College fair advice

PieceofToast
Tue, 10 Apr 2012 22:51:59 +0000

Okay, so don’t bother giving an admissions representative your contact information. It’ll be on your application, and they’ll be busy reading thousands of applications. No, the mission is to get their card, so that you have a specific person to contact with updates or questions regarding your application. When you do a major achievement after your application’s submitted, it’s good to send an articulate letter describing what you’ve done; they’ll usually add it to your file. Talk to them, make a good impression, ask any questions you might have about the college… but I very much doubt that they’ll remember you from one meeting alone.

I did get business cards from a few college representatives, and did eventually email them with a couple additional questions and a major accomplishment. They emailed me back with a brief note (‘congratulations, I’ll add this to your file’). Did it help? Perhaps–I like to think that it did.

I also believe that you can tell a lot about the school from the admissions officers–their demeanor can tell you a lot about how the administration operates. When I visited a college after talking to a rep, I wasn’t really surprised by how they conducted the campus admissions presentation, and it seemed to leak over into the campus ‘vibe’ as a whole.