You’ve seen them before — or at least the crowd surrounding them.

They are the gregarious, well-groomed, name-tagged Stanford student tour guides, who routinely walk the walk and talk the talk — backwards the whole way. Maybe it was in the Main Quad, as a group of photo-snapping senior citizens paused to admire Memorial Church, or in White Plaza, as a horde of prospective students and their accessorized parents prepared to purchase costly paraphernalia at the Stanford Bookstore.

Or maybe it was passing by a group of innocuous-looking students, when one suddenly burst into the history of Stanford architecture.

Sometimes I start in the middle of the tour while I’m walking around campus with my friends,” confessed Chris Elmore ‘08, a student guide. “My friends are like, ‘Chris, shut up.’”

One can’t really blame Elmore, a mathematics and computational science major who has been tour guiding since the end of his freshman year, for showing off a little. As official employees of the University, the tour guides are selected through a competitive application process in the spring. Those who make the cut are trained rigorously.

“We look for a number of things in our tour guides,” said Jennifer Bland, coordinator of Visitor Information Services, who emphasized that the tour guides functioned as public relations liaisons for the University. “We want them to be articulate and well-spoken. We want them to be sharp, quick learners. And we want them to be poised, professional and mature.”

The Visitor Information Services selects for these traits through multiple levels of screening, which include an extensive written application and group interviews.

“It’s a good experience overall,” said Elmore, who has weathered tour guide selection from both ends of the process. “Some of the questions in the written application are really insightful, and the group interview is a neat dynamic with a lot of excited, expressive people.”

Excited and expressive indeed. Armed with a store of personal anecdotes about Stanford life, and statistics and historical facts from a tour guide information binder that is over 250 pages, the student tour guides conduct public and private tours, oversee the Hoover Tower Observation Platform, and man the Visitor Information Center in Memorial Auditorium — all the while answering questions and sharing personal experiences with anyone who asks. The unenthusiastic need not apply.

The tour guides, however, do have some liberties in executing their duties. Instead of assigning a scripted tour, Visitor Information Services gives students loose guidelines and allows each personalize his or her own tour.

“There are certain subject areas that shouldn’t be omitted from any tour, such as information about Stanford’s academic programs,” said Bland, “but we encourage our guides to shape their tours as much as possible. Much of that depends on the group that they’re leading, and some of that depends on the personal style each tour guide brings to their tour. No two tours are ever the same.”

Somewhat predictably, Elmore — a techie, after all — described his tour style as “fact-heavy,” emphasizing statistics and campus history. Other guides, like Alexis Smith ‘08 and Claire Carlson ‘07, noted that their tours relied more heavily on personal anecdotes and details about student life.

“When I give a tour, I think about the specific details I would remember if I was a tourist,” said Smith, a history major. “For example, if I was a prospective student visiting campus, I wouldn’t necessarily remember the architectural style of Memorial Auditorium, but I would remember that every Sunday MemAud hosts FLiCKS, and that students fly paper airplanes during the movie.”

Carlson, who is a political science and communications double-major with a voice hoarse from broomballing, said that she uses a wide array of personal anecdotes, from her freshman ski trip to fountain-hopping, to illustrate her particular Stanford experience.

“Stanford is so known for its students that visitors are most interested in hearing from the actual students,” said Carlson. “As a Stanford student, you already know most of the basic information. It’s just about presenting it in a coherent fashion.”

The information that coheres into a tour differs from tour group to tour group, noted Smith. A tour given for a group of senior citizens, for example, would focus more heavily on the architectural elements and history of the campus, while a prospective undergraduate tour would feature discussions about housing, dining, academic requirements and campus culture.

But interest in some topics spans all age ranges.

“Both the senior citizens and the prospective undergraduates ask all about my life at Stanford,” said Smith. “They’re both really excited to hear about Stanford from a student perspective.”

Being a tour guide is not all glamorous, many of the guides agreed. Manning Hoover Tower on rainy days, for example, was described as “down time,” by Carlson, who does her homework and befriends fellow guides during the long stretches when visitors do not come by. Smith noted that she and her fellow guides had a 20-minute shift system for the Observation Platform, so that no guide gets “Rapunzeled” at the top of the tower.

Hoover Tower in general seemed to be a generative topic for the guides.

“Every single person asks when the bells ring,” said Elmore. “It’s kind of an inside joke with the guides. We get the question all the time.” (They ring most Wednesdays between 5 and 6 p.m., and on special occasions, like Commencement, Convocation, and Baccalaureate.)

“The tour guides had a costume party once,” said Smith, “and my best friend went as Hoover Tower and attached a bunch of tiny bells to herself. Everybody who saw her asked her when the bells rang.”

The ambassadors of the Stanford spirit bond over Hoover Tower?

“Well,” said Carlson. “We’re a very social group. We joke that we’re a ‘fratority’ of tour guides. People are always planning out-of-work activities. It’s a good group.”

“Tour guiding is by far one of my favorite things at Stanford,” said Smith, adding that she met her core group of friends through the tour guiding program. “I look forward to guiding. Even on days when I think don’t want to tour, as soon as I say my name and welcome my group, it perks up my day.”