<p>My daughter, who is a senior, had been thinking of attending an info session given by 3 colleges (she's interested in one, maybe 2 of them) tomorrow night.
How helpful are these sessions, both in terms of learning anything that you can't get off the schools' websites or other materials and in terms of the whole "demonstrated interest" thing?</p>
<p>To go to this would involve a 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 hour drive each way, plus the 90 minutes total of presentations by the 3 schools. My daughter is planning to re-take the ACT on Saturday, really wants to raise her score, so has been hitting the review books pretty hard. This college thing would take up pretty much all of tomorrow evening, and then she has her sports banquet on Thursday evening, which she can't miss (we're hoping it will be short), leaving only Friday for a little bit of study (I don't think it's good to do much last minute cramming the night before).</p>
<p>Soooo - stay home and do ACT prep tomorrow night, or spend pretty much the whole evening going to the info session? What would you wise people recommend?</p>
<p>(these schools are all 1500-1700 miles away from us. Since finances are tight with one already in college, we likely won't do visits requiring air travel until after her acceptances are in.)</p>
<p>If it were me, if I had already been preparing diligently, I’d go to the info sessions if that was really what I wanted to do. Studying right before an exam stresses me out. For me it is better to study hard before and then take the last few days off, other than to maybe review some notes or go over a couple practice questions before bed, light simple stuff. That depends on the student.</p>
<p>That said, I researched all the colleges I applied to so meticulously that the info sessions were a complete waste of time other than to remind me what I was working toward. I studied their websites, every other website I could find that mentioned them, spoke to admissions, spoke to financial aid, spoke to head of my intended departments, spoke to current students-- pretty much anything you can think of. I don’t know how useful they are to students who do a more typical amount of research.</p>
<p>stay home and do ACT prep tomorrow night.
If she is thinking that showing “demonstrated interest” by going to one of these crowded group sessions is MORE important to the admissions committee than having the highest ACT scores possible, she couldn’t be more wrong. There are lots of better ways to show demonstrated interest- finding out the name of her college rep and emailing a note expressing interest is just one way to make contact. If the rep happens to come to her HS school to visit, that is the important time to meet him, if only for 5 min.For some colleges, such as Wash U, applying ED is THE ultimate way to demonstrate interest. But colleges do understand that often students can’t travel thousands of miles to visit.And some could care less about DE- such as Stanford [ unless one is a DA]</p>
<p>I wouldn’t go–not because of the test, but because you’ll probably find it to be a big waste of time. You can find plenty of info on the college websites and you can email the admissions departments regarding any questions. </p>
<p>It’s important to actually visit the campuses, go on the campus tours, and get a feel for the campus environment and the student body. Hopefully, you have visited a couple of schools all ready. Make sure your daughter has at least 2 financial/academic safeties on her list that she actually likes and can see herself attending.</p>
<p>A few weeks ago I would’ve said “go!” but we went to one a couple of weeks ago (it was the Rice/UofC/Columbia/Brown one) and it wasn’t all that helpful. It’s just a ton of kids in a ballroom at a hotel and one rep per school and they aren’t all that interested in getting one on one time (I mean, really - how could they possibly?) And they only had kids fill out postcards. I honestly don’t think they’d weigh the “demonstrated interest” based on an evening like that.</p>
<p>In our experience, most regional information sessions were not particularly helpful. First of all, in this case three reps will be sharing the floor with each other for the first part of the evening. Your D will have to sit through one and maybe two presentations that she isn’t interested in. Secondly, some colleges send junior staff to these who are not always as knowledgeable as they should be. We were given incorrect information about something that was critical for D at one of these, and had we not had the sense to check on our own, it would have taken the school off D’s list unnecessarily. Scary! The break out part of the event, when you go off in a corner with the specific school rep could be helpful, but only if there are no really annoying people asking very personal questions about their little darlings. And there almost always are those people there. I vote for staying home.</p>
<p>I agree with the above posters that the mega info sessions are usually not that worthwhile.
On the other hand, if your daughter is absolutely burning to go, you could do the driving and she could use the travel time in the car to study.</p>
<p>If a break in the studying routine is in order, the car is a good place to do it.</p>
<p>Besides, cars have interior lights that kids can study by.</p>
<p>If she os going because she wnts to find out more abot those colleges, great.</p>
<p>If she’s going because it will tally up interest . . . forget it. That marginal value is not worth the drive.</p>
<p>A truer expression of interest might be for her to web search the school, find the Admissions Officer for her area, send an e-mail saying she wanted to attend but had academic and sports commitments, and ask if those schools are scheduling additional visits in the area and/or ask if there are recent alums locally that she could talk with.</p>