Most prospective college students and their parents attend at least one college fair while they’re in the college selection process. That’s good: college fairs are a great way to learn what colleges offer and to receive information from several colleges at once. I’ve worked at college fairs for years, and too often, I see students and parents walking around with no idea of what’s going on, and getting nothing out of it. Here are some tips to make the most of your college fair experience.
1. Know which colleges are going to be there. This should be easy. Most college fairs will announce the colleges and universities that will be in attendance before you arrive. If they don’t, your student should already be working on their lists of possible schools, so your plan should include making contact with those schools and looking for them once you arrive. Targeting up to five schools for more in-depth contact is a good idea.
2. Come with a plan. It’s easy to just go with the flow, but that’s not the idea of a college fair. Have your student come with a plan, including the kinds of questions they want to ask, and to make contact with schools they won’t be able to visit until the final stages of the admissions process. You probably don’t need to spend a great deal of time with a school that’s twenty miles away, but certainly do so with a school that’s two states away.
3. Be prepared with questions for each school. Every prospective student should prepare 2-3 questions for each school they visit, but in planning your questions, avoid those that everyone will say “yes” to. You can certainly ask if they have a nursing or engineering program (these are for schools where you don’t know what they offer.) But for the most part, don’t ask if their program is good, because everyone says their nursing program is good. Ask questions like:
If I needed help in a course, what kind of support do you offer? or,
What is the biggest selling point of your school? or,
If we were to talk to a student at your college, what would they tell me about the faculty?
Use you imagination to find out the things your student really wants to know about a college or university.
4. Let your student take the lead. This should probably have been the first tip, but it’s good for you both to be involved in this process. And while you may have lots of ideas about Megan or Sean going to Harvard or Stanford, they need to make some of the decisions about which schools to approach. What parents can do is to challenge their students to learn what is motivating them to consider one school over another. If their answer to why that school? focuses more on the parties they’ve heard about rather than the major they want to pursue, that’s an obvious red flag.
Some things that motivate students to apply to a school aren’t so obvious. For example, if your daughter really thrives in an environment where she gets individual attention, she might not do as well at a large university, even if that school has the best engineering program around. And if you feel your son is delightfully quirky, he may not thrive at a school that has a more conservative feel to it. Thoughtful probing on your part may help you help your student make better school choice decisions. I would also suggest that you say to your student: “I don’t know that school very well. What attracted you to it?” This is very much an “adult to adult” interaction rather than “parent to child.” Your student should appreciate that.
5. Attend any financial aid or scholarship presentations offered during the fair. This is another no-brainer. These sessions are put on by professional in how to finance a higher education. While you may have learned about financial aid from this blog or many other sources, the folks at the college fair are also likely to be local to you, and will have information about scholarship sources you can’t get anywhere else. Having both you and your student attend is a good idea.
6. Think about contacts and personal information. Know that if you fill out interest cards for colleges, you’ll be receiving lots of email from those schools. Perhaps you want that. If not, you may want to create a separate email address just for the college selection process. In that way, you can sort and look through any and all college recruitment materials in one place without clogging up your family email. My suggestion is that both you and your student have access to this email account, and that you go through it together on a regular basis. It’s all part of making this important decision together.
7. Have fun. There is a positive energy around college fairs that is actually fun. And so long as you’re smiling as you walk through row after row of colleges, your student will pick up on that and view the college fair as an opportunity and not a chore.
Good luck!