A feature in Wednesday’s New York Times on the new way of holding college tours for prospective students is built around Hendrix College. No more walking backwards shouting rote statistics for the tour guides. It’s supposed to be more about friendly walks with personal anecdotes.

I have observed that a night in the dorms, preferably with some serious parties, has a way of influencing student decisions, too. If that’s on the agenda at Hendrix (I’m betting not), they’re not saying.

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Hendrix has emerged as enough of a pace-setter for the modern campus tour that administrators from as far away as Bennington College in Vermont have traveled to Arkansas to see the program.

And yet, Hendrix considers its tour strategy so proprietary that when a direct competitor that it would not name — a college that, like Hendrix, is featured in the book “Colleges That Change Lives” — recently asked if it could send a delegation on a tour, the request was turned down.

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“That would be like Coke letting Pepsi into their plant,” said Laura Martin, the director of admission at Hendrix.

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