The season of college searching officially got under way on Tuesday at GPS when admission representatives from over 50 colleges and universities – a new record – gathered in the gym for the first College Night. The display tables were spread with pennants, admission materials and applications, information forms and viewbooks, all the better to educate juniors and seniors from GPS and the McCallie School.
“If we have a theme this year,” said GPS Director of College Counseling Susan McCarter, “it’s that our girls should challenge themselves and look at schools outside their comfort zone, or consider schools without immediate name recognition.”
That shouldn’t have been a problem at the first College Night; admission personnel came from Maine to California, Minnesota to Texas, and many locations in between. Among the many schools in attendance were a few Southeastern state universities (Auburn, Ole Miss), small private schools in the Northeast (Union, Bennington, Bowdoin, and Colby), Midwestern schools (DePauw University, Tulsa), and well-known engineering schools such as Embry-Riddle and Georgia Tech.
The large showing of schools is the first of four college nights, with two at McCallie and one more at GPS that are open to juniors and seniors from both schools. A number of other colleges and universities visit the schools’ College Counseling offices to meet individually or in small groups with interested students.
On Wednesday, Ms. McCarter and Assistant Director Claudia Goldbach left for the National Association of College Admission Counseling in Indianapolis, where Ms. McCarter was presenting a workshop on “Use of Demonstrated Interest in College Admission” with representatives from Rhodes, Tulane, and Pitzer College.