Temple held an open house on Sunday, allowing prospective students to see the campus, visit buildings and familiarize themselves with organizations on Main Campus.
Teenagers and their parents filled the Liacouras Center and lined the sidewalks in an effort to see all Temple has to offer, while the organizations tried their hardest to promote their agendas.
Several factors go into choosing the right college, but a visit to the campus is supposed to help potential students get an idea of what each university is about. Tour guides and student volunteers can tell people more about a school than any glossy brochure can.
However helpful they can be, open house volunteers are there to promote their causes and organizations in hopes of recruiting as many new students as possible. In a way, the tables in the Liacouras Center are set up for public relations purposes.
A new Web site offers an alternative to the tradition college tour . Launched in September, unigo.com features student reviews on 225 schools. High school seniors and their parents who want to know how students really feel can go to unigo.com to see the latest reviews.
Temple is one of the 225 colleges on the site.
Reviews on Temple’s Unigo page cover campus life, academics and the student body. Students can express their disappointments or give accolades to any of Main Campus’ aspects. One journalism student wrote there are “too many” bad things about Temple to list, though praised the active campus. Another student described Temple’s campus as “boring and ugly.”
Unigo.com offers a unique opportunity for prospective Temple students to get to know the university, but students’ reviews are not a solid enough base for choosing a college. If anything, the reviews show that college – no matter where you go – is what you make of it. What’s unattractive to one person might be just what another person is looking for in a school.
Though open houses may appear forced and rehearsed, volunteers at these events can provide facts about their schools that most students cannot. A student who had a bad experience with an organization may deter others from getting involved, but open houses allow teenagers and their families to see the factual side of things.
The best way to choose a college is to consider all aspects. Take a tour, walk around and talk to current students. A well-rounded visit makes for a well-rounded education.
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