Through providing an array of potential colleges for students, the spring college fair, which took place April 7, offered an opportunity to discover new schools.
According to guidance counselor Tom Overberger, the spring college fair is mainly focused towards juniors who are in the midst of their college search.
“In the spring, we have [the college fair] for juniors, because that’s when they should be looking pretty heavily for schools they potentially would apply to in the fall,” Overberger said.
The college fair is a place where students can learn more about colleges they may not have heard of before.
“A lot of times students just don’t know what they don’t know, they’ll see a name of a school on a table, and they’ve never heard of it before,” Overberger said. “Hopefully, they’ll go up and talk and start asking questions and realize that school could be a good fit for them.”
Drexel University Associate Director of Undergraduate Admissions Catherine Campbell-Perna said that there is a lot going on at local schools that many students are not aware of.
“Sometimes there’s places in [students’] own backyard that they think they know about but they don’t know until they come to one of these events,” Campbell-Perna said.
For a few years, Drexel did not attend any college fair which resulted in people being uninformed about events like open houses, visits and new programs that Drexel was offering, Campbell-Perna said.
According to Campbell-Perna, Drexel University leadership tried to only reach out using emails and other internet technologies, but because of that the application process was taken less seriously by applying students.
“We found that a lot of students just didn’t know we were a real school,” Campbell-Perna said.
According to junior Levi Lewis, the college fair is a great opportunity for students to learn more about what colleges can provide.
“The college career was really beneficial to students like myself, because it helped us gain more info on what colleges specifically have to offer,” Lewis said.
For those looking to stay in-state when attending college, the college fair provides numerous local schools.
“I went to the college fair because I want to stay in-state for college and there were a lot of prospective colleges that I want to go to,” Lewis said.
For junior Chris Fu, it was interesting to talk to big schools.
These included Penn State University, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Delaware.