Representatives from 20 Utah schools will gather at the Taylorsville Redwood Campus on Tuesday, October 18 for this semester’s College and University Fair.
The fair offers Salt Lake Community College students an opportunity to get a taste of what each school has to offer. Recruiters and advisors will be on hand to answer student’s questions about course offerings, admissions and college life for their respective institutions.
“We wanted to get all the schools at once. At least twenty schools will be on campus,” said Mike Atkinson, transfer advisor at Taylorsville Redwood Campus. “[Students can get] general information about transferring, getting admitted and scholarship deadlines.”
The transfer center is also offering a bonus to sweeten the pot. One lucky attendee will receive a tuition waiver for the current semester, which can easily be worth over $1,000.
“Come out,” said Atkinson. “We were able to get a tuition waiver for fall semester. So students come, see three schools, we’ll have a little card they can fill out. They turn it in and we’ll have a tuition waiver drawing for fall semester.”
Community college students are often caught off guard when it comes time to transfer to a four-year institution. Some find that they’ve earned a significant number of credits that won’t transfer to their school of choice, while others are unprepared for a school’s unique academic requirements.
These and other headaches can be avoided with a modest amount of planning, but the first step is often the hardest.
One way to get started is to begin a dialogue with a transfer advisor. Their job is to ensure that students are prepared by giving them the general lowdown that they need and by showing them where to go for more specific information. A simple preemptive conversation can ensure that a student doesn’t bloat their graduation timeframe by attending too many unnecessary classes.
“For me, the ultimate goal is to get them in the right degree here, the right classes here, to transfer on; to have the student thinking a semester or two in advance,” said Atkinson.
The College and University Fair can also facilitate that first step by providing one place where a student can get the rundown on the local four-year options. From there, a student has a much better idea of what to expect, and what will be expected of them.
“You need to get the information anyway. If you can get a free twelve to fifteen hundred bucks, it was worth a half hour or an hour,” said Atkinson
More information about the transfer center, including the College and University Fair, can be found at www.slcc.edu/transfercenter.
