Annoying People on College Tours

“The Huffington Post” has a good piece on the topic of annoying parents on college tours.

Ann Brenoff has a good piece up on “The Huffington Post” entitled “The 6 Most Annoying People You Will Meet On Every College Tour” that we just had to share with our readers. Her slugline? “After a while, all college tours seem the same. And these pesky people are always there.” Yeah they are. So who are Ann’s six archetypes of annoying college tour-goers? The wait is over.

“The parent who always needs to ask the first question.” Lots of parents have done their homework on the schools in advance of their visits and so these questions often come across as pre-recorded. Kind of like a Marco Rubio talking point in a presidential debate. Oh no we didn’t. “The know-it-all parent” is also ubiquitous on college tours. This parent asks about the specific traditions of the school. Maybe he or she went there. Or wanted to. Likely the latter. “The parent from another planet” is out there, too. This dad is admiring the flowers when the know-it-all parent is asking if the primal scream is still going strong at Northwestern.

There are typically annoying parents on every college tour. It’s a fact of life.

“The parent who humble brags throughout the tour.” Or maybe they aren’t even such humble brags. Let’s call it like it is. They’re brags. We know these parents well. Our tea pot is always singing when these parents call for free consults and we’ve got to jet. We don’t really drink all that much tea. But our regular readers understand our humor so we’ll move on. “The uninformed student tour guide” is also omnipresent. Lots of tour guides make things up. And don’t judge a school simply based on the tour guide. We’ve heard students say they don’t like Brown, for instance, because the tour guide seemed [expletive deleted]. But it’s not fair to base an impression of a school squarely on the shoulders of one student. Oh and lastly, there’s “the one student in this group who asks this question.” So which question is it? “What is the job placement/graduate school rate for your graduates six months out?” We feel for the other folks on the tour for sure!

Oh and if you’re wondering who the single most annoying person we’ve ever encountered on a college tour, wonder no longer. That would be…wait for it…the late soap opera star David Canary. While we respect his work on “All My Children” and we’re sure he had the best of intentions, on a tour of Tufts, he asked what it would take to donate a library. His son promptly pretended he didn’t know him. He was being so Adam by asking that question (and not Stuart). Does anybody get our joke? Bueller?