Colleges May be Visiting Your Area This Fall

(updated with several additional schools including Northeastern, Rutgers, SMU, Tulane & Washington U. in St. Louis)

I just noticed a link on the MIT admissions site with their Fall travel schedule. MIT shows up here in Atlanta in mid-October. Here's MIT Admissions Director Matt McGann's overview of what will be covered. If you live near a major city it's likely that many selective colleges will be visiting this Fall. Check the admissions sites for colleges you're interested in to see if they'll be visiting your area. As another example, here's Carnegie Mellon's Fall travel schedule.

College Travel Schedules:

MIT
Carnegie Mellon
Vanderbilt roadshow schedule -- a 56 city blitz.
Duke
Stanford
Johns Hopkins
UVA
Cornell
Drexel University
Northwestern
Princeton
Purdue
Penn
Harvard, Princeton & UVA
Dartmouth
Columbia
NYU
Northeastern University
Rutgers
SMU
Tulane
Washington University (St. Louis)

Seniors: August Advice from Johns Hopkins

Greg (& I) get a bunch of unsolicited email and snail mail from colleges. I think one of us must have checked a 'yes, please send us tons of spam' checkbox as part of PSAT registration, or something like that. One day I'll count how much we've received, but I'm sure its many hundreds of messages. Most of them are from colleges we don't care about and they just get filed away. Every once in awhile they come from a school of interest, or have some good advice. We received just such an email from Johns Hopkins yesterday that has valuable advice for Seniors. Here it is:

August: Calm Before the Storm

Your senior year is going to be a whirl of activities. Everything you do this year will be geared toward two things: getting accepted to college and graduation. This month might be your last chance to quietly explore your educational options without the pressure of monthly decision-making, application writing, and examination taking. Use your time well.

Get organized. If you haven't done it yet, cut your list of schools down to around eight or 10. Look carefully at each one, matching it against your goals and capabilities. Which schools have majors that reflect your interests? Which ones look like a good fit for financial and scholarship support? Where do you feel like you could be happy?

Get started completing applications so you don't have to do it this fall. Some deadlines for scholarships (school-based and independent) are coming up fast in September and October. Get your résumé in great shape. Every application, scholarship application, and special recognition program will want a copy.