Sam Jackson asks this interesting question on his blog, and he makes a great point. It’s not necessarily about the appearance of the office, but about the service. His thought:
Yes, it was a painful heat wave at Penn and that wasn’t their fault. The day before, though, the temperatures were almost as bad and I had visited both Yale and Wesleyan with my family. The biggest difference, where tour and admissions office experience was concerned (schools aside)? Wesleyan offered free bottles of water. It was also, hands down, the nicest, most accommodating, and most convincing of anywhere I visited, but that’s another story. The water was part of that. I know it’s not in the budgets for Penn and Yale to offer water to all the people who come and visit–they had rather bigger crowds–but those are some of the differences that we take away from tours. The little details that count.
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Are aesthetics important? Sure. But they’re not the most important part of the experience or ‘first impression,’ at least not in my mind, and it’s important to remember that. I didn’t see any places that were installing gold leaf in the admissions offices while cutting back on staff.
Interesting, no? Think back to your experience when you were looking at colleges. What do you remember? How the admissions office looked, or how your tour guide was? What was on the walls, or how wonderful your admissions counselor was? I’m not saying that having a nice, welcoming area is unimportant — heck, it’s very important, which is why we’re hoping to redesign our entire office — but there’s so much more to it than just looks.