Matt Gentry | Roanoke Times

Annabelle Ombac makes her pitches for Tech, inside and out.

Annabelle Ombac's passion for Virginia Tech makes her an ideal campus tour guide.

Well, that and her ability to project her voice, remember various Tech trivia and walk backward without tripping -- all while wearing Tech's Chicago maroon and burnt orange colors.

Ombac -- a rising senior majoring in communication -- has led prospective students and their families around Tech for four semesters, extolling the merits of attending the 26,000-student campus.

She is one of about 90 student tour guides -- or Hokie Ambassadors as they are called -- who are the face of Virginia Tech.

"I love to talk," Ombac said. "I love to tell people about the school."

It's a busy season for college visits, as high school students and their parents use the stretch from spring break to the end of summer to check out the higher education goods nationwide.

Most of those visitors are greeted by tour guides who are students, not administrators or other college staffers.

Students lend credibility to the information they relay to visitors in a way that administrators and others cannot, said Norrine Bailey Spencer, associate provost and director of undergraduate admissions at Tech.

"People are anxious to hear about the experience from someone who is going through it, not managing it," Spencer said.

Roanoke College associate director of admissions Anita Webster said student-led tours are an integral part of college recruitment.

"It plays a huge role in the student's decision to where they want to go to college," she said.

At Roanoke College, the student tour guides give individual tours to families, as opposed to the group tours that Tech and Radford University provide.

The private college in Salem pays its 28 guides, whereas the Hokie Ambassadors and 30 RU student admissions representatives volunteer their time.

At each of the three schools, the college guides must go through training and receive favorable evaluations on their performance.

Administrators stress the need to be honest in answering visitors' questions, whether the inquiry is about something as controversial as the school's alcohol policy or as benign as the college's rule about freshmen bringing cars to campus.

Rising senior Heather Amon, an RU guide since second semester of her freshman year, said she hears many questions about whether Radford's reputation as a party school is accurate.

But the most difficult questions she gets are from parents who try to press her to compare Radford with other schools, she said.

"We always try not to put other schools down," Amon said. "You never know what alumni are in your audience, and it's not a good representation of your own school."

Like the proverbial postal workers, college tour guides set out across campus whether it is sunny, rainy or snowy. Many families have trekked hundreds of miles to visit a college campus and can't easily return if the weather didn't cooperate on their trip.

At RU, the student guides will outfit visitors with umbrellas if rain is expected, as Amon did on a gray morning tour last Tuesday. The tour that day was pretty quiet, she said, which could have been a reflection of the weather.

Kasey Cunningham, a rising high school senior from Damascus, Md., came to campus with her mom, and the two looked around by themselves the night before the tour. Kasey said she had been judgmental about the school's buildings and the town when the pair walked around on their own. But after seeing the campus through Amon's eyes, Kasey liked RU much better.

"This came off much more impressive today," Kasey said.

When prospective students decide to attend, their campus tour guides can take much satisfaction in a job well done.

Ombac said her greatest pride as an ambassador -- beyond her obvious Hokie pride -- is when she sees current students on campus whom she led on tours as high school students.

She hands out business cards with her contact information listed to visitors at the end of her tours and routinely hears from prospective students via e-mail.

Ombac, who has also led tours at Colonial Williamsburg, got a great review from a family visiting from Yorktown.

"I think she was excellent," said Renee Evans, whose daughter Caitlin is considering Virginia Tech. "I would buy a used car from her."