<p>Thanks, sewbusy; good catch. I see Princeton lists the joint meetings with Harvard and U of Virginia in more detail than the Harvard site does yet.</p>
<p>Thank you, tokenadult for this timesaving thread. I used it last week to check on the schools S2 is interested in and for a computer-illiterate person like me it was a huge time saver. I thought it interesting that the three non-early schools have joined together for info sessions.</p>
<p>Hi, everyone, </p>
<p>My wife and oldest son are back from the MIT information session at Sabathani Community Center in Minneapolis, presented by admission officer McGregor Crowley and several members of MIT's team of Education Counselors (ECs) (a.k.a. alumni interviewers). I am referring to their notes and to a conversation with a local friend who also attended the session for this description of what was said there. </p>
<p>Last year the information session was in a suburban location within walking distance of my home; this year it was in the heart of inner city Minneapolis, within walking distance of where I lived when I was last a student. My wife estimates there were about 180 people in attendance in the auditorium. McGregor Crowley introduced himself to the group and said he had a particular interest in applicants from low income brackets or who are the first in their families to go to college. The "take home message" is the vibrancy of MIT. </p>
<p>MIT is interdisciplinary, connecting the unconnected. The problem sets are collaborative and promote working as a team. MIT's mission is to solve problems involving energy, the environment, cancer, poverty, and education, among other issues. </p>
<p>MIT has five different schools offering a wide variety of majors. There are schools of engineering; science; management; humanities, arts, and social sciences (HASS); and architecture. MIT has classes at a variety of levels so that all students can take classes at their own level of ability. </p>
<p>The MIT motto is "mens et manus" (mind and hand). Hands-on research experiences are available at MIT through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), which can be paid, volunteer, or for course credit. A majority of MIT students participate in UROPs. </p>
<p>MIT has many student organizations. [Those are enumerated by category in the handouts from the session.] </p>
<p>In your application, make it fun to read for the admission officers by talking about your passion. Students sometimes design their own research projects, so take student interests seriously. Include information in your application about your activities and how you achieve balance in your life. Set up an interview: it's a chance to talk about your life, about you, and about your goals. You will need letters of recommendation from a math or science teacher and from a humanities teacher. You will also need a guidance counselor letter. </p>
<p>You will need test scores from the SAT I with writing or the ACT with writing, and two SAT Subject Test scores from one of the two mathematics tests and one science test. SAT scores of 600 or higher are sufficient--"We have never made a decision based on test scores [alone]." </p>
<p>MIT offers a nonbinding early action admission option. </p>
<p>MIT is looking for young people who </p>
<p>1) have a sense of mission who want to do something, </p>
<p>2) have perseverance to take an idea and work on it, </p>
<p>3) have a collaborative spirit for helping others, </p>
<p>4) have initiative and curiosity, </p>
<p>5) are risk-taking, resulting in taking hard classes, (Many MIT students are solid B students who take the hardest classes they could.) </p>
<p>6) are hands-on doers, </p>
<p>7) have character, who have an obligation in life such as baby-sitting, </p>
<p>8) have balance. </p>
<p>After the main talk the local educational counselors (ECs) who attended the meeting introduced themselves. Most typically interview students from the same group of high schools each year, becoming familiar with those schools. They advised making your application memorable, using anecdotes rather than adjectives. Tell your story. One of the ECs, in one-on-one conversation with my wife while serving juice after the meeting, said that it's a good idea for a student to ask adults who know the student, "What do you notice about me?" Many times students are too casual about activities they do that make the adults who know them go "wow," so it is important for the student to get a sense of what activities make each student unique. </p>
<p>In the United States as a whole, about one applicant out of every six or seven will be admitted. The base acceptance rate is higher for Minnesota applicants. The ECs said there is no significant difference in acceptance rate between early action application and regular action application. </p>
<p>Someone asked about transfer admission, and the reply was that odds for transfer admission are very poor indeed. One transfer applicant who was successful recently was an International Mathematical Olympiad gold medalist who didn't find a good fit in his first college.</p>
<p>Awesome report. Many thanks!</p>
<p>Caltech admitted 573 applicants for fall 2006 class. 216 students enrolled.</p>
<p>Does anyone has admit/enroll statistics for MIT and HYP?
Thanks.</p>
<p>My D and I attended the Exploring Educational Excellence college fair last night for colleges Brown, Columbia, Cornell and U Chicago. My D is only a sophomore but has done some preliminary looking at college websites, so since the fair was in town we thought we would check it out. Another one is coming on Wed which we hope to attend also homework permitting.</p>
<p>The program started officially at 7:30 but the reps were setup ahead of time giving a much less crowded opportunity to talk to them. </p>
<p>Each rep gave a 10 minute general speech on an aspect of the admission process. They covered the tour, the essay, financial aid and the admission timeline. Then each rep gave another 10 minute speech on their specific school. All included pretty pictures of the campuses and Chicago and Cornell mentioned that they have snow. Chicago and Columbia talked about their core curriculum, Brown about theirs, Cornell seemed very glossy not really talkiing about 7 undergrad colleges. Yeah she mentioned them and mentioned that there exists an IRL school, but really didn't mention what this means to students. I am a bit more critical as I am an alumn and expected more meat. I probably would have had similar criticismns of the other schools if a similar situation.</p>
<p>No one talked about admission requirements- courses, test scores, etc, which I had expected to validate what they need to be working on at this point. My D has looked at various school websites to get an idea of this, but would have been good to hear some from the horses mouth.</p>
<p>I think U Chicago gave the best talk and it is the only school which interested my D, who is at the very beginning of browsing colleges. She took notes and went to that table afterwards. He mentioned discount tickets to activities in the city. Columbia talked about NYC, Cornell mentioned how beautiful (or should I say gorgeous) Ithaca is, not much from Brown.</p>
<p>The presentations took about 1:15. After that everyone flocked to the tables. There were about 200 people in attendence. They are on to MA and CT next, saying they will do 7 trips together this year.</p>
<p>Besides the main signin at the front door, or drop off your email confirmation which they had said was required but really wasn't, Chicago was the only one with cards for the students to leave info. All were light on handouts in my opinion, but this was my first fair. Only 1-2 thin handouts from each, and pens or other fun things, I am spoiled by tech trade shows I know.</p>
<p>One more show coming to town on Wed, then it is back into highschool more for a while longer.</p>
<p>My oldest son and I attended the Caltech information session this evening in Bloomington, MN, a suburb of Minneapolis. We arrived at the hotel meeting room just before the stated start time and saw the admission officer Owen Wolf (whose picture we had seen online before the meeting) greeting guests at the door and asking if they had a registration ticket. We did not, but my son's name was on a postcard in the officer's hand because he had preregistered for the event. My son checked the information on the card for accuracy and then we found seats in the room. At first there was very unpleasant recent rock music playing in the room. </p>
<p>There were 110 chairs set out at the start of the meeting, almost all of those eventually filled, with some attendees standing at the back. We saw some of my son's [url=<a href="http://www.arml.com/%5DARML%5B/url">http://www.arml.com/]ARML[/url</a>] teammates and one of those said, "It's an ARML reunion." This was a much bigger meeting than the Saturday afternoon Caltech information session we attended three years ago. </p>
<p>Owen Wolf thanked us on behalf of Caltech for coming to the meeting on an evening with heavy rain. He asked students to raise hands; almost half the attendees were prospective Caltech students. </p>
<p>Mr. Wolf started a slide show. He said Caltech offers various features, laid out in his main slide titles. </p>
<p>BIG SCIENCE </p>
<p>The college was founded in 1891 but took a new direction in 1903 when a Harvard-trained astronomer, Hale, came out to do research in California. Hale believed that "science investigation is the spring that feeds the stream" of engineering and technology, so he changed the college from being a practical tech school (with a course on typewriting!) to being a theoretical, research-oriented university of science. Noyes and Millikan also played big roles in the development of Caltech. </p>
<p>Caltech has many Nobel laureates on the faculty. Yet faculty are evaluated by how well they teach undergraduates. The 3:1 ratio of students to professors ensures opportunities to get to know professors well. </p>
<p>BIG RESEARCH </p>
<p>Research facilities affiliated with Caltech include the Jet Propulsion Laboratory nearby in California, and the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. "You can blame us for Pluto no longer being called a planet," said Mr. Wolf. There is research on the biochemistry of the human brain's response to stress and Caltech operates the Mars Rover. </p>
<p>BIG OPPORTUNITIES </p>
<p>Caltech likes professors and students to be colleagues. You'll be expected to work collaboratively on problem sets. </p>
<p>There are only 900 undergraduates at Caltech, and only 2,000 students total. Mr. Wolf said it's a misconception that small size limits opportunities. Caltech has many facilities and resources, and its small size ensures that students have access to them. Most courses have twenty or fewer students per class. </p>
<p>CAMPUS CULTURE </p>
<p>Caltech has an honor code. Mr. Wolf asked the high school students if any of them go to a school with an honor code, and I think my son was the only one who raised his hand. The entire Caltech honor code fits on one slide: "No member of the Caltech community shall take unfair advantage of any other member of the Caltech community." One consequence of the honor code is that all students have keys to all the labs so that they have 24/7 access to research equipment. You can get up at 3:00am with a new idea about chemistry and immediately grab a beaker and try it out in the lab. All Caltech exams are unproctored, and you are told what materials are fair game for the exams and trusted to follow those conditions. </p>
<p>Caltech has core requirements for all majors of
6 units of math
5 units of physics
2 units of chemistry
1 unit of biology
a freshman "menu" course
2 intro labs
1 unit of scientific writing
12 units of social science or humanities
3 physical education units, e.g., Ultimate Frisbee, ping pong, etc. </p>
<p>Caltech is organized into six academic divisions: biology; chemistry and chemical engineering; engineering and applied science; geology and planetary science; humanities and social science; and physics, mathematics, and astronomy. About 20 percent of students double major. One Caltech professor commented once, "If you don't teach scientists history, bad things will happen," so there is a strong emphasis on the humanities and social science courses, also so that Caltech students can communicate their ideas to nontechnical people. </p>
<p>Caltech offers a medical scholars program with UC San Diego. Apply to Caltech EA, and if admitted submit an application to the UCSD medical scholars program. Then you can be assured of medical school admission without taking an MCAT. Caltech also has a more conventional pre-med track that could lead to any medical school, and has opportunities for hospital internships. </p>
<p>Caltech has study abroad programs FOR SCIENTISTS that allow them to keep on pace to get their technical degrees and still experience foreign living. </p>
<p>A great program for undergraduate researchers is the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program, allowing summer research with pay of $6,000 over the summer. </p>
<p>Caltech students live in one of eight houses, which are neither exactly like dorms nor exactly like frat houses, but a lot like Hogwarts in the Harry Potter novels. </p>
<p>A big Caltech tradition is Ditch Day. [Ditch Day is the first thing I ever heard about Caltech, reading about it in a magazine article when I was in elementary school.] On Ditch Day, seniors leave the campus to hang out in Pasadena, and underclassmen try to break into their rooms to perform pranks. The seniors set up elaborate defense mechanisms for their rooms. The pranks and defenses get more elaborate each year, and now often have house themes. </p>
<p>Caltech ranks higher on the all-time list of college pranks than that other technical university in Cambridge, MA. The Caltech students have rewritten the hillside Hollywood sign to read "Caltech." They have hacked the scoreboard at the Rose Bowl to read "Caltech 38, MIT 9," winning praise from the scoreboard operator for figuring out how to write "Caltech" with lower-case letters. They also hacked a half-time card-flipping show at the Rose Bowl, stealing the glory of the U of WA Huskies to have the cards flip to show the Caltech mascot, the beaver, and the word "Caltech." </p>
<p>Overall, the campus culture is defined by "a shared passion for mathematics, science, and engineering." Caltech students have intellectual respect for one another, inquisitive creative mindpower, and a quirky sense of fun. </p>
<p>Mr. Wolf then took questions from the audience. As usual, parents asked most of the questions. My son commented after this session that the questions were much more elementary and on issues that parents should have looked up for themselves than at the MIT session on Saturday here. </p>
<p>Q [student]: How is the SAT II used in the admission process? </p>
<p>A: The math level 2 and one science SAT II are required because they are specific to those subjects. They help Caltech assess better than the more general SAT I test. </p>
<p>Q [parent]: How safe is the campus? </p>
<p>A: The campus has nineteen security officers and they come instantly if phoned by Caltech's emergency number or if a student lifts up one of the many blue security phones on campus. There is an escort service for crossing campus late at night. Houses have locks activated by infrared cards. </p>
<p>Q [student]: The ratio? </p>
<p>A: 65:35 male:female. Caltech wants that to change, but doesn't give preferences to applicants on that basis and doesn't change its standards. Caltech is doing outreach to gain more applications from women and from underrepresented minorities. Students should think about what kind of atmosphere makes them comfortable. </p>
<p>Q [parent]: Transfer credit for PSEO dual-enrollment college-as-high-school study? </p>
<p>A: Caltech expects students to take rigorous courses, but doesn't give credit for AP, IB, or college courses taken as a high school student. Caltech gives placement tests to admitted students and those are the basis for placement in appropriately advanced courses. You need to demonstrate that you can handle the work. You may think that you are duplicating courses, but Caltech courses are different. Just because you've taken a course in physics before doesn't mean you won't learn something from a Caltech physics course. </p>
<p>As for classes, there are no classes from noon to 1:00pm so everyone can eat lunch. There are no classes from 4:00pm to 6:00pm so sports teams can practice. All courses are taken P/F for the first two trimesters. </p>
<p>Q: Criteria for medical scholars program? </p>
<p>A: Apply to Caltech EA. If admitted, then apply to UCSD for medical scholars program, indicating interest in medicine. </p>
<p>Q [parent]: Can undergraduates at Caltech take graduate classes? </p>
<p>A: It's possible if space in the class is available. Graduate students have registration priority. If you have the aptitude, it's possible. </p>
<p>Q: Graduation rate? </p>
<p>A: Low 90s percent. Some leave Caltech because Caltech isn't what they thought it was. Comparison shop while you are a high school student so you know what college fits you. </p>
<p>Q [parent]: Can you get two years of transfer credit for participating in Minnesota's PSEO (dual enrollment in college for high school) program? </p>
<p>A: No credit for PSEO. No dual credit. [I commented to my son that this is the FAQ par excellence in Minnesota; parents always ask this question at elite college information sessions in this state.] </p>
<p>Q: The number who apply? The number who are admitted? How do you pick students? </p>
<p>A: Applications are read three times, at least. Once by an admission officer (who looks for basic minimal qualifications), once by a professor (who looks for adequate preparation for the student's undergraduate studies), once by a student admission committee member (one of sixteen undergraduates each year who assess applications for fit to Caltech's residential life). The important question to answer is "How have the last four years in high school made me a better scientist or mathematician or engineer?" Mention specific details. The other important question is, "What would your roommate say about you?" Do you stay in your room all day? Do you join projects with other students? </p>
<p>If students aren't specific, the Caltech admission committee has no way to know how they'll function. Applicants have to understand that Caltech is a community. </p>
<p>Q: Average financial aid? </p>
<p>A: Fantastic. Merit scholarships, need-based grants, loans, and work study. More than thirty Axline scholarships are offered each year. </p>
<p>First, Caltech gives all the grants it can. Work study jobs can pay up to $25 per hour. Graduates have an average debt of only $5000 after four years at Caltech. Submit the FAFSA and the CSS Profile, and Caltech will figure out the rest. </p>
<p>Q: Do outside scholarships reduce the financial aid package. </p>
<p>A: It depends on the outside scholarship. </p>
<p>Q [student]: Can you get credit for college work before Caltech? Do you have to repeat classes? [My reaction was, didn't you hear the earlier question?] </p>
<p>A: Absolutely not [you will not have to repeat classes]. Caltech classes are more challenging. We'll place you by the placement tests. </p>
<p>Q: Foreign languages at Caltech? </p>
<p>A: These days only Spanish and French. You can double major with one major being a language major. </p>
<p>Some of the questions were so routine I recorded only the answers; you can guess the questions. </p>
<p>A: We accept the ACT; take what you are comfortable with. </p>
<p>A: No interviews. </p>
<p>Be sure to get a letter of recommendation from a teacher who likes you. Some students try to get letters from teachers of classes in which they were struggling. Faculty members read the letters, and comments like, "This student was surly and argumentative" or "This student didn't turn in all his homework" raise red flags. Letters can be sent ahead of the other required application forms. </p>
<p>A: We don't prefer online or paper. Just make sure to get the application in on time. Don't wait until the day of the deadline. </p>
<p>A: Early action is nonbinding. You can comparison shop. If Caltech is your fallback school, you are doing really well. [That line got smiles from some of the ARML team students.] An early action application shows interest in Caltech--you are getting your application together early in your senior year. There is no significant difference in acceptance rate for EA. Deferment is NOT the same as a denial. Usually being deferred means that the admission committee needs more information to make a decision. Respond to a deferral by sending a letter updating the admission committee on new facts about you that have come up since you filed your EA application. </p>
<p>A: The October SAT is the last date timely for EA. </p>
<p>A: Send in your SAT scores through an official College Board score report. </p>
<p>Q: Weighting of SAT II scores? </p>
<p>A: All are weighed equally. Caltech looks at your specific strengths. No one area of your application makes or breaks you. Caltech is one of the most holistic admission offices known to Owen Wolf [who has worked at other admission offices before working at Caltech]. </p>
<p>Then the general meeting was dismissed. Just a few families stayed to ask more specific questions. </p>
<p>I didn't get a chance to follow up on coureur's observation of a statement that Caltech is advantageous for going to graduate school. I was surprised that there were no alumni at this meeting, or at least none identified to the audience, as there were two alumni at the much smaller Saturday afternoon meeting my son and I attended three years ago.</p>
<p>We have the opportunity to meet many college reps through our high school college center--we have over 30 admissions reps from schools all over the country coming directly to our high school (and those throughout the city) in Portland, OR. for informsiton sessions. it is a wonderful opportunity for interested students to meet the reps who will actually be reading THEIR applications. We encourgage parents to come to these meetings as well, and they usually defer to the students' questions. the reps seem more than willing to answer questions from anyone, however. It's been a great experience for us to learn in-depth information from a school our students might not have the resources to visit.</p>
<p>we have several colleges visiting our private HS also, however these require leaving class to attend the info session. When the time comes, I will encourage my kids to only to this for the very few schools at the top of their lists. Hopefully they can get another opportunity to express interest without missing classes.</p>
<p>btw- I don't think the reps at Monday night's session were regional reps, at least that wasn't indicated by their titles. </p>
<p>I don't think parents are encouraged to attend the events at our school. This could be a size issue as they are held in the counselor's office.</p>
<p>before I add my next trip report, I'm going to add additional thoughts to my comment right above this about missing class time when the college visits the HS.</p>
<p>I assume these are the area reps who in most cases will be the first readers of the apps. In that case, I think it would be a good idea to make the connection. Both the college fairs I've attended this week have not included the area reps which was a surprise to me. Next report to follow..</p>
<p>Attended our second (and probably last) college fair for the season, this one was "exploring college options" with Harvard, Duke, Georgetown, Penn, and Stanford. The format from the previous one was slightly different. Each college talked about 15 mins, then they did a short panel for q&a so everyone could hear all the q's and a's.</p>
<p>Stanford rep had been on the job for 10 days (!!!) Most of the other reps were +20 years in the field and at their school. At least a couple were alums. Harvard and Penn (?) guys had grown up here and there was talk about how the area has changed in the past 20 years..</p>
<p>Nothing really memorable about the stump speeches. Stanford showed many pictures of palm trees and flowers and grass and said it's like that 365 days a year. My D said "boring" so I guess we won't be thinking about CA schools, fine with me. Already thought she would probably stay in the NE.</p>
<p>The panel had about 10 questions only 2 asked by kids rest by parents. Kid quesitons were "what makes an app stand out" and one about sports and walk ons and scholarships. That question was directed to the individual reps at the end. </p>
<p>You know how there is a person (usually parent) in your school, or a coworker who always has at least one question at every single meeting, and the question is usually not very useful, and often whiney? Well she was at the fair :-) My D had told a few of her sophomore friends about this event and this family was there in the front row. the mom says that our school as grade deflation (true) and the list of colleges they attend isn't that impressive (true) and she wonders if the school profile is really looked at which would theoretically say how tough the school is. The Harvard guy took this question, he said they get all types, homeschooled, kids "practially raised by wolves" (yes he said this) and then talked about our school as if it were "XYZ correctional institution" Several others then continued to use our school name, and since they weren't the regional reps, I don't think they really knew of the school, but boy were the others in the audience embarrassed.</p>
<p>Very few of the questions got straight answers, and those were the ones where the answers were facts on the handouts, like can you take the ACT. One person asked about multiple SAT retakes, and the Stanford guy said all the colleges there would superscore and not penalize for obsessive retaking.</p>
<p>The panel was good to hear other people's questions. The room was filled to capacity. About 10-12 kids from our school compared to only one other on Monday, so this one must have had some publicity.</p>
<p>Asked D afterwards if any of the schools were interesting to her and she said Harvard, which was a change from before when she was anti-Harvard. Not that she has a chance, but we'll have to see what she liked about it. I think it was the house system. Plenty of time for us to explore, right now we are assembling attributes to consider plus location.</p>
<p>Thanks for the interesting report on the Exploring College Options information session.</p>
<p>Tokenadult wrote:</p>
<p>"McGregor Crowley introduced himself to the group and said he had a particular interest in applicants from low income brackets or who are the first in their families to go to college."</p>
<p>This is a long-standing commitment of MIT's. I was a student there in the 70s and was impressed by how many students were the first in their families to go to college or the first in their town to go out of state. </p>
<p>I am also impressed, in retrospect, with how little people cared about each other's economic status. The only reason we cared that someone had a car was so we could bum a ride, and many people had part-time jobs.</p>
<p>The other thing, which I'm told hasn't changed, is that students were very much "self-competitive" rather than "other-competitive." For the most part, people cared about doing the best they could, not out-doing others. Upper-classmen were always happy to help frosh with their problem sets (everyone takes the same core courses freshman year) and people in classes together often helped each other study.</p>
<p>No place is right for everyone, but MIT was definitely the right place for me and I've never regretted attending.</p>
<p>went to a college information session yesterday, and one dad hogged the people who tried to get to others and two of the most annoying girls on the planet asked the stupidest questions- so tell me, does xyz school have school sprit, and like, you know do people go to watch, the like games and stuff, and do they watch the intermurals, and like....</p>
<p>ARGGGGHHHH</p>
<p>They thought their questions were inciteful and clever, but they were shallow and repetitive</p>
<p>It's too bad that not everyone has something insightful to say when joining in on a discussion about colleges.</p>
<p>Here are some links to some colleges' pages on off-campus visits. Check with each college about whether you can arrange a meeting. </p>
<p>Barnard College </p>
<p><a href="http://www.barnard.edu/admiss/fall_events/off-campus.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.barnard.edu/admiss/fall_events/off-campus.html</a> </p>
<p>Bates College </p>
<p><a href="http://www.bates.edu/off-campus-options.xml%5B/url%5D">http://www.bates.edu/off-campus-options.xml</a> </p>
<p>Colgate University </p>
<p><a href="http://www.colgate.edu/DesktopDefault1.aspx?tabid=1023%5B/url%5D">http://www.colgate.edu/DesktopDefault1.aspx?tabid=1023</a> </p>
<p>Haverford College </p>
<p><a href="http://www.haverford.edu/admission/inyourneighborhood.php%5B/url%5D">http://www.haverford.edu/admission/inyourneighborhood.php</a> </p>
<p>Kenyon College </p>
<p><a href="http://www.kenyon.edu/x1834.xml%5B/url%5D">http://www.kenyon.edu/x1834.xml</a> </p>
<p>Macalester College </p>
<p><a href="http://www2.macalester.edu/admissions/areavisits.cfm%5B/url%5D">http://www2.macalester.edu/admissions/areavisits.cfm</a> </p>
<p>Smith College </p>
<p><a href="http://www.smith.edu/admission/visit/%5B/url%5D">http://www.smith.edu/admission/visit/</a></p>
<p>Two College Confidential participants, bluebayou in another thread on this Parents Forum, and TheDad in a thread on the Smith College forum, brought up the interesting point that a college influences its outreach to students by where the college holds its regional information meetings or high school visits or off-campus interviews. I try to look at what a college says about itself by what meeting places it chooses on the road. </p>
<p>A lot of colleges go to National College Fair events </p>
<p>but there are some colleges that don't. Usually a National College Fair event will be in a big, downtown convention center that is on lots of bus lines, and often high schools send school buses to the fairs so that students can meet lots of college representatives. Yale has a very impressive visit program </p>
<p><a href="http://admissions.yale.edu/events/%5B/url%5D">http://admissions.yale.edu/events/</a> </p>
<p>but appears not to attend National College Fair events. I was very surprised to see Harvard at the Minnesota National College Fair four years ago, but I was told that it is usually there, and it will be there again this year. At that college fair four years ago I learned about school-specific regional college information sessions, attending Harvard's in southwest Minneapolis, a neighborhood that historically was the wealthiest neighborhood inside the city limits but very much an "urban" location on bus lines, with a good ethnic mix of students in attendance. </p>
<p>I see that differing colleges that visit my town for high school visits sometimes visit almost only public high schools (e.g., some of the state flagship universities from other regions) or only private high schools (e.g., some LACs from out east). Naturally, representatives of Catholic colleges take special care to visit Catholic high schools. </p>
<p>What patterns of visits do you notice in your city? Can a poor student who has to take the city bus on his own reach the college meetings in your town? Do public high schools (or private high schools) open their doors to visits by students who aren't enrolled at that school? What kind of visiting pattern is most appealing to you?</p>
<p>Interesting, Token. By me (northern Jersey) Dartmouth, Penn, and Cornell are presenting at $20K++ per year prep schools. Boston U, Carnegie-Mellon, & Northwestern are in hotels. Vanderbilt presented in a museum that could be reached by a more mixed student base than the others. NJ in general has limited public transportation around the state. It might be easier for kids without cars to get into the Manhattan presentations.</p>
<p>tokenadult, this thread is about making the most of those information sessions, and our session was almost ruined by those two obnoxious girls and the rude dad who didn't let anyone get a word in with the admissions people who were trying to get away from him conversationwise, but he didn't get the hint</p>
<p>my post was to show others how NOT to act at one of the meetings- it impresses noone</p>
<p>Public transportation in my area (Western WA) really stinks, especially on weekends when the college dog and pony shows take place. We had to drive to both sessions that we chose to go to, and pay for parking. The sessions were held in nice hotels (Westin and the like).
As far as college visits to schools, D's friends from her sports team say that "good" colleges send reps only to "good" schools (college prep privates and the 3-4 public ones in our area that consistently make top 1000 HS list).
The big college fair is usually held in downtown Seattle, and the garage in the convention center does charge reasonable flat parking fee, if you can find a spot, since bus transportation on weekends is, alas, not an option.</p>