What English Questions Help You Learn More on a St. Louis Campus Tour?

A campus tour at Washington University in St. Louis, Saint Louis University, UMSL, Webster University, or Harris-Stowe State University is one of the few extended English-conversation opportunities a prospective international student gets at a target school. The tour guide is usually a current undergraduate, walking with the visiting group for 60 to 90 minutes through campus quads, residential complexes, libraries, and academic buildings. The information session that often follows adds another 30 to 60 minutes of structured presentation and Q&A. Most tours leave unstructured time at the end for follow-up questions on a bench or near the visitor center.

St. Louis campus conversation route

This is a real conversation, not a presentation. The student you talk with is a current undergraduate whose perspective on the school is informed by daily experience — not a marketing employee with a script. Used well, the tour is one of the highest-leverage English-speaking situations a prospective international student gets during a single trip. Used poorly, it produces a stream of polite, brochure-language answers and very little information.

This guide walks the question patterns that turn a St. Louis campus tour into a real conversation. The framing is communication skill — these are questions a serious student would actually want to ask, and the same patterns work whether you are walking past Brookings Hall at WashU, sitting in a DuBourg Hall atrium at SLU, looking at the Touhill Performing Arts Center at UMSL, walking the leafy quads of Webster Groves, or having coffee with a Harris-Stowe student near Midtown.

The Wrong Pattern

Most international visitors fall into a small set of low-yield questions:

"Is the food good?" "Do students like it here?" "Are the classes hard?" "Is St. Louis a nice city?"

These get short, vague, polite answers. "Yeah, the dining is fine." "Most people love it." "The classes are challenging but fair." "St. Louis is a great city most of the year." Polite. Friendly. Almost no information.

The reason these questions fail is that they ask for general assessments. General assessments give the speaker an easy non-answer. Specific instances force the speaker to think and produce concrete detail. Compare:

The pattern: open questions start with what, how, walk me through, or describe, and they ask for a specific, concrete instance. The instance is what makes the answer useful.

Five Question Categories That Work on a St. Louis Campus Tour

A productive campus tour conversation organizes questions around five categories. Two or three questions per category, asked at appropriate moments during the walk, will produce a substantial mental picture of the school.

1. The daily academic rhythm

What does a typical week actually look like? Specific instances produce more useful answers than generic descriptions:

"Walk me through your Tuesday. When do you wake up? Where do you eat? What do you do between classes?"

"What does your average week look like in terms of hours per week — class time, problem sets, readings, studio time, research hours, clinical hours, clubs?"

"How big are your classes? How often do you actually talk to professors?"

"When you're stuck on a paper, a problem set, or a project, who do you go to first?"

"What's the most useful office hour you've ever attended? What did the professor do?"

These questions reveal class size, faculty accessibility, and the support structures that determine whether a student thrives academically. A tour guide who can name a specific professor or describe a specific office hour conversation is telling you the support structure is real; a tour guide who speaks only in general terms may not have used it.

2. WashU-specific questions

WashU is structured around several undergraduate schools and divisions — the College of Arts and Sciences, the McKelvey School of Engineering, the Olin Business School, and the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, with interdisciplinary options and a medical-school-adjacent pre-health pathway. Fit at WashU is school-specific, not just university-specific. Useful WashU questions:

"Why did you apply to Engineering specifically, instead of Arts and Sciences? What did your visit show you about the school that the website couldn't?"

"How does your school's advising work? Do you have a faculty advisor from day one, or does that come later?"

"How common is switching between WashU schools? Is it something students plan for, or something that happens reactively?"

"Walk me through your toughest class in the major. What made it the toughest — the volume, the difficulty, the pace, the projects?"

"How does your school handle research opportunities for undergraduates? Did you find your lab through a class, a professor, an online application, or word of mouth?"

"How does the South 40 residential-college system actually shape your week? Do you eat there, study there, or mostly use it as a place to sleep?"

"How accessible is the WashU Medical Campus / Barnes-Jewish cluster for pre-health undergraduates? Did you find shadowing or research opportunities through the medical campus, or through other channels?"

"How does the Delmar Loop fit into your weekly rhythm? Do you walk there for dinner, study at a cafe, or mostly stay on campus?"

"Tell me about a Sam Fox / Olin / McKelvey tradition or class that made you feel like you really belonged in this specific school."

For applicants considering specific WashU school applications, the school-specific questions matter more than the general ones. The WashU majors fit guide and the WashU campus visit guide elsewhere in this series cover the academic differences between the schools; the campus tour is the right place to ask current students how those differences show up in daily life.

3. SLU-specific questions

Saint Louis University is a Jesuit research university with a strong health-sciences and professional-school identity. Useful SLU questions:

"How does the Jesuit mission actually show up in your day-to-day classes and student life? Or is it mostly a background thing?"

"Walk me through how you got your first clinical placement / nursing rotation / business internship / aviation experience. Was it through a class, through a professor's introduction, through alumni, or through your own search?"

"How do students in the health sciences balance the clinical hours with the broader liberal-arts side of SLU?"

"How does the Midtown location affect your weekly rhythm? Do you spend time in Grand Center, in Central West End, in downtown, or mostly on campus?"

"How does SLU's service tradition show up in practice? Are you required to do service, or do you opt into it?"

"What's the relationship between SLU undergraduates and SLU graduate / professional students like? Do you take classes together, share student space, or mostly run on separate tracks?"

"Tell me about a class — or an experience — at SLU that really shifted how you think about your major."

"How accessible is the Saint Louis University Medical Center for pre-health undergraduates? Did you find shadowing or research opportunities through SLU's medical campus?"

"What kind of student does well at SLU, and what kind doesn't?"

For prospective SLU applicants, the program-specific questions are usually more informative than the university-wide questions. The SLU campus visit guide elsewhere in this series covers the school structure; the tour is the right place to ask current students how the program actually shapes their week.

4. UMSL, Webster, and Harris-Stowe questions

The other three St. Louis campuses run different academic and student-life rhythms. The question patterns shift accordingly.

UMSL is a public research university with a substantial commuter population, a smaller residential community, and MetroLink access:

"Walk me through a typical Tuesday. Do you commute, live on campus, or live nearby?"

"How does the commuter-versus-residential mix shape student life at UMSL? Do most students stay around campus on evenings, or head home after class?"

"How accessible are research opportunities for undergraduates here? Did you find your lab through a class, through a professor, or through the university's research office?"

"What's the relationship between UMSL and the city like? Do students spend much time downtown, in Central West End, or in the South Grand area?"

"How does the MetroLink shape your daily life? Do you ride it for class, for evenings out, or both?"

Webster runs a smaller, suburban-residential pattern in Webster Groves:

"What's the daily rhythm of living in Webster Groves like? How much time do you spend in the suburb itself versus going into central St. Louis?"

"How does the smaller scale of Webster show up in advising and faculty contact?"

"How accessible are internships and creative opportunities through the Conservatory of Theatre Arts / business / communications programs?"

"What's the relationship between Webster students and the surrounding suburb?"

"Where do students go on weekends — into central St. Louis, around Webster Groves, or somewhere else?"

Harris-Stowe is a public HBCU near Midtown:

"How does the HBCU community at Harris-Stowe show up in daily life? Is it concentrated on campus, or extended into the surrounding neighborhoods?"

"What's the relationship between Harris-Stowe and the broader St. Louis student community at SLU, WashU, UMSL, Webster?"

"How does the campus support international students specifically? Are there programs that connect international students with the broader community?"

"What's a Harris-Stowe tradition or program that you'd want a prospective international student to know about?"

The UMSL / Webster / Harris-Stowe article elsewhere in this series covers the academic differences between these schools.

5. The city, the weather, MetroLink, housing, and life off campus

Daily life beyond the campus core is shaped by neighborhood, weather, transit, and housing decisions. Useful questions:

"Where did you live your first year? Where do you live now? How did you find your housing for sophomore / junior year?"

"How do you actually get around — walking, MetroLink, driving, rideshare, or some combination?"

"What's the rhythm between campus and the city? Do you go to Forest Park, to Central West End, to the Delmar Loop, to Grand Center, to South Grand often, or is most of your time on campus?"

"Walk me through a typical Saturday. Do you stay on campus, go to a Cardinals game, walk Forest Park, head to a museum?"

"What's the worst commute or transportation moment you've had this semester?"

"How does the weather change your daily routine? Do you walk more, take MetroLink more, study indoors more — and at what point of the year does the pattern shift?"

"How does tornado season actually work for students? Do you have a routine when a watch is issued?"

"If you had to do it again, would you live on campus, in nearby apartments, or somewhere else?"

"What's your MetroLink routine in winter? Do you leave 15 minutes earlier, plan differently, or just accept some delays?"

"How does Forest Park fit into your weekly rhythm, if at all?"

These questions surface the practical logistics that determine whether daily life feels sustainable. Tour guides usually answer these well because they live the logistics every day. A WashU guide describing the walk from South 40 to a 9 AM class in February, a SLU guide describing the walk from a residence hall to a Grand Center evening, or any guide describing the MetroLink arriving five minutes late during a thunderstorm — these are the answers that build a real picture.

Community, fit, and trade-offs

How do students actually meet each other? Where does the social structure come from? And what does this school not offer that another might?

"How did you meet your closest friends here?"

"What's the most active student organization you've seen, and what do they do?"

"Where do international students from your country or your region tend to gather?"

"What's a moment from your first semester when you felt like you found your community?"

"What's it like being a student from outside the United States here?"

"What kind of student does well here, and what kind doesn't?"

"If you had to do it again, would you still come here? What would you change?"

"What were the schools you turned down to come here, and what made the difference?"

"What's the most common complaint you hear from current students?"

"What advice would you give to a first-year international student arriving in August?"

These are some of the highest-yield questions of the tour. Tour guides do not always give complete answers, but the partial answers reveal what the website cannot. A guide who hesitates on "what kind of student doesn't do well here?" is telling you that the answer is real but hard to articulate.

Each St. Louis university has substantial international student populations and active offices that support international students; asking how those offices show up in daily life — not just at orientation — produces specific, useful detail.

Follow-Up Moves

The first answer to a question is often a polished, brochure-version answer. The second answer — produced by a follow-up question — is usually closer to the truth. Three follow-up moves to learn:

The specific-instance follow-up

Q: "How are professors here?" A: "Generally pretty accessible." Follow-up: "Can you give me an example? Tell me about a professor you actually went to office hours with."

The specific-instance follow-up moves the guide from a general claim to a concrete story. The story is the useful information.

The contrast follow-up

Q: "How is the social life on campus?" A: "Lots going on." Follow-up: "What kinds of students don't fit in socially here? Where do they go?"

The contrast follow-up forces the guide out of generic positive statements toward specific differentiation. It often produces the most informative answers of the entire tour.

The example follow-up

Q: "Are there many international students here?" A: "Yes, a lot." Follow-up: "Where do you see them most often? Are there specific clubs, dining halls, or events where international students gather?"

The example follow-up turns a yes-or-no answer into a concrete location or organization. Whether or not the example matches the general claim is the most useful information.

Useful Phrases for St. Louis Campus Conversations

A small set of conversational phrases that work well in this register:

• "What does X look like in practice?" — turns a generic answer into a specific story.
• "Walk me through..." — invites narrative; produces step-by-step concrete answers.
• "Tell me about a time when..." — invites a specific instance.
• "What surprised you about..." — invites the speaker to reveal something unexpected.
• "In your own experience..." — explicitly opens the question to the speaker's specific story.
• "What would you tell yourself a year ago?" — produces honest, advice-shaped answers.
• "How does that compare to what you expected?" — invites contrast between expectation and reality.
• "What's one thing you'd change about this place?" — invites honest critique without being aggressive.
• "How does that work in February?" — St. Louis-specific; the answer reveals how a student handles the cold-weather changes.
• "How does that work during a tornado watch?" — St. Louis-specific; the answer reveals how a student handles spring storm season.
• "How does that work on a Cardinals home stand?" — St. Louis-specific; the answer reveals how a student navigates downtown event days.
• "Who helps students plan that?" — surfaces the advising or staff structure that supports the answer.

A useful conversational rhythm: ask one question, listen to the full answer without interrupting, ask exactly one specific follow-up, and then move on. The pattern is: question → full answer → follow-up → answer → next topic. Resist the impulse to interrupt with multiple follow-ups in rapid succession.

Phrase Bank by Setting

The same general principle (open, specific, follow-up-friendly) plays out differently in different parts of the visit. A phrase bank organized by setting:

On a WashU campus tour

"I'm interested in McKelvey Engineering specifically — could you tell me what made you choose this school over Arts and Sciences?"

"How does the WashU school-application process show up once you're enrolled? Do you ever feel like the school boundary matters more than the university one?"

"What does the walk from South 40 to a McKelvey class on a snowy Tuesday actually feel like?"

"When you went to your first WashU research opportunity, how did you find it?"

"If a high-school student is unsure about Olin Business versus Arts and Sciences for an economics focus, what would you tell them?"

On a SLU campus tour

"What's the Jesuit identity actually like for students who aren't Catholic? Does it feel inclusive, or does the religious framing matter more than I'd expect?"

"How does the clinical / nursing / aviation / business program connect with the Grand Center and Central West End neighborhoods around campus?"

"What does the SLU service tradition look like in practice for a typical undergraduate?"

"How does SLU's smaller scale show up when you compare it with students you know at larger schools?"

"What's the relationship between SLU and downtown St. Louis like for students who live on campus?"

On a UMSL, Webster, or Harris-Stowe campus tour

"What does the residential / commuter mix actually feel like for students? Is there a strong evening campus rhythm, or does most of campus empty out after class?"

"How does the campus connect with the broader St. Louis student community at the other universities?"

"What's a tradition or program at this school that you'd want a prospective international student to know about?"

"How does the smaller scale of this school show up in advising and faculty contact?"

"Where do students from this school go on weekends?"

At an admissions information session

A more formal setting with a presentation followed by Q&A. The question patterns shift slightly toward structured, well-formed questions that work for a room. Useful framings:

"Could you describe how the school handles first-year advising for international students specifically?"

"What does internal transfer between schools look like in practice — how common, what timeline, what support?"

"How does the school approach undergraduate research / studio access / clinical placement for first- and second-year students?"

"What does the institutional financial-aid picture look like for international applicants this year?"

Save the open-ended, more personal questions for the walking-tour portion or for follow-up conversations with current students rather than the public Q&A.

During a department or school-specific visit

When the visit includes a specific department or school stop — McKelvey Engineering, Olin Business, Sam Fox, the SLU health-sciences buildings, UMSL business or nursing, the Webster Conservatory — the questions can get more specific:

"Could you describe what a typical week looks like for a sophomore in this department?"

"How does the advising structure work inside this specific department?"

"Where do students in this department do their internships in the summer?"

"What's the relationship between this department and the rest of the university for cross-listed classes?"

In a current-student chat (over coffee, on a quad bench, in a campus cafe)

This is the most open conversational setting and the highest-information one. The student is talking with you informally, not on duty as a tour guide. Useful framings:

"What's the most surprising thing about this school that you didn't expect when you applied?"

"If you could redo your first semester, what would you do differently?"

"What's a class — or an experience — that genuinely changed how you think about your major?"

"What does a 'good week' look like for you here?"

"Do you ever feel like St. Louis is too small? How do you handle that?"

Parent logistics conversations

For parents who want to ask their own questions:

"From a parent's perspective, what would you want me to know about how the school supports first-year international students in St. Louis?"

"What's something you learned about the school after enrolling that you wish your family had known earlier?"

"How does the school think about safety in St. Louis, particularly for first-year students still learning the city?"

"What's the airport routine like for students who travel home over breaks?"

These acknowledge the parent's role while still inviting the kind of open answer that produces useful information.

Comparing Answers Across the St. Louis Schools

Families visiting more than one of WashU, SLU, UMSL, Webster, or Harris-Stowe in the same trip benefit from comparing notes. After each campus, write down two or three specific things the guide said. Useful comparison-aware questions to ask at each:

"At WashU, we heard that the residential college and South 40 system shape the first-year experience strongly. Does SLU's residential life feel similar, or more independent / urban?"

"At SLU, the Jesuit mission shapes how the school talks about itself. Does WashU's school identity feel similarly cohesive, or organized differently?"

"At UMSL, the commuter-and-MetroLink rhythm came up several times. Is there a similar pattern at Webster, or is the suburban-residential rhythm fundamentally different?"

"At Webster, the Conservatory of Theatre Arts shapes the campus identity. Does that creative-arts emphasis have a parallel at the other St. Louis schools, or is it specific to Webster?"

These comparison-aware questions invite the current student to position their school against the others, which is often more honest than asking the school to describe itself in isolation. St. Louis students are usually well-informed about each other because the daily geography puts them in the same neighborhoods, the same MetroLink stations, and the same downtown spaces.

What to Avoid

A few patterns that produce poor answers:

• Asking the same question every prospective student asks. "How is the dining hall?" gets the same polished answer every tour. Try "where do students who are tired of the dining hall go to eat?" instead.
• Asking about prestige or rankings. Tour guides cannot meaningfully answer; the answer is always some version of "we're great." Direct your questions about reputation to your own research, not to the tour.
• Asking purely about logistics that you can find on the website. Tour time is precious; spend it on questions that require a human answer. "How many students are at WashU?" is on the website. "How do WashU students actually feel about the Tuesday-morning walk from South 40 to class in February?" is not.
• Asking only as a parent. If the prospective student is on the tour, the prospective student should be asking the questions.
• Long preambles before the question. International English learners sometimes feel the need to explain context before asking. The tour guide does not need the preamble; the question alone is fine.

Practicing Before the Trip

Two practical exercises to do before a campus visit:

Write 10 questions in advance

Write down 10 questions, organized by the five categories above. Two questions per category. Read them out loud. Trim any that sound generic ("Is the food good?"); rewrite them as specific-instance questions ("What did you eat for dinner last night?"). Practice the wording until it feels comfortable to say.

Plan one follow-up per question

For each of your 10 questions, write down one specific follow-up question that you would ask depending on a vague answer. This pre-thinking is what produces the on-the-spot follow-up move during the actual tour.

Conversation practice

Ask a friend or family member to play the role of the tour guide and run through your 10 questions and follow-ups. The first time through, the rhythm will feel awkward. The second or third time, the questions will start to feel natural to ask out loud. The goal is for the actual tour to feel like the third or fourth conversation, not the first.

After the Tour

Within 30 minutes of finishing the tour, write down what you learned. Specific quotations are more useful than general impressions. "The tour guide said her toughest class was an introductory engineering course with about 80 students in a single lecture but 18 students in the recitation section" is more useful than "the classes seem fine." The specific notes are what you will look at when comparing schools at the end of a multi-school visit week.

A campus tour conversation is also a low-stakes practice opportunity for English conversation skills that transfer well beyond admissions visits. The patterns — open questions over closed, specific instances over general assessments, follow-ups over single questions — work in informational interviews, networking conversations, internship interactions, and the general adult skill of getting useful information out of a conversation. The tour gives you 60 to 90 minutes with someone whose job is to answer your questions. Used well, it is one of the most concentrated language-and-decision-making opportunities a prospective international student gets in a single visit.

For the practical English you will use in the rest of the trip — at a Hill barbecue counter, in a Central West End cafe, on a MetroLink platform, or during a tornado watch — the food ordering English skills article and the transit and weather English skills article elsewhere in this series cover different communication situations. Together they cover most of the practical English a visiting family will need during a St. Louis trip.

For families using the WashU, SLU, UMSL, Webster, and Harris-Stowe visits to compare the schools, the WashU campus visit guide, the SLU campus visit guide, the UMSL / Webster / Harris-Stowe article, and the campus visit landmarks article elsewhere in this series cover the academic structure that the tour questions are designed to probe. The study-travel overview covers the broader case for St. Louis as a campus-visit destination.

The point is not to extract answers that match a checklist. The point is to leave the conversation knowing concrete things about the school that you did not know before — things you could not have read on the website. Those are the things that turn a generic application into a specific one, and a generic visit into one that genuinely informs the family's decision.