I went undercover on an NYU admissions tour

As a senior in high school, admissions tours seemed incredibly important, as if they were some sort of mystical portal into the next four years of my life. As it turned out, they were actually quite boring and uninformative, and the unnecessarily cheery tour guides made me squirm beneath my clothes. Beyond that, curiously enough, though I had been on tons of campus tours at other schools, I ended up going to a school I hadn’t toured: NYU.

That being said, I recently had the chance to go on one here, and having finally completed this important step in the life of any NYU student, I can assure everybody that NYU’s campus tour is as boring as those of any other school (can’t let them exceed us).

I checked in at the Welcome Center on West 4th and was given one of those purple admissions guest stickers. Then I was escorted to a dark room where 30 other people were seated. Our tour guide entered and introduced herself, before we watched a ten minute video about the NYU student experience. The video was pretty unremarkable, but it did talk about a wide variety of things available to do at NYU.

Then we were split up into groups of ten and taken to Kimmel where the tour guide discussed the kinds of classes available at the various schools and mentioned that Spike Lee is a professor here. Afterwards we were taken to Bobst’s lobby. I’m not really sure why we spent such a short time there (it was sort of awkward to be honest). Then we were taken to Weinstein where the tour guide discussed various residence options. The tour ended at Washington Mews, which I learned is apparently one of only three privately owned streets in Manhattan. Yeah, it was as boring as it sounds.

Overall, the tour was honestly really boring. The tour guide didn’t really saying anything scandalously inaccurate, but also didn’t really provide a very accurate description of what NYU is like. The tour felt like it could have been given at any other private university in the country and didn’t really do a good job of selling the school. Having said that, I managed to find my way here without the aid of a campus tour, and in the future others will do the same, so it shouldn’t be a big deal. (A more exciting campus tour would still be nice.)

There were still some really bad highlights which stood out.  The tour guide mentioned the fact that NYU students won’t be stuck in core classes with huge lectures. This sounded great but it probably would have been more believable had I not just come from my Texts and Ideas lecture which has more than 100 students.

They also told us how Godard is probably the best place to stay because of how convenient it is but we all know that crashing on a friend’s couch in a Stuy Town apartment is tons funner, and significantly cheaper—convenience be damned. (Also, I can’t help but feel that I’ve heard too many bad things about Godard for it to really be the best place to stay at NYU.) One thing I did learn is that there is an office that can help students get involved safely with protest movements around the city. Maybe I’ll find it sometime during my remaining two years here.