The National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) held their annual college fair March 24 at the San Diego Convection Center. High schools all over the county were represented including SDA. “I decided to go because I thought it would be good to talk to colleges that are from out of state instead of visiting them,” said junior Loraina Stinson.
NACAC, founded in 1937, is an organization that strives to help students make choices for postsecondary education. They sponsor college fairs around the country. Each fair has around 200 colleges attending, composed of mostly out of state schools. Available workshops include informing students about selecting the right college, financial aid, California higher education, and SAT vs. ACT.
Counselor Vicki de Jesus explained the importance of college fairs: “Both the college fairs and college visits on high school campuses allow the opportunity for students to network with the same representatives that might review their particular application in the near future.” She did stress however, that it could be invaluable. There are no guarantees in admissions.
At the San Diego Convention, each college or university had a representative ready to answer questions and take mailing requests. “I thought it was helpful because at the college fair you can talk to an actual person and ask questions that letters can’t answer for you,” said junior Anne Holston.
Besides the reps, students liked the scanning technology. If the student signed up in advance, NACAC sent them a bar code via email that they could print and take to the convention. If a student was particularly interested in a certain college, the representative would scan their bar code which put them on the mailing list to receive additional information.
“I thought it was really useful. If there were a lot of people there, you could just have them quickly scan your barcode and then you’d know you’d be able to get emails about that particular college,” said Holston.
The amount of colleges did deter some students: “What I didn’t like about it was that there were a ton of colleges that I wasn’t interested in that I had to wade through to find the colleges I did want,” said junior Katherine Ozorio.
The college fair had an overall positive impact on SDA students, but it didn’t affect their college choices. “I just went to find more colleges with my major but I’m not sure what college is right for me,” said junior Brenton Scher.
“It didn’t exactly influence my choice of where I want to go, but it made me consider more schools that I hadn’t thought of before that could be a good fit for me and helped me to narrow down some of my previous considerations,” said Ozorio.