Online college fair

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An online college fair, or virtual college fair, is a relatively recent phenomenon that consists of a collection of colleges and universities that communicate and provide information online during a specific timeframe. An online college fair operates according to several of the usual conventions of a “brick and mortar” college fair: there are event halls, schools have booths that prospective students and/or parents can visit to exchange information, and there are speaker sessions by various admissions and education experts. However, the entire fair is contained online, and therefore an online college fair can also have many of the characteristics of a virtual world.

One of the main benefits of an online college fair is that travel cost is eliminated for both school representatives and students.

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[edit] History

The first such online college fair was organized by the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) and held on October 9th, 2001. Approximately 200 institutions participated; the number of participating students is unknown. This first online college fair was widely considered a failure as the number of students trying to log on overloaded the system.[1] NACAC, which planned on conducting online college fairs on a regular basis, discontinued the program after the initial event. Since this first conference, there have been additional online college fairs. Gradschools.com hosted an online college fair in conjunction with a live fair. This event also ran into technical difficulties; namely firewall problems and recruiters that were not prepared to use the online chat features.[2] In November of 2002, the Big Apple College Fair also had an online college fair in conjunction with a live fair.[3]

[edit] Current Online College Fairs

With more users moving utilizing the web for college search information as well as the spread of broadband internet access, online college fairs are once again becoming a major resource for college application information. In October 2007, BusinessWeek, which produces annual rankings of United States business school MBA programs, held MBA Expo 2007 with the tagline “Find the B-School that fits you best.” A total of 8 US and international business schools attended.

On November 13th and 14th 2007, CollegeWeekLive conducted the largest online college fair to date, with over 15,000 event registrants.[4] The fair allowed attendees to interact with college admissions officials and college students from 130 schools via instant messaging and video chat. The fair also included 8 keynote speakers addressing several topics including financial aid, diversity, college essays. etc.

It has been announced that CollegeWeekLive will be held again on March 4th and 5th, 2008.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ http://chronicle.com/free/2002/08/2002080901t.htm The Chronicle for Higher Education
  2. ^ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HJE/is_3_2/ai_79961314 Matrix: The Magazine for Leaders in Education
  3. ^ http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-2222136/Big-Apple-College-Fair-for.html PR Newswire
  4. ^ http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20071115005617&newsLang=en Business Wire

[edit] External links