Campus Visit: Part 1

Greetings readers!

In this past weekend’s edition of Cincinnati’s newspaper, The Enquirer, there was a really interesting article about ways for prospective college students to “Maximize Your College Visit.” For today’s blog, I wanted to take a spinoff of the article and add a few of my own pieces of advice for making the most of your college visits:

Do your homework before you visit.
I completely agree that doing your own research about the college is very important. Look for ways to compare each of the colleges you are looking at, but also look for additional opportunities and resources the college provides. For example: Did you know that almost 40% of Miami students have studied abroad? Every year over 1,500 Miami students participate in a global experience! As you discover some of these unique opportunities, make sure you ask about them during your college visit. As admission counselors, we don’t know everything, but we are willing to find the answers or help make necessary connections for you.

Think about the future.
When you are searching for colleges, don’t just look at the programs that are important to you now, look also at what may be important to you in the future. During our information sessions at Miami, we like to provide prospective students with ways that many Miami students have gained hands-on experience, developed professional contacts and relationships, and helped build their resumes. One way that Miami students do these things is by participating in research with faculty members. Although Miami has great graduate programs, our main focus is on undergraduate teaching. Therefore, research opportunities that are normally reserved for graduate students at other colleges and universities are actually offered to Miami’s undergraduate students. In fact, about 30% of Miami undergraduate students participate in research every year.

These are just a couple of my own pieces of advice for now. In a couple of weeks, I will write another spin off on the article, so stay tuned. In the mean time, you may want to get up to speed on The Enquirer’s article: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090709/EDIT03/907120302

Until next time,
Brian