshman-senior comparison was ‘unique’ according to Carson.
‘One student looking at BU as a potential school brought it to our attention as a top tour,’ Carson said. ‘We found it to be a top tour as well.’
According to Carson, the purpose of the award is to ‘showcase those tours which go above and beyond, really compelling presentations that answer questions and communicate fields of studies.’
BU’s Virtual Tour is separated into two divisions, the Freshman Experience and the Senior Experience. The freshman tour focuses on the transition of college, while the senior part offers a look back at undergraduate life and a glimpse of future opportunities.
Both tours follow four students in their daily activities around the campus. Elements of video and audio are included in the tours to create a movie-like presentation, which Carson said he considers an important aspect.
Carson also said he believes a good virtual tour could have a potential impact upon alumni donations.
‘More and more universities are using these tours as fundraising tools,’ Carson said. ‘It gives alumni a chance to see how the university has changed and encourages gifts to particular funds or buildings.’
Director of Office of Admissions Kelly Walter said student interaction was an important element when developing the tour.
‘The words used are those of students. Nothing was scripted, it was real life,’ Walter said. ‘We wanted to make sure that when we built the website, you not only saw but you heard about what they were thinking, doing and who they were interacting with.’
The effort to build the tour, led by Senior Assistant Director of Communications Amy Marcott, was a year-and-a-half-long endeavor. The Office of Admissions researched other college websites, listened to student comments, and eventually brought in companies to present ideas to the department, according to Walter.
The Office of Admissions decided to work in collaboration with 1991 BU alumnus Michael Weiss’ company, Imagistic. The site launched in September, and Walter has been pleased with the site’s feedback thus far.
‘It’s clear that students are using our site; we had 66,955 [people visiting] the website for this October, compared to 47,118 last year in October,’ Walter said. ‘Still, in order to keep students coming back, we plan to constantly evolve, everything will be routinely changed. We can’t remain stagnant, students will lose interest and we want them to have a picture of Boston University that is constantly changing and evolving.’
However, many current freshmen are divided on whether virtual tours are helpful in the college search.
‘Some tours were incredibly corny. The quotes that different tours used from the guides were goofy,’ College of Arts and Sciences freshman Beth Foughty said. ‘I made my decision based on the real tour. Being able to see the insides of buildings and ask questions made the difference.’
On the other hand, School of Engineering freshman John Donnelly said he thought having the possibility to skip a trip to the school was beneficial.
‘Virtual tours show you the campus without actually having to go there,’ Donnelly said. ‘I saw certain things about the campus and put it all together.’