<p>This is the high season colleges reps are visiting High Schools. On the surface, it seems just like a sales pitch. A presentation of some sort is given and the interested students get a chance to ask some questions. Is there any thing more than that?</p>
<p>I will assume there must be some communications between the college rep and the HS GC. Does the GC push certain student(s)? If a student could formulate a very nice question, does that get him/her noticed by the rep? Since the application is not in yet, I don't think college reps would have much information of any particular student at this time. Except the recruited and/or major national competition winners, of course.</p>
<p>Also, could one judge the "academic strength" of the HS from the range of colleges that come to visit? Could a HS become a "favorite" of a particular college rep?</p>
<p>Our “college night” is tonight - but it is an event where 40-50 colleges are represented in one setting. Sounds like you are talking about times when an individual admin rep comes to a school to meet with kids. That doesn’t happen much in our large publics.</p>
<p>I’m going to answer this based on my experience as a parent of a student at a large public high school and my own employment in the college counseling office of a small private high school. The college reps come in for one period - so maybe it’s 40 minutes. What happens next depends on how many students show up. If it is a large group for a popular school - the college rep gives kind of a canned presentation - hitting the highlights of the school and their admissions process - and then takes questions. if it is a lesser known school and only 2-3 students show up - they really get a more personal experience - almost like a small group interview and the rep can taylor the presentation to their interests. </p>
<p>At both, if the GC knows a particular student is very interested and very well qualified - they will promote them to the rep. Some reps are more receptive to this than others. Over time, relationships do develop between the GC and the college rep - particularly when they are both in the same position for a number of years. However, I have not seen this relationship have a noticeable effect on the admissions decision - it’s more of a help when something is missing from the student’s application and they take the time to call the GC and let them know, allow the missing info to be faxed, etc.</p>
<p>I’ve been volunteering to take notes for students who can’t attend when reps visit our large public northeastern high school. What rockvillemom says is the norm. The rep does his or her “spiel”, kids ask questions, I ask prepared questions to make sure my form is completely filled out with the information that is sought. Kids who are applying or very interested make sure to attend and get some “face time” with the rep, but how much time you get depends on how many kids are there, which is dependent on how popular the school is there. For instance, when BC or NYU send a rep? There’s almost no one on one time. However, this week we had a large, southern flagship university visit and there was just one prospective student. She obviously received a great deal of attention from the rep.</p>
<p>I sat in on a session when ds was a sophomore, just because I happened to be on campus when they announced it and it was a school ds was interested in. Ds wasn’t there because only juniors and seniors are allowed to attend the visits.</p>
<p>This college is very popular at ds’s school. There were probably 75 kids there. Rep had the kids fill out an interest card, she did her spiel and handed out some material, though she ran out. Kids asked questions, and some lined up to introduce themselves in an attempt to get face time, but the crowd was way too big for meaningful engagement.</p>
<p>Ds has been at some, however, where there were very few kids, he said, so there’s a lot of opportunity to make an impression. We have been at other events where the recruiters remember ds (or they’re lying )</p>
<p>We get many of the same schools every year, but I’ve spoken to a couple of recruiters who say whether they get to our particular school depends on how much time they have in town. There are probably a half-dozen top schools in the area, and if they only have one day, they may only make three of them. Or they might have two days in town, but one evening is set aside for a reception at a hotel, so kids at all schools get a chance to learn about the program, making fewer school visits unnecessary.</p>
<p>Our experience has been much like the descriptions by the other posters. I will say that S1 showed up at one session and wound up having an hour-long, one-on-one chat with the head of admissions from that school (and it was #2 on his list).</p>
<p>Our large school gets lots of reps for the high season sometimes several in one day. I think they do the rounds of the county and some schools have regional reps. 4gsmom describes it pretty accurately.</p>
<p>My kids found that it <em>can</em> be particularly valuable to attend sessions for LACs that they are interested in. LACs tend to be schools for which expression of interest on the part of the student is noticed; admission are more holistic and the regional rep might remember something about an applicant who showed up and participated (easier to stand out at a typical sparsely attended LAC presentation than at a crowded one for an Ivy or a large state school).</p>
<p>They also found that some regional reps are not very well informed about the school they represent, especially about specialty programs, so don’t take everything these guys say as gospel. If you doubt the veracity, check the website. Info on the website is pretty likely to be accurate.</p>
<p>Many students find they can’t attend all the sessions they might be interested in (too many conflicts with important classes/tests) – also schools often limit the total number of these sessions that a junior or senior may attend. The truth is, they are relatively inefficient as a way of conveying info about the school in the age of web sites, and I believe that the financial squeeze on college income will cause institutions to reduce their investment in the road show, or at least to focus it more tightly…</p>
<p>Based on what I’ve seen, these reps are on the road doing evening college fairs and visit individual schools during the day in what would otherwise be downtime for them. While I’m sure that some colleges target certain schools to visit, at D’s school which schools do day visits is more a function of who the GC invites and whether the date fits into the rep’s schedule than it is of the caliber of the school.</p>
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