From October 20-23, nearly twenty universities from around the country are coming to give students a chance to learn about their institution. 

Many of these visits were made possible due to the strong reputation built by previous graduates over the years.

“There are over 200 college representatives in town next week because of the college fairs at the World Market Center,” counselor Janelle Kelly said. “All those colleges gather there, but those events are at night. So during the day, the representatives want to go visit schools and do some recruiting. They look for schools with a good reputation and send kids out to some reputable colleges. We’ve had to turn down a few schools because we can’t accommodate everyone, but we’re still having quite a few this week.”

Students, primarily juniors and seniors, were able to sign up for presentations at the beginning of the year to learn more about specific colleges. 

“For the ones where they give an actual presentation, the link was sent out for kids to sign up [to see certain schools],” Kelly said. “Usually, we don’t have ninth graders and tenth graders at those presentations, just because it’s too early for them. They’re not quite in that position yet.”

Despite presentations being limited to upper classmen, all grade levels will have a chance to learn about the individual schools during first and second lunch.

“For lunch visits, it’s up to the kids if they’re going to go up [to the tables] and benefit from it, or simply ignore it,” Kelly said. “We [encourage students] to sign up for these visits because the representatives always have information such as brochures and stuff that the students can grab. [The thing is], we have a lot of kids who say they want to go out of state, but they’ve done zero research. They don’t know what the costs are. They don’t know the programs they have. So, this is just a way to help them do their research.”

Representatives from the schools will be present to answer any questions the students have.

“I think it’s a great way [for students] to find schools that may have a program they’ll really want that they can’t get locally,” American Government teacher Adam Cegavske said. “They can talk to the actual people that work there and see the requirements they need to meet before the end of the semester. If stuff is due with the FAFSA or scholarship information, [it could] help them understand how to get more money and also get accepted too.”

Many students have expressed their excitement about checking out all the different colleges. 

“I am very excited for all the colleges presenting [this week],” junior Nathan Evarts said. “I think they will be very helpful in deciding what colleges to work towards and [will also] help with research senior year. My counselor [already] recommended Embry Riddle and UNR to me for the engineering program, but seeing all the different colleges and what they offer on campus will help my decision.”

Students believe this experience will benefit them greatly in finding a college that fits their future career interests.

“These college fairs are very interesting,” senior McKinley Shavers said. “They’re here to help us get an understanding of where we want to go. For instance, I’m still trying to figure out where I’m trying to go and what I’m trying to do. I feel like these colleges coming in are helping me progress toward that. I’m [most] excited to learn about UNLV, or CSN, because I want to stay in state for the Millennium scholarship. But other than that, I may [also] look towards some options out of state that could be interesting.”