Kiera Valente ’13 | Staff Writer

With application deadlines quickly approaching, many seniors and  juniors are taking advantage of all the opportunities available to learn about colleges through scheduled meetings available at South this year.

With ninety-nine colleges and universities visiting, there is hope that everyone can find something they like, Teresa Bennett director of  the Career Resource Center (CRC) said.

For interested students, the list of visiting colleges  is posted outside of the counseling center, Bennett said. Fall is the primary time for them to be visiting, so most are visiting now.

“I went to University of Colorado Boulder and it was great,” said Lilly Boggs’13. “Not only was it so much easier to understand than a website but it was nice to just talk with someone who actually lived there.”

Representatives come from all over the country as well as almost all Michigan colleges, Bennett said. With over 100 visits, there is hope that there is a school that interests every student.

“We base a lot of visits off of how many students for that school have attended our school or have been interested in the school in the past years,” said Adrian College Admissions Counselor  Diana Galia.

Adrian, which is approximately and hour and a half away from Grosse Pointe, is just one of the many examples of the colleges that come to South, Bennett said.

“Generally a lot of the same schools, the Michigan ones at least, come every year to South, so if you miss it one year it will most likely be here the next,” said Bennett. “The far away ones sometimes come every other year though.”

To be able to attend one of these visits, students must go to the Counseling Center at least a day in advance to get a pass, Bennett said. The visits are during class, though, so students will have to make up what they miss.

“A lot of times teachers complain about students using it to just skip class,” said Bennett. “I hope kids don’t abuse this privilege and use it for what it was meant for.”

Most of the out of state visits have their meetings in the Library by the CRC, Bennett said. The bigger ones, like University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Grand Valley State University, had their meetings in either Cleminson Hall or the Auditorium.

“These visits are a great opportunity to see or hear about universities they (students) might not have heard of before,” said Bennett. “You cannot get all the answers from a website. Sometimes it is better to talk to someone face to face. This allows you to build a reputation with the representative, where students can just sit down and ask direct questions.”

Students may not realize it, but a lot of the representatives from schools not only remember the students that come to talk with them, but are also the admissions adviser for the county or state, Galia said.

“(The meeting) helps (me) get familiar with the students,” said Galia. “I will be with them from the time they apply to their acceptance so it helps build the relationship.”

A lot of students may think that after going to College Night, these meetings would just be repetitive and an unnecessary step in the college process, Bennett said. Really it is nothing like college night.

Most of College Night, which will be taking place Wednesday, Oct. 10,  is spent browsing around, ‘shopping’ the schools while these meetings allow students to really dig under the surface of the school, Bennett said.

Even students who think they know everything there is to know about a school find these meetings helpful in some way or another, Bennett said. In the long run, its 40 minutes that could help students make a major decision with going to college.

View the video below of Denison College representative Nancy Gibson, for a chance to see what a college visit is like.