A photo from our NYC fair
Next week our annual grad fair tour will take us to…
- Denver, CO (Monday, October 25)
- Seattle, WA (Wednesday, October 27)
- Portland, OR (Thursday, October 28)
If you’re near one of those cities, we hope you’ll join us. You’ll have a chance to meet recruiters from 60-80 graduate degree programs ranging from conflict resolution to law to social work to journalism.
A prospective doctoral student recently wrote to ask whether he should travel to one of our fairs. He was curious what to expect and wondered: W hat is the value of attending a grad fair?
Amy Potthast, our Director of Service and Graduate Programs, offered her take:
Each fair takes place in a large room where each school staffs a table with more information, and where representatives chat with prospective students.
One value of a grad fair is that you can potentially build rapport with an admissions staffer at your prospective schools. You’ll then have the name of someone with whom you can follow up, ask questions, and meet on campus. You can make an initial in-person impression with a school representative — which is more powerful than over the phone.
Another value of the event is that you will learn more about schools you’d like to apply for and you find other programs you hadn’t set your sights on yet.
You can also ask basic questions and weed out other programs that aren’t going to be the best fit for your goals — saving you time and money.
We’ll have a Q&A panel where a number of recruiters will offer frank advice about admissions and financial aid so you can hear from a range of admissions experts at once.
On-campus visits are also a good idea, and we have an article on our site where you can learn more about how to plan for campus visits.
Learn more about grad school in our Public Service Graduate Education Resources Center.
[This blog entry appeared on an older version of Idealist; any broken links are a result of having re-launched our site in Fall 2010.]
