College Fairs

Mass Chaos… Let’s be honest – that is what a college fair can feel like, but it is also the opportunity for you to gain a lot of useful information from a large number of schools in a short period of time.

So, if you are going to head out to the Columbus Suburban College Fair tomorrow, Sunday, October 5th from 2:00 - 5:00 at Otterbein College, here is some information that can hopefully help you. Take a deep breath, relax, and try not to get too overwhelmed.

The good news is that college fairs give you a chance to meet with admissions representatives in person. They are all gathered together in one place in order to meet you and to answer your questions. Many schools also keep track of the number of interactions/ meetings you have with their admissions representatives during your search and application process so that they can gauge your interest level in their school. As a component of this, and also a way to expand their mailing database, a large number of the college fair booths will have cards for you to fill out with your contact information and interests. If you want to save time you can create and print out address labels that include your name, address, phone number, e-mail, high school name, year of graduation, intended major(s), and extra-curricular activities of interest. You can then just put the label on the card instead of re-writing the exact same information at table after table for each college.

Be prepared before you get to the college fair. Know that there will be far more schools than you are interested in or can even truly take in during one afternoon, so it is useful to come up with a list of colleges that you would be interested in learning more about. You can use PrepHQ to help you create that list by doing a search that looks for different criteria that seems to be a good fit for you. With that list in hand you now have a starting point for the colleges that you would like to talk to during the fair.

It can be useful to ask the same questions of each college so that you can compare them and their responses appropriately. The National Association of College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) has a handout that you can use to help with questions and I encourage you to also consider thinking about the things you most want to know about the school and can’t find in a brochure or website. Everyone is different so your questions are going to be different depending upon your interests, but if you are really interested in playing a club sport in college, you might want to ask about their club/ intramural program and the numbers of students that participate. You may want to ask what the top 2 or 3 majors are on campus as that will give you an idea of what most of the students are interested in studying. If you are undecided about what you would like to study, it would be a great idea to ask them what support and services are available to help students in exploring different majors.

Take something with you to be able to jot some notes on and also a pen or pencil. It is a crazy event with so much happening that if you don’t write it down as you go, you won’t remember much after the fact. The admissions representatives are giving you a small look of the college – what do you think following each glimpse?

When you are walking through the college fair with the list of schools that you want to talk to don’t forget to leave some time for browsing – you may realize that a school you hadn’t previously considered has just what you are looking for in a college. It can be easy for us to get caught in the cycle of only looking at specific schools because that is what “everyone” else is considering.

Ideally you will be able to avoid getting caught up in the crowds and confusion so that you don’t walk away from the college fair with a lot of brochures, but no real ideas or impressions about which colleges most interest you. At the end of the day you will likely have a bag filled with information about colleges. As the “Faring Well at College Fairs” article says, “Don’t succumb to the temptation of just piling all those brochures in some obscure corner of your bedroom. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, take a day or two away from the college search. Then get out all of those brochures, along with the notes you took at the fair, and read through them. You may find that some colleges aren’t as interesting as you first thought. Others only look better the more you research them.”

Good luck and happy college searching… I can’t wait to hear about the schools that spark your interest!

(By the way - in addition to the Columbus Suburban College Fair on Sunday afternoon there is a Learning Disabilities College Fair at Gahanna Lincoln High School on Monday evening from 6-8pm and a Columbus Kiwanis College Fair at Vets Memorial on Tuesday night from 6-8pm.