Representatives of more than 50 colleges and universities came to EC for Transfer Day Fair on Tuesday, Oct. 6 to share information about their schools, a Transfer Center coordinator said.
School brochures were handed out to students who were interested in obtaining them and inside many of the brochures were information such as admission rates, offered majors, and offered programs.
In addition to being able to collect brochures, students were able to go to each table and ask the school’s representative any lingering questions that were on their minds about transferring and which colleges or universities had programs for their majors.
“We were able to talk and gain knowledge from an actual person we could see instead of worrying about or looking up faulty information from the internet about our choice of schools,” Paula Kirjavainen, English major, said.
Many students decided to show up at this event because they were interested in choosing a particular college and finding out information on admission requirements as well as the school’s application process.
They wanted to find out what expectations certain universities had for transferring students and the qualities they were looking for when choosing students.
“I wanted to know whether or not certain schools cared if I did extracurricular activities or if they would just rather have me focus on my academics,” Vi Nguyen, history major, said.
Nguyen said her question was answered by many of the representatives and school expectations were clarified for her so that she is able to make the “right educational decisions” for the future.
“It was also a big opportunity for continuing students and fall applicants to gather information on financial aid and tuition fees to confirm certain school choices,” Transfer Center coordinator, Sue Oda, said.
For instance, after walking through the Fair, some students such as Kirjavainen lost interest in colleges that they wanted to attend before and gained interest in others.
“It helped me because I found out that one of the universities I’m interested in, UC Santa Cruz has a very high tuition, so I’m not sure if it will stay on my list,” she said.
Kirjavainen also said that although she and possibly other students changed their minds about applying to certain colleges, it wasn’t a problem because the Fair had plenty of other options to choose from and gain some “insider knowledge from”.
“What we try to do is show students that they have many options available to them,” Oda said.
“We had Cal States, Universities of California, out-of-state school, historically black colleges, and independent colleges so I hope it showed them there was a lot more out there than what they had thought about.”
Oda said that EC’s top student transferred universities, Cal State Dominguez, Cal State Long Beach, and UCLA were all present at the Fair.
Other schools such as University of Montana, Howard University, Otis, and Mount St. Mary’s College were also among the 58 showed up to give out information to students.
Oda said that although there will be other transfer fairs throughout the year, the Transfer Day Fair is the biggest transfer fair with the most amount of universities on campus and it takes place only once a year.
“The Fair went really well. There were so many students and universities that showed up and some school though we had great students,” she said.