On April 16, the College Advising office hosted the annual College Fair for the school’s Upper Mids and eleventh graders from local schools. The college fair offers an opportunity for students to get a glimpse into life at colleges and universities.
Ms. Serena Oh Castellano, director of college advising, said, “This is an opportunity to do qualitative research about the schools that they’re looking at and ask questions that you can’t get answers to on a website. It’s important that you don’t just go learn from colleges that you’ve already heard about, but that you ask questions of and learn more about colleges and universities that you may not have heard of.”
The fair included representatives from national and international colleges and universities, including the University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon University, and 104 other schools.
Ms. Castellano said, “We have Canadian universities coming. There’s a college from Ireland. We have IE University, which is in Spain, so we have some schools from all over.”
The office also tries to invite universities that might be of special interest to local students. “Even though we might not have a lot of Hotchkiss students looking at a given school, I thought it was more inclusive to invite schools that other students in this area might be interested in,” said Ms. Castellano.
The College Advising Office follows a specific protocol in order to plan the fair. “There are many different offices at the school that are involved. The fair includes Security, because they have to point all of our guests in the right direction for parking. There’s housekeeping, there’s catering, there’s Mrs. Lisa Brown, chief of staff to the head of school. We need to reserve all of the rooms,” said Ms. Castellano.
Ms. Castellano said, “We typically start by inviting the colleges and universities where we’ve had a history of students applying. Some colleges hear about it from other representatives.”
Though the fair was primarily for students, it also allowed the school’s college advisors to build relationships with representatives. “We obviously want to cultivate strong representatives on the advisor side, because that’s a way of advocating for our students,” said Ms. Castellano.
The event marked an important milestone for Upper Mids in their college process. Ms. Castellano said, “It wouldn’t happen without the support and help of so many people at the school. Mrs. Diana Jones, our administrative assistant, takes care of a lot. She always sends thank you notes to so many people in the community, because without their support and assistance, we wouldn’t be able to make this important event happen.”
