Virtual tour for the university and school: applicants see everything before admission
Virtual tour for the university and school: applicants see everything before admission Briefly: A virtual tour for the university and school allows the applicant to walk through the buildings, look into the laboratories and dormitories before submitting documents. At 360° Space we photographed the admissions office of a technical university in Kazan and a boarding school in the Moscow region - the share of targeted applications on the site increased by 30–40%. A virtual tour of a university school is a way to show a university or educational institution from the inside without going to an open day. Parents from Vladivostok will not fly to Moscow to see their future freshman’s dormitory, but on the tour they will walk through it in five minutes. We have been photographing educational institutions since 2019 and see the same picture: a tour on the website reduces the flow of “empty” calls to the admissions committee and increases the share of meaningful applications. Below is what exactly such a tour provides and how we put it together. Why does education need a 3D tour? Increased trust and applications. According to our client, a college from Kazan, after the launch of the tour, the share of completed forms on the website increased from 4% to 6.5% in two months. Savings on in-person events. One round replaces 3-4 open days a year: the commission sends a link in the messenger, and reserves live meetings for the finalists. Assistance to non-resident and foreign applicants. In the summer of 2025, we were asked to create an English-language version of the tour for applicants from Central Asia - applications from these regions tripled in one stream. Transparency for parents. Mom sees a dorm bedroom, a dining room and a first-aid post—there are significantly fewer questions at a face-to-face meeting. Tool for accreditation and grants. The tour covers the requirements for “openness of the educational environment” and looks appropriate in presentations for the board of trustees. How it works Filming begins with a route scenario. We sit down with the vice-rector or director and decide what the applicant should see: the main entrance, the rector’s office, three or four flagship auditoriums, laboratories in specialized areas, a dining room, a gym, a dormitory. An average 8,000 m² university building requires 400–600 filming points and two to three days of operator work with a Matterport Pro3 camera. We plan to shoot during the holidays or evening hours: empty corridors look cleaner and there is less glare from the windows. For a boarding school in the Moscow region, we left at 7:00 p.m. after the lower classes had finished their school hours - during the shift we assembled the educational building, and by the morning the administration approved the preliminary installation. Next is post-processing. We clear frames of random people, add tags with descriptions of audiences, embed video greetings from teachers, PDF admission programs, links to an application form to the admissions committee. The finished tour is assembled within 5–10 working days after filming. There are three ways to store and give a tour to the user. The first is the 360° Space cloud: high-speed servers with technical support on our side; the university does not think about hosting. The second is the customer’s server: the tour is deployed on the university’s infrastructure if the information security service has strict requirements for storing data within the circuit. The third is an offline version: a stand-alone assembly for the admissions committee stand at the Admissions Navigator exhibition or a separate version for a VR headset for career guidance events. See all projects → How much does it cost? The price depends on the area and depth of the interactive. Photography of a compact school or college up to 1,500 m² - from 55,000 ₽ turnkey with basic marks and hosting in the cloud. University building of 5000–8000 m² with several laboratories and a dormitory - from 180,000 ₽. If you need an English version, integration with the admissions committee’s CRM, or a VR assembly for an exhibition, we consider it separately according to the terms of reference. As a result, the daily check of a Matterport operator is cheaper than stitched 360° panoramas from local photo studios - the camera shoots faster and does not require manual stitching of frames. You can more accurately calculate the project for your footage using a calculator - there you just need to indicate the area, number of floors and whether VR mode is needed. Frequently asked questions Is it possible to rent an existing building without stopping classes? Yes. We work during holidays, evenings after classes or on weekends. For a large university, they usually allocate 2-3 sessions of 4-5 hours each - we coordinate the schedule with the vice-rector for economic affairs. What if the layout changes every year? Filming is modular: you can reshoot individual floors or a new building, and the old tour will remain operational. One of our clients, a gymnasium in the Moscow region, updates about 20% of the tour every summer; a complete reshoot is not needed. How to embed a tour on a university website? We provide an iframe code that can be inserted into any CMS - 1C-Bitrix, WordPress, Tilda. For scenarios with authorization through the Unified Identification of Authorization or integration into the applicant’s personal account, we set up a separate API endpoint. Calculate costProject catalogMatterport