Although college representative visits to high schools are nothing new, many more juniors and seniors are taking advantage of the meetings to further their college search.
The college visit meetings can be beneficial to students because they provide detailed information about a particular college but do not require a trek to the campus. The meetings are led by a college admissions representative from the visiting university, who personally meets with the students and provides information about the school.
Instead of traveling all the way to the university to tour a campus, “students [can] hear first-hand from a college representative about the college, including programs, majors, residential life and student activities on a campus,” said guidance counselor, Katie Dorn. The meetings allow students to “gain an understanding of how each college makes their admission decisions and what the application requirements are for admission,” said Dorn.
Senior Jeff Sauer attends the college visit meetings to help “easily thin [his] college selection process.” Despite the numerous benefits that the college visit meetings provide to help a student’s college selection process, some students have used these meetings as an opportunity to get out of class. The guidance counselors “keep track of the number of college visits attended by each student, and will meet with any student who has attended too many of the meetings,” said Dorn.
In addition to a student’s interest in attending a meeting for a visiting university and obtaining a pink pass to excuse them from class, students must have their teacher’s signature before they attend the meeting. “Teachers have the right to not sign a pass and keep the student in class if there is a test or presentation that day or important material being covered,” said Dorn.
It is evident that some students are using the college visits meetings to skip class. Out of 21 juniors and seniors surveyed, 12 students reported that they had attended a college visit meeting to get out of class.
“I have notice[d] that many people attend nearly all of the college meetings in order to skip class or miss a test,” said Sauer.
Although some students do not use the meetings effectively, many juniors and seniors find the meetings informative and helpful in their college search.
Junior Maya Gardiner has attended seven college meetings this school year because the meetings “can be really helpful if [a student] doesn’t know much about a school that [they] are really interested in.”
Junior Meggie Dumas agrees with the opportunities that the meetings provide. As a junior, attending the meetings “opens doors and enables the [college] decision process to start,” said Dumas. The meetings have allowed Dumas to “create an opinion on whether or not it would be in [her] best interest to look further into a specific college” from information that she gathered from the meeting at OHS.
This fall, more than ten universities visited Orono for the first time because of the “concerted marketing effort [guidance counselors have made] to colleges and universities around the country to let them know about Orono High School and our great students,” said Dorn. The guidance counselors extend invitations to universities “that OHS students have been applying to, yet the college admission representative has never been to Orono or had not accepted students from Orono,” said Dorn.
The new marketing strategies from the guidance office have been successful as this fall brought a surplus of some of the nation’s top colleges. In addition to visits from returning schools like Vanderbilt University and the University of Southern California, OHS has added visits from the University of Notre Dame, Tufts University, Colgate University, Boston College and many others to the repertoire this fall.
“Orono’s reputation has always been great, but now more of [the nation’s top colleges] are aware of the successes,” said college visit meetings volunteer Sarah Hrusovsky.
Margeaux Dittrich is the Arts & Entertainment Editor for The Spartan Speaks.
