When the temperature in Evanston finally reached 50 degrees, Northwestern tour guide Shelby Walchuk only had one complaint about swapping her boots for flip flops – it was a lot harder to walk backwards.
Walchuk and about 95 other student tour guides have been a lot busier since the start of Spring Quarter, when the number and size of tours increase. With warm weather and admissions decisions looming for accepted students, up to 200 prospective students and parents can shuffle through a campus tour each day from Monday through Saturday.
Beginning in April, the Office of Undergraduate Admission offers two scheduled campus tours each day with about six tour guides for each time slot. In the winter, only one tour leaves each day with one or two guides, said Josiah Jenkins, assistant director of admissions.
“Certainly in the winter, tour groups get considerably smaller as people avoid the bad weather and aren’t as serious about looking at college,” said Jenkins, Weinberg ’07 and a former Daily columnist. “Tours are larger in the spring when the weather is nicer.”
While about 95 tour guides lead approximately one tour per week, Communication sophomore Rucha Mehta gave three tours last week.
“April’s always really busy,” she said.
Tours leave from the Office of Undergraduate Admission, located at 1801 Hinman Ave., and loop around south campus. In the 75-minute tour, student guides take groups of up to 20 people past The Arch, The Rock, the University Library and the Lakefill.
Each tour guide shares the same factual information on NU history, academics and student life during the tour, but the personal anecdotes of each guide help bring to life what it means to be an NU student, said Jenkins, a former tour guide.
“We try to give an informal experience, and all tour guides are encouraged to make lots of really horrible jokes,” he said.
In the spring, Walchuk said she always asks her tour groups to count how many times she loses her flip flops and to help her avoid running into flower pots outside of Norris University Center.
“(Tour guides) walk backwards and talk forwards,” the Weinberg junior said. “My sandals fall off all the time.”
Selected from each of NU’s six schools, tour guides are paid $15 per tour and are not part of the work-study program. With a large number of applicants, becoming a tour guide is a highly competitive process, Jenkins said.
“In general it’s been harder to become a tour guide by hiring percentages than to gain admission to Northwestern itself,” he said.
As part of the interview process, applicants draw a question out of a “Cup of Death,” which contains tricky questions a tour guide may receive during a tour.
As a tour guide, “you get off-the-wall questions and you have to be prepared for whatever people are going to ask you,” Walchuk said.
Walchuk said she once argued about past NU traditions that no longer exist with an alumnus who came on a tour with his son.
But the occasional lost shoe or tricky question is worth it, Walchuk said, especially when she sometimes sees students around campus that were on her tours, she said.
“To see that they’re here makes us feel all the much better about what we do,” Walchuk said.
