How One Student Made The Most Of His College Visit
I received a call the other day from one my students, Nick, who had spent the day at SUNY Oneonta, a regional state university situated in the middle of upstate New York. He was scheduled to attend their information session but had also called ahead to secure an interview with an admission counselor. With the school residing nearly four hours from his hometown, it wasn’t likely that he was going back for a second visit before application season takes off. The school had only recently shown up on Nick’s radar and with a day off from school for Rosh Hashanah, he and his dad made the trek to campus.
Once the interview was over, Nick and his dad decided to skip the information session. He felt they had already received so much good information from the admission counselor that sitting through a 45-minute presentation would be redundant. They took a chance and decided to go off the beaten path to explore campus on their own.
Nick is a prospective music industry major so they decided to visit the music building to take a look around. Once inside, they ran into a few students. They made small talk with the students and then happened upon a professor who was on his way to teach a class. After introducing himself, the professor offered to show them around the building. He talked about the program’s strengths, the opportunities that were there for a student like Nick and also showed them around the sound recording studios. But it’s what happened next that got me so excited for Nick.
Realizing the time had come for his class to start shortly, the professor invited Nick to sit in on his class.
Nick accepted this professor’s offer and spent the next hour and half getting a taste of what a college class would feel like.
I’m so proud of him for doing what he did and I couldn’t have scripted it any better even if I had tried. If Nick had just sat through the information session, he would have missed out on all of this. He never would have sat in on the class, he never would have had a first hand look at the studios and he never would have called me with the level of excitement in his voice that I heard that day.
Instead, he took a chance, struck up some conversations and ended up having an experience that may just end up being a game-changer by the time his applications have been submitted and the dust has settled.
Now, that’s how you make the most of a college visit.
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