Orange Key sees large increase in application numbers

Orange Key, the University’s student-run tour service, saw an increase of about 20 applicants from last year to a total of nearly 100 interested undergraduates.

According to tour guide Sean Li ’11, Orange Key received approximately 80 applications last year.

Li explained that Orange Key accepted 50 percent of the 80 applicants last year. This year, “the plan is to take about 10 more” for a total of 50 new members, Li added.

The increase in accepted tour guides is intended to accommodate seniors who “are not as involved and do not tour as much ... so we want to have a few more people involved,” Li said.

Orange Key will announce the new tour guides on Saturday.

In order to be chosen as a tour guide, students attend an open house in the winter and receive “a huge book called the ‘Guide for Guides,’” Kevin McKee ’14 said, adding that the book “pretty much has the answer for any question you could get on a tour.”

Students then shadow two regular tours before leading a tour evaluated by a current Orange Key officer.

Several applicants cited the importance of the University campus tour during their college admission process as one of the primary reasons for joining.

“I thought it was great coming on a tour before [applying to Princeton] and I figured it’s really important to give a good first impression to interested students,” said Amy Sun ’14.

Sun continued to explain that she had “signed up at the activities fair in the fall and just waited until they sent an e-mail about an open house” in order to apply.

McKee said he never received an official tour from Orange Key, but explained that his decision to join was in part because many of his friends had signed up to be tour guides.

“I was applying to a lot of schools last year and my tour guides gave a memorable first impression to each school I visited,” McKee said.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

“I didn’t get the chance to tour Princeton because I had a few friends here who gave me an informal tour, but I love being at Princeton and I just want other people to as well.”

Both McKee and Sun said that they were happy to apply regardless of the results.

“The whole experience has been a lot of fun,” said McKee.

“Even if I do not get into this illustrious organization, I had a lot of fun in the process.”

Orange Key, whose volunteer guides lead 26 weekly tours, was founded in 1935 and had been an independently managed student organization funded by University Services until its incorporation into the admission office at the beginning of the 2006-07 academic year.

The group currently represents the admission department as the primary source of official tours on campus to visitors and prospective students.