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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We had the same experience at UVA in February. The two female tour guides explicitly said they were unpaid and would accept tips. They also said that their tours were unvetted and unreviewed by the admissions office. The tour guides had lukewarm feelings about UVA, which made us wonder why they were tour guides. We didn’t see anyone from our large tour offer tips to the guides, although maybe we just didn’t see it happen. [/quote]

I am the second poster who had our guide ask for tips.  Also, I mentioned I have done two UVA tours - one five years ago with my oldest DS and the one just a few weeks ago with my youngest.  I had visited UVA several times as a tourist and really wanted to love UVA.  The tour guide we had five years ago had me walking away hating UVA.  He complained about the food, the dorms, the size of his classes.  He didn't like ANYTHING about the school.  The woman who did our tour earlier this month was much more positive about the school.  She did complain about the food when directly asked.  But overall, she was very positive.  The only negative part of the tour was the soliciting for tips.

And yes, she was an official guide.  The school had a large tent setup right outside of the admissions office.  We went during FCPS' spring break - there was a huge crowd of people in the tent and we checked in with two people who had laptops making sure we were registered.  We were given a group number and about every 5 minutes, a large group was called to start their tour.

The guides at UVA did not wear UVA garb or any type of identification so you couldn't tell who was a guide.  We toured some other schools that week and all of our guides were wearing either a nametag or a shirt from the school so you could tell they were part of the admissions office.[/quote]

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