<p>I am a parent of a junior. He is on the cusp of being a National Merit Semi-Finalist this summer. Like most of you, he has been receiving lots of generic college emails and form letters. However, he received a couple I want feedback on. We live in Colorado. One invitation was for a presentation in our area from 5 Ivies/near Ivies (Cornell ,Brown,UChicago). Today, we got one from "exploringcollegeoptions" for a presentation by Harvard, Duke, Georgetown,etc. Besides the aspect of us getting info...are these indicative of some level of interest in our son or do they invite hundreds of kids. Also, does anyone know who presents (junior or senior admit people?) . Thanks for any help.</p>
<p>We went to one last year with Harvard, UPenn, Georgetown, Duke and Stanford. People could walk in with no invite, and there was no required pre-registration. I’d say there were close to 1000 students. It was mostly the local alumni reps but UPenn did have an adcom guy (he was sort of "MC"ing the thing). It was definitely an info session and not a chance to even show your interest, unless you stayed afterwards (we didn’t) :)</p>
<p>Most of the very selective colleges don’t care about demonsrating interest beyone writint a convincing “Why ___ college” essay if hey ask for one.</p>
<p>This is not indicative of any level of interest in your son.<br>
Anyone can attend.</p>
<p>Attach no significance to your son’s invitation. The schools you mentioned invite thousands – not hundreds – of kids to these presentations held all across the country.</p>
<p>With respect to the “Exploring College Options”, the invitation is nothing special. However, it does allow you and your son to kill multiple birds with one stone. The presentations are concise, but informative, and the presenters answered questions and did stay after for individual questions. In the case of Penn, I know that it was the Adcom in charge of our area, the rest I don’t know. It did cause my son to consider Stanford and Georgetown and to do some research on their programs.</p>
<p>Because of the economy, some schools are <em>only</em> doing these joint presentations and not going to individual high schools, so this my be your son’s only opportunity to ask questions about these schools to someone at least connected to the admissions office.</p>
<p>Thanks to all for your comments. I’m not surprised. I think we’ll skip a 1,000 person presentation.</p>
<p>Don’t dismiss them all. For some schools(slightly below the Everyone on the PLanet wants to go Here level) “demonstrating interest” is a factor, and if they made a presentation in your town and your son didn’t show up, and you couldn’t afford to actually visit, that would be a negative.
OTOH, all he has to do to fix that is email those schools and say "Hi, I wish I could go to your presentation but I had to (try out for all-state band, compete in the robotics/cheer/drama finals, cure cancer, whatever…), and ask a coherent question about the school that couldn’t be answered by a quick look at the website. That’s demonstrated interest.</p>
<p>Those are useful meetings. You don’t need an invitation to attend one. I try to gather information about meetings like those and post the information here on CC. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/650085-spring-2009-college-fairs-info-sessions.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/650085-spring-2009-college-fairs-info-sessions.html</a> </p>
<p>If you go, I’d be much obliged if you wrote up a description of your visit. I’ll try to do the same after I attend the meetings in my town.</p>
<p>Attending the presentation may help your son decide whether to apply to those colleges, what kind of colleges he’s interested in, and what info to include in his applications. For those reasons, it can be very useful to attend.</p>
<p>Four years ago, we attended a similar event with admissions reps from Penn, Georgetown, and Duke. In our community, only 80 or so people showed up. We had lots of face time with the reps. It helped our NMS son decide that none of these schools were for him. Remember that these events not only help you decide what schools are on your list. They help you determine what ones are not. And with an NMS student, the options are too many at this point not to take up opportunities to scale the list down.</p>