So we give tours to approximately 41,000 people
every year.
Our busiest months are months of July and August,
during which a lot of families are visiting colleges
with prospective students.
In fact, over 90% of our visitors
are prospective students of MIT and their families.
And.
In this sense, the tours for a lot of people
are, if not their first impression of MIT,
one of their only impressions of MIT.
So even if these students do go on
to get admitted and become students here,
it's oftentimes their introduction to the school
and what it means to be an MIT student.
And what it means to go to school here.
And gives an idea as to how important
the tours are for forming people's outward impressions
of the school.
And also in terms of correcting the popular misconceptions
and such that MIT is often labeled with.
So, for example, when I was looking at MIT as a school,
I pictured it as a place where people
did science and engineering all the time
and no one really had any fun or even smiled.
And really nothing could be farther from the truth.
So, in my tours, I really like to show people
the MIT sense of humor and also to talk a lot about student
life and show that there's much more to MIT
than just academics.
So tour guides are a self-selected group of people.
We don't actually advertise for tour guides.
Pretty much all of our guides became part of our group
by word of mouth from other tour guides.
We have people from all different departments,
all different majors, people who do
all sorts of different kinds of activities outside of class.
And what's cool is that everyone who
does everything is incredibly passionate about it.
And one role that we have as tour guides
is to share our passions with prospective students.
So I talk a lot about my experience
on the wrestling team and about how that's really
been such a great thing for me to do,
in addition to my academics and help balance that out.
But my fellow tour guides will talk about theater,
they'll talk about arts, they'll talk about music.
And I think that's one thing that's
so great about having such a diverse set of tour guides,
that we really represent all the different range of interests
that students have across the Institute.
So we can really give people a well-rounded perspective.
Right now, we are standing in Lobby 7.
This is actually where a lot of our tours depart.
So this is actually one of my favorite places at MIT.
And it's a place that I really actually love
talking to people about when I give my tours.
This is also normally where I talk about the history of MIT.
Because this is where the replica of the MIT seal is.
And also, this is where the information office is.
So a lot of our tours will definitely stop through here.
And I think this provides a very good starting point
for a lot of tours.
It provides a good way of dividing the campus
into two sides.
One side that's very residential and the other side that's
completely academic.
All right, so if you want to head this way,
the next stop on our tour is going to be Killian Court.
So this is actually another one of my favorite places at MIT.
And if you've ever been on MIT's website
or if you've ever seen a postcard of MIT,
you've probably seen this shot.
So one of my favorite parts of the tour
is the ability to tell a few stories about MIT's history,
whether they be about our campus itself, or some
of our famous hacks, or things like that.
I think it adds another dimension to the tour,
and really gets the group involved with the tour itself.
And it's not like you're just pointing out landmarks
and giving out random trivia.
You're involving them in a little piece of the MIT
experience.
So now we're going to go ahead and talk about athletics.
This building right next to me over here
is the Z Center, MIT's main athletic facilities.
We actually have 33 different varsity sports,
which is the most out of any division 3
institution in the country.
And we have everything from field hockey and football
to water polo and fencing.
A lot of people think that MIT is nerdy.
Or that everybody just studies all the time
and doesn't do anything else.
And it's really great when I can give a tour to somebody,
and I can watch them change as I'm talking to them.
I watch their self-confidence rise
as I tell them what I looked like when I was in high school.
And I really think that one of the best parts about being
a tour guide is that you really get to change
the way people see MIT.
The one thing that's cool about being a tour guide
is every single tour you give, you're
going to be with a different group of people.
And so you really get a sense of the number of people
who are interested in MIT.
We can literally have 300 students signed up for one tour
and we'll fill up the entire main lobby of MIT.
And we'll have 15 different tour guides there
and we'll have to divide up all the groups of people
into different ones and organize it.
And it can be a little bit of a logistics challenge.
So it's kind of fun, and it really
does give you a sense of MIT's place in the world.
And just how lucky we are to be here.