Whether a future North Campus engineer or an aspiring South Campus artist, prospective students now have the chance to tour the entire Northwestern campus.
In past years, the prospective undergraduate tour route only covered the southern part of campus, while the northern side was shown from a spot outside Norris University Center, 1999 Campus Drive. Beginning in summer 2010, the Office of Undergraduate Admission changed the tour route to include both areas of campus. The new route walks along Sheridan Road and includes parts of the Technological Institute, 2145 Sheridan Road, and the science buildings northeast of Annenberg Hall.
“Contrary to popular belief, our campus is not that big,” said Caitlin Smith, assistant director of undergraduate admission. “And it seemed like it was something that was manageable and worth exploring because we wanted to give those prospective students whose classes would be primarily on North Campus a look at Tech and the other North Campus buildings.”
While adding North Campus to the tour means covering more ground, the admissions office has to keep the tours to just over an hour in length. This means that returning tour guides have to change what parts of campus they focus on, Smith said.
“It definitely is a little bit different,” said Communication junior Sean Brennan, an NU tour guide. “Now, instead of taking a spot outside of Norris and pointing out the buildings on North Campus, we let the people touring kind of live in the moment while in the buildings. It also encourages a lot more questions. Before, people were afraid of asking about North Campus because they hadn’t actually seen it.”
The Office of Undergraduate Admission has received good feedback on the new tour route from prospective students, with one student sending an e-mail thanking the office for the new tour, Smith said. Because of this response, the route will continue to include the entire campus throughout the year.
“My favorite part [of North Campus] was definitely seeing the lake,” prospective student Hayley Windbigler said. “Also, at Tech they let us look into a large classroom and compared it to a small classroom. I think that if we would have turned around just at Norris, we wouldn’t have had a good look at the real diversity of the campus.”
– [email protected], contributing writer
