So many high school students are trying to find their perfect college—myself included. 

I went to the University of La Crosse’s tour very excited. In the mail, I received an agenda for the day. The agenda sounded organized and like it had something for everyone. There were expos for health, business, sports, etc. 

The first event was getting to know the campus and an overview of UWL. Overall it was good to get to know the prices, majors, and life on campus. This part of the tour was about an hour, but  I would suggest making the time shorter.  

The next event scheduled was the academic overview. During the academic overview, I chose to go to the health and business sections. During the health field overview, the professor covered almost all the different health fields and majors. He explained what they did, the pros, and the cons of each specific field. During the business section, the professor only talked briefly about the business fields. It was more clubs that they had on campus, which didn’t help me to figure out which business major was right for me. I did like how they brought in business major students to get their point of view, though. 

Next, I attended the Health Expo. When I walked in, it was packed with lines for each health field. It took a  long time to get all the different fields of information because they were doing one-on-one instead of group sessions like earlier. Additionally, a lot of the professionals at the booths didn’t explain the field. At the Physical Therapy booth, for example, I asked what majors I should take to become a PT or what majors or classes would help me in this field. They just told me it could be any major without any additional information. 

Next, Before the main campus tour, they gathered everyone in a huge conference room. The administrators brought out the Vanguards, our tour guides. This part of the day was the most helpful. Parents and students sent in questions and the Vanguards answered them in a large group setting. I enjoyed this part because you got a student perspective instead of an admissions person. They made it fun and interesting, while still answering the questions. 

Finally, in the afternoon, we got the campus tour. This is the part that everyone was waiting for. They split us up into small groups. Our assigned Vanguard would take us through some of the buildings and give us details about them and other areas of campus like the food hall, gym, field house, etc. This part was great because you could see all the new improvements to the college, and imagine if this college was right for you. My only complaint was that with about 5 kids and 2 parents per kid, everyone was trying to sneak in front of each other to be the front so you could hear more easily since she didn’t have a microphone. 

Overall it was a great experience to get a view of the college life at UW-La Crosse. Everyone was friendly and always willing to help if you had any questions. I would say they could go without some of the sections of the tour. So, I would recommend the student panel and the campus tour the most because those were the most informative and enjoyable compared to everything else.