Virtual College Fairs

Learning about colleges when you can't walk on the campus and see the students can be a challenge, but there are LOTS of virtual opportunities that colleges have been working to create and provide for students.  We will talk more about learning about schools from them directly in a different post, but tonight I want to highlight the benefits of doing virtual college fairs.

So, I have to be honest.  I think that college fairs are incredibly overwhelming when they are in person.  They let the counselors have a preview day so that we could get a feel for what it is like for students and, at least to me, I only found it slightly less overwhelming.  But at the same time I also really enjoyed the chance to hop on to various sessions and learn about different schools without having to set up individual appointments with separate admissions offices.

There are two main organizations that are coordinating and facilitating the virtual college fairs.  The Ohio Association of College Admissions Counselors is hosting their college fair over essentially 2 months.  They start next week on September 14th and run through October 1st and then they take a break before kicking back up again October 26th through November 13th.  There are lots of interesting options associated with their college fair including sessions about myth busting, college essays, applying to med school, plus, of course, all of the typical individual college information presentations.  (I have signed up and am looking forward to attending many of these sessions.)

The other organization is the National Association of College Admissions Counselors and they are hosting 4 days of virtual college fairs starting this coming weekend on September 13th from 12-8pm.  They also have dates scheduled for October 12th from 1-9pm, October 18th from 12-8pm, and November 8th from 2-10pm.  This was the college fair that I got to preview and I had a hard time figuring out who all had sessions running at any given time and felt like I was doing a LOT of jumping around.  One hint, in case it is helpful is that if you search for exhibitors by state you will see the colleges for that state and you can then scroll down to look at see when they might be running formal sessions that you could attend and on what topics.  So, for example, a college might have a general information session a few times, they may have a session on honors or other special programs, and they might have a financial aid and scholarship related session where other colleges may just have admissions information sessions.  They sent us an email today with a link to this 2 minute video on getting around and while I think it seems easy when I did it I didn't use all of the options they gave as easily as they made it seem.  So I strongly suggest you watch the brief video first.  And here is a quick start guide.  Also, one other hint - Don't look for OSU in the alphabetical list as "OSU" or even as "Ohio State" they are "THE Ohio State University."  Yep, under T's... not where I thought I would find them.

All of the college fairs are free of charge, but you do need to register for them.  Here are the links to sign up:

Ohio College Fair (not just Ohio colleges!): https://oacac.org/student-registration/

National College Fair: https://virtualcollegefairs.org/

Again, great opportunities will abound starting this weekend.  Don't miss out on any of the sessions that interest you!