My son has received a notice from one of the colleges that he is interested in that they will be at the National Association for College Admission Counseling fair. Looking at the colleges that will be in attendance, at lot of the colleges that he is interested in while be at the fair. Just curious if anyone has attended one of these and if it is worthwhile. We would be attending the one in Atlanta which is about a 2 hour drive for us.
What grade is your son in?
Has he started the college hunt?
Has he taken the SAT/ACT yet?
Did he take the PSAT? WHat did he get?
What is his GPA?
What part of the country is he thinking about attending?
Does he know what he might want to major in?
I have found that college fairs are good start to the process if they haven’t thought about college much yet.
If he will go to the State U or a CC, then maybe it is too much.
But if he is considering other schools, then it may be a good idea.
I think to make it more worthwhile, you should come up with a list of schools to talk to.
Use the Supermatch tool over on the left to find some ideas.
If he has a better idea of what he wants then just visiting colleges over spring break is good too.
College fairs are a great way to get more information and learn about the colleges and possibly discover new colleges your son wasn’t interested in before. 2 hours is a long way to drive though so you really should weigh your options/what schools are there and consider if it’s even worth going.
Here are the answers to your questions:
What grade is your son in? 10th
Has he started the college hunt? yes
Has he taken the SAT/ACT yet? yes took as a Freshman got 27 is scheduled to take again next month
Did he take the PSAT? WHat did he get? yes, took it earlier this year Critical Reading 61, Math 55, Writing 49
What is his GPA? 4.00 unweighted. 4.050 weighted
What part of the country is he thinking about attending? anywhere
Does he know what he might want to major in? yes, aerospace engineering
His first choice is Ga Tech. We would be able to meet with them at the fair. Most of his Top 10 choices will be at the college fair. We already have a listing of the schools that he is interested in.
I took my S to a college fair that was very close to home. It was kind of a feeding frenzy – pretty much he signed in and spoke to an admissions person for a few minutes at each school he was interested in (I stayed in the background) and took a bunch of brochures back home. A number of schools had people lined up waiting to talk to the representative. We ultimately visited all of the schools he applied to and many colleges visit our HS as well so the college fair probably wasn’t worth the time (I didn’t go to the same fair with my younger D). However, if you want to “demonstrate interest” and talk to someone briefly about some schools you may not be able to visit (as you said he’d be applying all over the country) then consider going.
I’d concur with @happy1: “feeding frenzy” is a good description of the ones we’ve been to (two of which were NACAC). What did come off as a positive for us was that we decided to talk to every school that didn’t have anyone clustered around, and S and D got to practice talking informally with college recruiters. Then, when we went to information nights with 1-5 specific schools, they already had a level of comfort in that situation, and could formulate questions without sounding goofy.
Do they have a fair in the fall? That would be a better time.
I would wait until junior year to really get started.
Also, use the summer to have him prep for the PSAT.
It won’t hurt to go to the fair but the college reps will be more interested in the Juniors.
Once he takes the PSAT junior year you will have a good idea on his SAT scores.
Then you can target colleges that would match up with those scores.
PLEASE make sure to have him apply to safeties and matches he would be happy to go to…if you read CC now you will see how many kids are rejected/waitlisted at their reach schools and aren’t happy with their safeties.
Plan to visit colleges spring break of junior year/over the summer.
My S will be going to one in a few weeks, but it is 15 minutes from home, and his high school and most in the area are sending kids by the busload during the school day. I generally think that in this digital age the usefulness of college fairs as a mechanism to gain information about schools is less and less important. I do, though, like the suggestions others have made about potential value in a) “demonstrating interest”, particularly to LACs and b) getting experience speaking with admissions reps. In the OP’s case, I’m puzzled by the notion of driving two hours to Atlanta to go see a Georgia Tech rep at a college fair, when one could instead drive two hours to Atlanta to go see … Georgia Tech itself. Clearly the difference would be if the student wants opportunities to practice speaking with admissions reps in low-stakes situations and/or if there are other schools attending that may be of potential interest.
NACAC does maintain a list of participating schools on its website. For the one in my area, I was interested to see that it was overwhelmingly not-so-selective and downright obscure schools. I suppose the most selective and well-known schools are not hurting for applicants, at least the type of applicant one would get only because their booth was happened upon at a college fair.