Surviving the College Tour

By JAMES R. PETERSEN

THE young woman walking through the San Francisco airport was a classic California blonde - legs up to her ear lobes, a skirt the size of a headband with the letters S-T-A-N-F-O-R-D dancing across the buttocks. I looked from this fashion statement to my 16-year-old daughter, Sierra, and realized I was seeing the future.

In the next few days she would acquire similar attire and, if all went well, a new address. The college tour was upon us. A force of nature had us in its clutches as we wandered California like the annual migration of the wildebeests or, more aptly, the cliff dive of the lemmings.

Survivors of the experience had given me tons of advice. See for yourself if it helped.

TREAT THE EVENT AS VACATION
The whole family tagged along for this holiday, one that would ultimately cost far more than a week at Club Med. We began our tour at the Powell Street cable car in San Francisco. As we waited to board, a street musician warmed up the crowd. "How many Deadheads does it take to change a light bulb? None. They watch it burn out, then follow it around for 30 years."

I took this as an omen. I would not use the college tour as a pretext to wax nostalgic about my school years. For one thing, I am still under disciplinary probation at Trinity College in Hartford. (For taking over the administration building and briefly holding the trustees captive, the college has put a red flag on my student file that remains until I apologize.)

We wandered about Fisherman's Wharf, admiring the street performers, the silver-painted human statues, the rap artists. The "real world" is full of examples of what happens to people who don't go to college. One guy peered out at us from inside a sanitation can. He held up a sign that said "White Trash" and shouted warnings: "Stay in school. Don't turn out like me." I gave him a dollar.

STAY IN THE BACKGROUND
Parents are supposed to hang back and let their children ask the questions. My job was to keep notes that would let us sort through impressions at a later date. I tried to get the pulse of each place by reading the campus newspaper.

The picture on the front of the Berkeley paper showed three male students staging a vibrator race, sliding the bullet-shaped sex aids down a plywood incline. Students at the University of California, Santa Barbara, were encouraged to consider hooking up with neighbors. A student columnist wrote: "Just think, if the house next door throws a 'dress as your favorite anime character' theme party, you will have that much less distance to travel the next morning after the hookup, thus, much less sarcastic commentary from strangers you pass as you embark on the walk of shame home. Then again, if you are attending anime theme parties, you should be ashamed of yourself to begin with." (Note to parents: I'm told campus papers run such incendiary articles during the weeks scheduled for campus tours, that this is not typical college behavior. Note to students: Yes, it is.)

LEARN THE BRAGGING RIGHTS
In a single week we were given tours by a theater arts major who wanted to run away with Cirque de Soleil, a communications major who wanted to be a stand-up comedian and a political science-economics major who wanted a job, any job. All shared the ability to talk while walking backward.

Our guide at the University of California, Santa Cruz, an amiable aspiring actor who had studied Warrior Yoga, relayed the useful information that the school's mascot, the banana slug, had been celebrated in the pages of Sports Illustrated. Face it, the mascot is crucial. You will be looking at it on notebook covers, sweatshirts and alumni newsletters for the rest of your life.

The guide also bragged that the Santa Cruz campus was as big as 11 Disneylands. Over at Berkeley, the guide told us that the university had invented the particle accelerator and, more important, Tater Tots. (Well, not exactly, a university spokesman says, but at least the technology behind them - dehydrated mashed potatoes.) Stanford, we learned, had introduced to college football the concept of the helmet and the huddle. And Santa Barbara students, it seemed, had invented fire and, almost immediately thereafter, a novel way to recycle the contents of a keg party.

"Yeah, we have a reputation for setting fire to sofas and then putting out the fire by peeing on the flames," our guide said. Seeing the look on some parents' faces, she qualified her remarks: "It doesn't happen that often, but when it does, it's pretty funny."

JUDGE A CAMPUS BY ITS ESTEEM FOR INNOVATIVE THOUGHT
The Berkeley faculty has at one time or another included 18 Nobel winners. Banners with their pictures hang from utility poles on Telegraph Avenue, which may be the only place you will get to see them. On campus there are parking spaces reserved for Nobel laureate permit holders. Forget advancing knowledge or improving the fate of mankind. Come up with a history-changing breakthrough, and Berkeley gives you a spot to park your S.U.V. Now that's incentive. Stanford and the California Institute of Technology, on the other hand, tended to play down the prize, perhaps because so many incoming freshmen already have one.

CONSIDER ALTERNATIVE METHODS
There are cheaper ways to do this, said friends. Make use of the Internet. Videos. Catalogs. Watch the college-tour episode of "The Sopranos," in which Tony whacks a snitch while he's showing his daughter, Meadow, around campuses in New England.

As we strolled around Berkeley, Conor, my 12-year-old son, said, "I recognize this place."

A past life? "It's one of the levels on my Tony Hawk skateboard video game," he said. Sure enough. He pointed out a number of landmarks from the game that clearly were inspired by the Berkeley campus. Judging by the number of students on skateboards, it was as accurate a portrait of college life as any.

LOOK INSIDE A DORM
One collection of empty Red Bull cans looks the same as the next. At Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, a student had set up a sofa, desk and lamp in the courtyard outside his dorm. He may have been "sexiled," which, according to a guide to college slang that I had picked up, means "being forced to vacate your room so that a roommate can romp in private with a member of the opposite (or same) sex." Or maybe his financial aid package didn't stretch as far as a room. Whatever. He quietly read as students manning a nearby refreshment stand threw lemons against the side of the building.

EAT A MEAL ON CAMPUS
The guides rhapsodized about the diversity in food. Students could pig out on fare that included vegetarian, vegan, lactose-intolerant, low carb, no carb, low fat, kosher, ethnic. Strangely, it all resembled pizza. Caltech, at least, was honest. Our guide told us the residence halls don't bother serving breakfast because students aren't up at that hour.

IT'S YOUR CHILD'S LIFE, NOT YOURS
We had learned from other parents that nothing in the catalogs or college guides - that is, rational objective data - would determine your child's final choice. Children pick up on the intangibles. A friend's daughter chose her college after looking at the shoes students wore. My son was favorably impressed by the "awesome" sci-fi art lining the halls at Caltech. He also liked the pranks (rigging the scoreboard at the Rose Bowl to read "Caltech 60, M.I.T. 0" and reconfiguring the Hollywood sign to read Caltech).

There's a lot to be said about a place whose idea of a road trip is the Mars rover. My daughter was also impressed. She liked "the idea of smart people gathering and working to make themselves smarter."

It will be worth every penny.