<p>I remember gong to college fairs when I was in high school, but I hardly hear about people attending them now. And I do wonder...why do people attend them? Can you really learn about a school at someone's presentation table if you haven't visited the school? Or are they more for a kid to meet an admissions rep? Would love to get some inout on this. TIA!</p>
<p>My DS and I went to one in the Fall. I basically forced him to go :). I wanted him to get an idea of what colleges’ were looking for. It was right at midterm time and he wasn’t studying. It exposed us to schools we didn’t even think of and turned him on to one in particular. He got excited about the prospect of college. He now knows what is expected of him from the information we received that day. To say the least he studied when he got home and made high A’s on all his midterms. </p>
<p>We are attending a National College Fair tomorrow night. We have some questions to ask new schools that CC brought to our attention. Looking forward to seeing my son getting excited all over again. </p>
<p>I attended one with my D. We thought it was a waste of time. It was crowded, and my D wasn’t pushy enough to compete with the kids/parents who were practically knocking people over to get to the front of the line to talk to college representatives. The few that we did get to speak with weren’t adcoms but rather local alumni or recruiters whose information seemed a bit dated. This was one of the better known/attended fairs in our area. Maybe this wasn’t the norm, but I’ll never know because my D refused to attend any more college fairs. </p>
<p>D found her college at one. It hadn’t been on the radar at all, but the admissions reps started talking to her about Math modeling competitions …</p>
<p>My older D found one school where she applied at one of those huge national fairs. She did get in though decided not to attend there. At a much smaller, specific fair, my younger D got confirmation that one school will remain on her list when the local alum rep turned out to be a grad whose D was also applying there-couldn’t say enough about it, and not just from an academic point of view. She also answered a concern that we had about a very small school and really made the “Why should I go here?” question the best one we could have asked.</p>
<p>We went to one, and yes, some of the schools had people standing 10 deep trying to get to the front. We live in the south and the southern schools were packed. My daughter did pick up material from northern/western schools and is going to one we probably wouldn’t have thought of but for this school fair. She also talked to a few reps from art schools and learned what she would need for one of those (way more than she had) so it was good for bringing her expectations in line too.</p>
<p>There are reps at their school almost every day, but they’d miss too much class time if they went to more than a handful.</p>
<p>We went to a couple of fairs. They are not particularly worthwhile due to crowds but it is an easy way to show interest in a several schools. At one particularly large fair they had a computerized admission slip that the schools clicked on to show interest. At smaller ones DD brought stickers with name/address/phone/email/grad date. She simply placed one of her stickers on their info postcard. Adcoms seemed impressed with her being organized and it was much faster and easier than filling out the cards at each booth.</p>
<p>If everyone attending is at least somewhat knowledgable about the schools that are there, then yes, they might be. But obviously that would never happen, so instead you’re stuck listening to people asking about the acceptance rate and average test scores over and over again.</p>
<p>We went to one and thought it was a waste of time. Like beth’s mom’s daughter, my DD tends to stand back and observe rather than push herself to the front of the line. I think most of the people who have found their way to CC would be better served doing some internet research and contacting schools independently. You can get info, find out when reps are in town, attend more focused meetings, and arrange for visits or interviews that way without being part of a mob scene. </p>
<p>I went to one and I thought it was a great experience. I talked to admission representatives from an out of state college I’d never heard of. About a year later, I did my research and applied to that school as my number one choice. About six months after, I got accepted and am hoping to enroll for next year. </p>
<p>Went to one with oldest son. Didn’t find it useful at all. Maybe if we had gone when sophomore or even early junior year when he was still forming his list. By the time we went he was already pretty settled on where he was looking…and he was being recruited for sports too so that was probably a factor since none of the schools there highlighted their sports programs.</p>
<p>I dislike the college fair atmosphere intensely. Our local ones are crowded loud and pretty useless. We only go if the kids HS teacher’s are offering bonus points for attending. I was excited to go with my oldest to the first one, but I soon found out the truth, at least for me, that I don’t like them.</p>
<p>My dad made me go to one junior year. It mainly featured local schools (something I wasn’t interested in) and all the more competitive schools has huge crowds around their tables. I picked up pamphlets but never looked at them again.</p>
<p>Went to one with S. He wasn’t particularly interested and didn’t find it very useful and helpful. The Us he had any interest in came to his HS campus and he could choose whether to sign up for an interview if he was interested. He had a pretty good idea of which Us he planned to apply to. D only applied to one school as a transfer–the one S was attending, so she didn’t need any fairs.</p>
<p>They could be useful to help get young people excited about Us and perhaps tell them about Us they don’t know much about (and may not even now exist). $$$$ is a huge issue and not sure whether many of the fairs are ready and willing to discuss that issue, even if parents ask–it’s probably the marketing/PR folks from Us who attend, not those with the NPC and financial info.</p>
<p>College fairs were helpful for both of my daughters because talking to multiple school reps gave them a chance to formulate a series of questions that were important to them. Sometimes talking to a rep - even for a school that isn’t actually a great fit - will give the student some insight and get them thinking. When you’re new to the process you “don’t know what you don’t know” and any way you can broaden your knowledge is worthwhile. </p>
<p>The college reps at fairs tend to be friendly and approachable. I find them helpful to personalize the process, especially when applicants are intimidated or new to the process. The family who is seasoned or has a set of colleges to apply to already might not find them helpful, but for a family that is not set on college choice, and possibly first generation students, I think it is helpful to make an unknown and intimidating process more familiar.</p>
<p>College fairs also are a low effort way to start your kid looking at colleges. Also you can get feedback from your child on what seems to stand out at them…one time I was staffing my alma mater’s booth as an alumni, so my DD went around looking at the other colleges. She wants to be pre-med so she looked at ones that said “pre-med”…after that we had a discussion about how any college can be pre-med and that there is no pre-med major. Also she looked at a college in our state and she was pretty excited, so I checked it out and discovered that its 75% of SAT was in the 500s…too low for her, I think. So that got us looking on About.com where they have lists of colleges per state that show the SAT scores…we used that to help us choose matches.</p>
<p>SO for the college I represent, usually the parents know more about it than the students, so I can put a friendly face out there for them to talk to to make the college more real. We are about a 10 hour drive away from where i live, so it is an easy way for them to get started without an actual visit.</p>
<p>College Fairs - Just another tool that’s good to have, and they can be a starting point for discussion as several people have mentioned. Went to one with my D, and we both talked for a long time to her Big Brother’s school… but then she attended an info session for NU off the main room. She took home the big purple envelope and scheduled a visit, which worked out nicely for her. And on the visit her younger brother decided that NU was his place too.- so a pretty useful tool. </p>
<p>I didn’t find the one I attended particularly useful. Many of the reps were not very approachable or, conversely, had taken the used car salesman approach to dealing with potential applicants. </p>
<p>Some were clearly in the wrong job. The real kicker was when we stopped at the booth of the college my father had attended (but not graduated from). This was a cultural LAC in my mother’s hometown; she had attended the technological university across the river. When my mother mentioned her alma mater, the rep blurted, “Wow! I always thought our girls tried to marry the men from that school, not the other way around!”</p>
<p>I’m a student. I attended one college fair, and it was not helpful. I think it would probably only help if you didn’t have a clue about any colleges. I knew about most of the colleges at the fair, and felt like everything the representatives said was old news.</p>