As the school year comes to an end, the discussion of colleges is beginning to shift focus away from the seniors, as they conclude their decisions, and towards juniors, as they begin to consider where they’ll be applying. Every spring, MCPS holds a countywide college fair during which students from various schools can go meet admissions officers from hundreds of colleges and begin to get an idea of what schools they’d like to attend.
Though the concept and intent of the MCPS college fair are both positive and high-yielding in terms of college exposure, upon attending, the event really isn’t as productive and helpful as one might anticipate.
To paint the picture of the field trip, a majority of the junior class meets after their third periods, files onto school buses and begins the drive to the Adventist HealthCare field house at the Germantown soccerplex. Upon arrival, students are released into rows upon rows of admissions officers, during which they have an hour to fit in as many conversations as possible. Once the hour is up, students file back onto the buses and begin their departure back to WJ.
The plan itself is simple, but it fails to account for the not-so-simple task that students attend the college fair to complete: beginning to develop relationships with admissions officers. A two-minute conversation about how one is touring the school over spring break hardly leaves an impression, and it’s undeniable that students need more time with school representatives to begin to develop a genuine relationship with them. Some students understand this and take the time to have a long and productive conversation with representatives, but by the time that one student is done, the line of students behind them has wasted about half of their time at the fair in line for just that one school.
Understandably, each school’s one-hour shift allows for various MCPS schools to quickly file in and file out of the fair, making sure that each school gets an opportunity to participate in the event. However, these quick shifts simply aren’t long enough for students to truly get a word in with officers and visit a decent amount of colleges’ tables, defeating the entire purpose of the fair. Just take one of the most popular schools into consideration, the University of Michigan. For the entire fair, the Michigan representative was swarmed with at least 30 students at a time, all of whom were competing to get so much as one word in. Some students spent as much as 45 of their 60 minutes waiting in the Michigan line, and once they could finally get through with a conversation, it was time to go.
Without some changes from MCPS, the common belief about the college fair being a beneficial and productive experience for students simply isn’t true, which is why I would advise that rising juniors pass on the event. Whether it be enlarging time slots for each high school’s time at the event or trying to acquire more representatives for each table, some alterations are necessary for the college fair to be worthwhile.
