<p>^^We’ll be attending a college fair next month, so I’m interested as well :)</p>
<p>WRT college visits: LuckyBoy was dragged on a tour of our local state flagship (way local, we could walk there LOL) to give him/us a “baseline” for college tours. I told him to choose a nearby smaller school to visit over his longish Easter break to get the feel of a smaller campus. He chose a small university over a LAC—which makes sense for someone interested in engineering/sciences. He needs to get a more cohesive list together by the end of March (coincidentally the same week as the college fair) for a meeting with the guidance counselor. We’ll plan our some driving trips over the summer.</p>
<p>kathiep, I just checked our flagship’s website (you’d know of it by your location but I want to stay somewhat anonymous) and there are scheduled special visit dates and daily tours listed for the summer already. Maybe UVM just hasn’t gotten that info up yet? Perhaps they are concentrating on the admitted students visit dates right now.</p>
<p>we have never been to a college fair–as they are in the fall here and our student had a conflict with a sporting event…</p>
<p>we have done the group night thing–where say 4 colleges all come to a hotel and use a ballroom, host a panel and speak to a LARGE group of parents and kids. That was helpful as the AdCom reps told a bit about schools, showed a powerpoint etc and talked about admissions and fin-aid…</p>
<p>For college fairs, I have a few pieces of advice. 1) If you haven’t already done so, set up a separate e-mail account that you can both access. Use this for things college related. 2) Make up address labels with the following information: Students name, address, e-mail address, HS name and graduation year and intended major if they have one. The admissions people LOVE these and it’s a real time saver as all of them want that info. 3.) Look over all the colleges at the college fair and highlight on the map when you get there the ones that you don’t want to miss. 4) google, “Unique questions for college fair” so your student will have some good questions to ask. My son wanted to know about internships and merit aid and asked each admissions person about that. 5) Let your child do the talking - Step away from the table! Have fun and get all the information you can. You can sift through it at home.</p>
<p>For the local college fair earlier this month, the students could register online and print out a barcode. Then the colleges they visited could scan their paper and have all their info without needing address labels or hand-written cards! My S and I toured separately, so he could speak on his own (not sure how much he actually did) and I could ask a few questions I had.</p>
<p>To add to the great ideas KatieP posted: (1) Take a look at NACACNet.org - there are Tips, FAQs and other articles and info on College Fairs (2) Do a mock Q&A with your child - You act as the college rep. Your child should practice shaking hands, introducing him/herself, asking questions and listening while maintaining eye contact and shake hands when finished. </p>
<p>It is a good idea to bring a clipboard with a notepad and pen to hold notes and questions and write down answers. It also gives them something to do with their hands and the reps take them more seriously. He/she should ask for a card of the person spoken to and follow-up with a thank you by email.</p>
<p>I remember reading kathiep’s advice about the address labels before, so I had planned on doing that for ds. No problems with LuckyBoy talking with adults—he’s a Boy Scout going through the Eagle process. I haven’t heard anything about signing up prior to the event----gosh, that would be handy to have an assigned barcode!</p>
<p>I had hoped to have ds get through the rest of the Fiske guide before the college fair, just so he’d recognize more school names at least. But he’s leaving for 2 weeks in Austria on Wednesday (school exchange opportunity) and returns the week before the college fair. He may not be able to finish the O-Y schools. No biggie. Dh and I are practicing being “chill” LOL</p>
<p>Well the college fair was a madhouse… We did get a bar code so it made things alot easier, however, there were so many people there that there really wasn’t enough time to talk with anyone representing the schools. In fact, most schools had 2 people at each booth and I wish there would have been 1 express line (for people who just wanted to have their bar code scanned so they could just get info sent to them) and another line for questions… I had to wait 1/2hr in line to get to the UF booth and didn’t feel it was right to ask a bunch of questions with so many people waiting behind me. When I finally got to the front of the line, they didn’t even have a scanner. Just got a booklet and left. What a waste of time! We (my husband, son and I) split up and tried to get info from all the schools that could be of interest and figure we will pour through it all later and contact the schools directly with any questions or try to get the answers from their websites.</p>
<p>Kathiep, You suggested the mailing labels. Great idea, but now my H and I are arguing over what constitutes a “mailing label”. Can you give us an idea on size? Like a return address label or bigger? </p>
<p>S is now signed up to tour Bryant U. and UConn-Storrs on Friday. While we did tour 3 schools last summer, this is really the official start to our big push to visit schools.</p>
<p>We used return address labels because that’s what we had. We use them normally for Christmas cards, but I think he had to squish the information in like</p>
<p>Name + HS name
street address
City, State, zip
e-mail
grad date and intended major</p>
<p>Late night student freakout about how she’s not going to get in anywhere. Sigh. She wants to know early that she’s gotten in somewhere so that she doesn’t have to go through all of senior year in a panic about getting in. But those EA and rolling admit schools (along with other carefully-considered safeties) are now suddenly horrid because they are places where people only supposedly go because they didn’t get in anywhere else. :rolleyes: </p>
<p>Interestingly, she’s saying that if she doesn’t get in to her top choices, she’d rather go somewhere completely different than to a “lesser” version of her top picks. Also, she’s dusting off some schools that she’d visited before and dismissed, because she feels more secure about her chances of getting in. I suspect this is going to be a recurring theme.</p>
<p>I need to figure out a better way to cope with this kind of drama over the next year. Maybe buy boxed sets of some favorite tv show, or a pinball machine, or a chocolate fountain, or something.</p>
<p>Gosh I can only hope that someday S will be anywhere that concerned. Never worries about grades, college visits, or school in general. sigh…</p>
<p>I would vote for the chocolate fountain or an alcoholic beverage but I just had my yearly checkup and well neither is in the cards for a while for me. How about a good run or long walk?</p>
<p>Slithey–love the chocolate fountain! But perhaps you should redirect your coping strategy. Parents of '09s had a mantra of “margarita mix and hair dye” Red wine is also useful.</p>
<p>mamom and chintzy, I’m hoping for a coping strategy that’ll work for both the parents AND the student. I suppose virgin margaritas and hot pink hair dye for her? But maybe, only after all interviews are completed. :)</p>
<p>Wait, I know, medical marijuana!
(joke…that was a JOKE)</p>
<p>Hmmm, do you really have any influence over your D’s emotional well being? My D is only 10 and I have no control over that emotional roller coaster!</p>
<p>SlitheyTove–fasten your seat belt, it’s going to be a bumpy…13 months. LOL. I second the motion on chocolate, start with milk chocolate and save the darker semi-sweet versions for the biggest bumps.</p>
<p>I haven’t been here for a while so hi again. My S2, a dear boy with a deer-in-the-headlights look in his eye when colleges are lightly mentioned by dear mom, his best friends, or his GC, and I attended a meeting at school for his spring break college tour. This is very much like the one Slithey was joking about in an earlier post. The school takes 30 some kids by bus from the St. Louis to Penn and visits 11 colleges/universities in 6 days–not counting travel days. Yikes. They will sample small vs. large, super selective vs. safety, LAC vs. State U, urban vs. small town, etc. Nice addition is that 3 of the schools GCs escort the kids and do debriefings on the busride at time, and also they hold lunch or dinner receptions for HS alums who attend the colleges visited to get their feedback. That way, our west coast kids can hear how their former classmates are dealing with snowstorms, honors colleges, different majors, etc.</p>
<p>Best part is–all that checking in and checking out of 6 hotels, bus routing, finding directions in so many strange towns, scheduling college tours, finding places to eat (ack!) in such a compressed amount of time is not the total responsibility of this rather befuddled mom. </p>
<p>S2 chose to go on this tour, but lest you think this represents a sudden interest in selecting a college list, I must honestly report I think it has more to do with his a) love of travel and hotels, and 2) his best buds are going too. When he realizes he’s signed up to trudge in the rain through almost a dozen campuses, at least I won’t be there to see him grimace.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the stress is going to get worse before it gets better! I have several friends who are parents of seniors, and they are all handling the stress in different ways. One said her son is just miserable to be around (and he’s already gotten into several fine schools), and she has warned all her friends who see him not to even ASK him about college. In another case, the mom is stressed, jumping on her son every day to ask whether he’s heard anything, but the son is very relaxed about the whole process. Every family handles the pressure differently I guess. I think my son will be the mellow one and I will be the stressed one!</p>
<p>Geez, I’m not handling well the stress of my son leaving tomorrow for two weeks in Austria! I’d better develop some good coping mechanisms soon… </p>
<p>It’s hard for me in the winter since I LOVE to garden-----weeding and digging are great stress relievers. Too bad the garden is still covered with our never-ending February snow!</p>
<p>The rollercoaster is not gender specific…
had coffee witha mom of a HYP student to get an idea of howthe student (and parents) negotiated the journey…applied to 8 got in 5, rej 2 and wl 1</p>
<p>anyway…came home to dinner and our student got a look of panic when I told said student what the mom/student’s advice is…</p>
<p>We will do 4 schools this month and as they are spread out–there will be that valuable travle time to talk…hummm…yet I foresee sleeping in student’s future.</p>
</p>