On the Rice application, College Fairs and Off-Campus Information Sessions are listed as separate contacts.
What’s the difference?
A college fair is usually a table with a college representative at an event where lots of colleges have tables. Crowded, noisy, minimal opportunity to have any meaningful discussion, IMHO. Be sure to sign in at the tables of colleges you care about if you go to one.
An off campus info session is sometimes scheduled in larger cities, and students who have signed up for mailings are invited. It is usually a brief talk from someone associated with the college, and then mingling and chatting for a while. Sometimes a college will join with a couple other colleges for a related event.
Another kind of off campus info session is if a college sends a rep to a HS where they do an info presentation and andre questions. They do this for HSs where they tend to get a lot of applicants.
They show different levels of demonstrated interest - one might just stumble onto a school’s table at a college fair. One has to make an effort to attend an off-campus information session.
Information sessions are preferable in my opinion because in a college fair everyone is talking to a bunch of people from a bunch of different colleges, oftentimes with people waiting in line and asking very general questions. Information sessions are more targeted towards the specific college and will likely be more presentation style with an opportunity to ask questions at the end.