College Fairs: Show & Tell

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I attended another college fair last night at Westwood High School (MA), where nearly 100 colleges were in attendance. These fairs are one-stop opportunities to see what a college has to offer, but it's really a time to pick up the school's literature and meet an admissions person. That's all.

Unfortunately, many of these colleges didn't send their own admissions people, but instead sent people with dated perspectives: alumni with sweet but irrelevant memories to a 16-year-old who shows up to the booth. Perhaps guilty of such bad marketing were colleges like Villanova, Hamilton, Hobart & Williams, Wake Forest, and UMaine. Maybe they knew something about college fairs that made it worthwhile NOT to send their admissions people. For this post, I submit the following observation.

According to my own subjective categories, here are the colleges that impressed me the most:

Most creative and practical presentation catalog: Bridgewater State

Most influenced by a student's interest in their college (HINT: send emails, make lots of phone calls, show your face frequently to admission people): Holy Cross

Most informative catalog so you don't have to visit campus: UMaine, Orono

Most bang-for-your-buck (3 required internships): Endicott

Most worth-looking-into engineering college: Illinois Institute of Technology

Most noticeable college for creative writing: Eckerd (sunny Florida)

Most attractive for accounting and math majors: Eastern Connecticut Univ

Best packaging for college fairs: St Michael's

Most frequented booth: Northeastern

College fairs should be attended only by students (read: parents should stay home) so they can meet the admissions people. It's a way of getting a first sense of the school, but hardly enough of a sense to establish an objective opinion (read: students should stay home).

College fairs are classic Show & Tell: Here's our fantastic catalog, you should love us because of these three hundred and sixty-seven reasons, which means you should feel soothing goosebumps about spending your life-savings with us.

If you must, collect literature and free pens because that's about all you or your student are going to get out of it. I suspect 16- and 17-year-olds are more savvy than the colleges: they discovered the internet a long time ago, and they can order all the college's marketing stuff online. Plus, a student makes an impression by visiting the campus, not the fair. That was the "inside" info I got from these admissions people who showed up.

Student Debt: What Are We Thinking?

I had a gut-wrenching talk with one of my students about the debt he will incur when he graduates from college. He was accepted recently to a college whose cost of attendance is $45,000 a year. The college gave him $7,000 a year in grants. To put it in a way we all understand, his $7,000 was a 15% discount off the going rate.

Not counting the yearly 6% increases he'll receive from the college, and because his parents are strapped for funds to help him pay, his debt upon graduation - at age 22 - will exceed $140,000.

As a real consequence, imagine the following scenario. Three or four years after graduation, he meets the girl of his dreams, and before long the discussion of marriage comes up. But before they both decide to make the Big Decision, the conversation goes like this, starting with the young man:

"I can't tell you how lucky I am to be with you."

"I feel the same way."

Then she asks: "Before we go any further with talk of marriage, I need to ask you one question."

"What's that, sweetheart?"

"How much college debt do you have?"

"Oh...about $140,000. My payments are about $1,500 a month."

"Really? Well, how are we going to buy a house and raise a family over the next ten years with your debt? Plus, I have about $40,000 of my own."

You can see where this is going. How 'bout nowhere? That is, the couple look at each other in exasperation, and for very practical reasons, maybe she opts outs of the relationship and two good hearts are broken.

I asked my student if he could process what a $140,000 debt means. He confessed that he couldn't. Maybe it's some sort of fictional phenomenon that other people worry about, similar to a tornado disaster we New Englanders only see on TV. We know tornadoes happen in Oklahoma and Texas, but not here.

Very slowly this tornado of debt is heading toward this young high school senior, and he doesn't even see it.

Any thoughts? Please post your comments here.

How To Get Off A College's Wait-List: A Solution

Your child has been placed "on hold" by his or her # 1 choice until the college reviews their entire line of applicants, but you're not feeling comfortable. Yet your student still has a shot at getting in. But how? What do you do now? Wait? Waiting is the mistake all wait-listed students make. They're not pro-active in getting off the wait-list. Guess who notices?

Here's a solution (I'm not guaranteeing this will work, but some of my students have made it work).

First determine how badly you really want to go to this college. Let's assume you'd crawl on broken glass for a mile to attend. Great!...you've got your enthusiasm engine fired up, which is exactly the energy you need to make things happen. It's enthusiasm that's going to get someone's attention in the admissions office. It's what I like to call the Gentle Sledgehammer Approach.

The next thing you do is write down on one sheet of paper the 2 or 3 reasons why you absolutely must attend your #1 choice (example = Professor Pin Head is THE expert in the field I want to study, and I have to study under him!), but more importantly, give 3 reasons how the college will benefit from you being one of their students.

Then call the admissions office to find out when the admissions people are in. Go to the school unannounced (asking for an appointment on the phone will get you nowhere) and ask the receptionist if you can have a 2-minute meeting with an admissions counselor. You'll be asked, "What's this regarding?" Simply respond, "I've been wait-listed and all I need is 2 minutes to see an admissions counselor."

Chances are very good you'll get your meeting. Once you're in the admissions counselor's office, have your sheet of paper ready and start by thanking the person for their time. Introduce yourself and state that you appreciate having 2 minutes of their time to discuss what you wrote down. Chances are good that you'll get more time because admissions people never see a line of wait-listed students outsides their office.

Be prepared to hear the counselor say that you can simply hand over your sheet of paper, that it will be reviewed later, and that you can leave. Respond that you'd be happy to, but then state your case with enthusiasm, which is what the admissions person wants to see and hear! After all, how many opportunities do you think this admissions person gets to see and hear someone like you? Hardly ever!

After you leave, you will leave behind not only a piece of paper, but a powerful and positive impression of YOU. When the admission committee finalizes their applicants from the wait-list, guess who they're going to think of first?

Good luck to you!