3 lessons learned from virtual college fairs

This fall we hosted our first first virtual college fair with East Side Union High School in San Jose, California. Over 800 number of students and 95 colleges and universities traded in their printed brochures and resumes for small group chats and on-demand tours of the campus. Since then we've hosted a handful of other virtual college fairs across the nation. Below we’ve highlighted three of our lessons learned from our recent virtual college fairs.

1. Students and parents don’t miss the in-person college fair.
In fact many attendees reported that they liked the convenience of joining from their home. They also enjoyed being able to connect with and learn about schools that they had not heard of before. Schools that might not normally travel to your district are now able to connect with your students! It was like colleges were recruiting students from their couch!

2. Virtual college fairs require less time and money to set up for the high school.
Where traditional fairs take months to organize, Hillsborough County Public Schools only had nine days to set up and recruit both students and colleges and universities. On the day of the event, they had 31 higher ed institutions and 141 students attend.

3. Students do interact with the colleges and universities.
On average, students interacted with at least 2 colleges during the fair. One student attended sessions and favorited 12 unique colleges over the two-hour period. Another student attended sessions from Fairleigh Dickinson University, Binghamton University (SUNY), Florida International University, Florida State University, Mississippi State University, CSU Maritime Academy, and University of Nebraska at Omaha all from behind their computer screen!
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