YouVisit Campus Virtually With New Online Tour Experience

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 3, 2014) — The University of Kentucky is proud to launch two brand new virtual tours — one of the main campus and one of residence halls — through the YouVisit platform. The YouVisit tours provide both prospective undergraduate and graduate students an up-close and engaging view of the university.

"Our community is continuously becoming a more diverse, global society," Kelley Bozeman, marketing director, said. "We wanted to give students from across the Commonwealth, country and world a way to experience our campus, even if they are unable to travel to Lexington."

This project was a collaborative project between the UK Office of Public Relations and Marketing and Enrollment Management.

The online tours simulate an actual campus tour. Each of the tours is led by a campus tour guide who narrates the visitor through the tour much like they do on a campus visit. Cassidy and Arayo, both UK Visitor Center tour guides, take visitors to the site on a tour of campus and residence halls, describing each tour stop and giving fun information about UK, academics and campus services along the way.

The main campus tour guides you through the campus, Rupp Arena and Downtown Lexington, the Arboretum and Keeneland. The second tour gives you a personal view of the many residence halls on campus.

"We felt it was important to include parts of Lexington with the campus tour," Bozeman said. "Lexington is a great college town and is part of what makes UK so special. We selected a few locations to highlight that are favorites of our students."

Viewers are able to watch videos and view 360-degree panoramic shots that connect to each stop to give them an even more exclusive look at the university. The website also provides text-only subtitles for each stop of the tour. Interested students can also schedule a campus tour and apply to the university from the site.

"We know that students spend a lot of time online researching prospective institutions," Bozeman said. "YouVisit allows students to check out UK as they are researching schools and gives them a great sampling of what our campus is like. We also anticipate students using the site to review campus as they make their final college decisions. The University of Kentucky is an amazing place to spend your collegiate years and we're excited to offer YouVisit as another tool to help in the college selection process."

The online virtual tours provide translations in both Spanish and Mandarin to accommodate  interested international students. They are also mobile-friendly and work on any mobile device including smartphones and tablets. The tours will be able to help keep prospective students informed and aware of the many new innovations going on at UK.

"The tour will be updated on a yearly basis, but we will continuously add supplemental photos and videos to the site," Bozeman said.

The YouVisit tour platform, along with seeblue.com and applyuk.com, are innovative ways that the University of Kentucky is utilizing to share our "see blue." story with prospective students.

"Visiting seeblue.com, our YouVisit campus tour and applyuk.com, along with following our social media accounts, should give a prospective student a good idea of what life would be like as a Wildcat," Bozeman said.

View the University of Kentucky virtual tour at the YouVisit website at www.youvisit.com/tour/uky.

Let us share our "see blue." story with you. Connect with "see blue." on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr. Visit steller.co/seeblue to see why our students, faculty, staff and alumni love being a Wildcat.

Share your UK experiences with us using #seeblue.

MEDIA CONTACT: Katy Bennett, katy.bennett@uky.edu, 859-257-1909