Virtual Campus Tours
Virtual campus tours serve multiple purposes. They maximize campus enrollment by marketing to a larger audience. They increase diversity by reaching a wider audience. They help to reduce travel costs associated with campus visits. Virtual tours increase campus familiarity by helping students become accustomed to the campus before arrival. It is a good opportunity for the school to highlight their geographic and architectural features as well. Overall, virtual tours help to simplify the enrollment process by giving students and recruiters the chance to meet “face-to-face” and to talk about what to expect during the admissions and enrollment process.
YOUniversityTV allows you to search not only by the name of the college, but also by varying criteria such at tuition cost, region, state, or size. This allows a more general search for students who haven't yet narrowed down their college search. When you view a college, the website gives the basic statistics for that college and then links to the video tours they offer on the website.
YouVisit offers detailed virtual tours with a narrator to create the feeling of being on an onsite campus tour.
CampusTours builds video tours, photorealistic interactive campus maps, mobile walking tours and custom data-driven multimedia applications for education, non-profit and government clients worldwide. This site contains thousands of virtual campus tours and interactive campus maps.
eCampusTours offers virtual tours of over 1,300 universities and helps students and parents search for colleges from the comfort of their homes.
CollegeNiche provides rankings, reviews, and statistics on K-12 schools, colleges, and universities. They also provide virtual campus tours for select colleges and universities.
Tips for Campus Tours
"YouVisit perhaps has the best “virtual tour” where you get a real feel for the campus, but we think the students will be more interested in YOUniversityTV"- Mr. A
The team at FreeCollegeAdvice decided to conduct research using some of these virtual tours and this is what we found:
We began with CampusTours.com. We are very disappointed with the content on this site as it does not appear to be a virtual tour, but rather a few student interviews caught on video. The website offers these interviews under the title “tour”, and has a number of other links, including a webcam where you can see what’s happening through a live feed on various parts of the campus. There is a video link to YouTube, but this is quite inconvenient as many of students require a VPN to access these videos. When we do turn on the VPN, the YouTube video channel is a collection of random videos that take place on campus, with none of them being an actual tour. Additionally, there is a link to the school’s main website and a map of how to get there.
On YouVisit.com, the school we are looking for, Boston College, is not even listed! We decided to conduct the tour of Boston University instead, just to get a feel for the campus. Boston University's tour has not been built yet, so we look at Harvard. The tour is not actually what we thought a virtual tour would be, but rather a stream of pictures with a narrator. The information is quite informative and students may get a good feel of the school through the tours of the universities that are available. There are 360 degree panoramas of the main buildings and also a collection of still photos. The video section is a collection of videos of events on campus. Overall, we think the site is well put together, but definitely not what we had in mind.
YOUniversityTV.com has an incredible promotional video for Boston College, the school we choose to use as the constant in our research. The site is exciting, informative, and well constructed. The visitor is introduced to the campus environment, to some of the professors, to an Admissions Officer, and to a number of students. It is full of fun and interesting facts that tell you what you want to know about the campus and student life. You can see what the campus dorms and apartments are like. You can learn about famous alumni and campus events. Overall, we think that you will really enjoy these types of videos (although they not virtual tours, per se).
Lastly, researched for Boston College (BC) on CollegeClickTV. There are a total of 47 videos associated with BC on this site. Most of the videos are interviews with staff and students and a majority of the content seems to be predominantly student generated. The videos cover a variety of topics, but not one video is an actual campus tour. The site looks more like short "meet-and-greets" with current students who tell the viewer their opinion about BC.
Overall, each one of the sites has something unique to offer (that is, if the school you are looking for is actually featured). YouVisit perhaps has the best “virtual tour” where you get a real feel for the campus, but we think the students will be more interested in YOUniversityTV due to its engaging and fast-paced content delivery.
Stay tuned for our review of eCampusTours.com
YOUniversityTV allows you to search not only by the name of the college, but also by varying criteria such at tuition cost, region, state, or size. This allows a more general search for students who haven't yet narrowed down their college search. When you view a college, the website gives the basic statistics for that college and then links to the video tours they offer on the website.
YouVisit offers detailed virtual tours with a narrator to create the feeling of being on an onsite campus tour.
CampusTours builds video tours, photorealistic interactive campus maps, mobile walking tours and custom data-driven multimedia applications for education, non-profit and government clients worldwide. This site contains thousands of virtual campus tours and interactive campus maps.
eCampusTours offers virtual tours of over 1,300 universities and helps students and parents search for colleges from the comfort of their homes.
CollegeNiche provides rankings, reviews, and statistics on K-12 schools, colleges, and universities. They also provide virtual campus tours for select colleges and universities.
Tips for Campus Tours
"YouVisit perhaps has the best “virtual tour” where you get a real feel for the campus, but we think the students will be more interested in YOUniversityTV"- Mr. A
The team at FreeCollegeAdvice decided to conduct research using some of these virtual tours and this is what we found:
We began with CampusTours.com. We are very disappointed with the content on this site as it does not appear to be a virtual tour, but rather a few student interviews caught on video. The website offers these interviews under the title “tour”, and has a number of other links, including a webcam where you can see what’s happening through a live feed on various parts of the campus. There is a video link to YouTube, but this is quite inconvenient as many of students require a VPN to access these videos. When we do turn on the VPN, the YouTube video channel is a collection of random videos that take place on campus, with none of them being an actual tour. Additionally, there is a link to the school’s main website and a map of how to get there.
On YouVisit.com, the school we are looking for, Boston College, is not even listed! We decided to conduct the tour of Boston University instead, just to get a feel for the campus. Boston University's tour has not been built yet, so we look at Harvard. The tour is not actually what we thought a virtual tour would be, but rather a stream of pictures with a narrator. The information is quite informative and students may get a good feel of the school through the tours of the universities that are available. There are 360 degree panoramas of the main buildings and also a collection of still photos. The video section is a collection of videos of events on campus. Overall, we think the site is well put together, but definitely not what we had in mind.
YOUniversityTV.com has an incredible promotional video for Boston College, the school we choose to use as the constant in our research. The site is exciting, informative, and well constructed. The visitor is introduced to the campus environment, to some of the professors, to an Admissions Officer, and to a number of students. It is full of fun and interesting facts that tell you what you want to know about the campus and student life. You can see what the campus dorms and apartments are like. You can learn about famous alumni and campus events. Overall, we think that you will really enjoy these types of videos (although they not virtual tours, per se).
Lastly, researched for Boston College (BC) on CollegeClickTV. There are a total of 47 videos associated with BC on this site. Most of the videos are interviews with staff and students and a majority of the content seems to be predominantly student generated. The videos cover a variety of topics, but not one video is an actual campus tour. The site looks more like short "meet-and-greets" with current students who tell the viewer their opinion about BC.
Overall, each one of the sites has something unique to offer (that is, if the school you are looking for is actually featured). YouVisit perhaps has the best “virtual tour” where you get a real feel for the campus, but we think the students will be more interested in YOUniversityTV due to its engaging and fast-paced content delivery.
Stay tuned for our review of eCampusTours.com