College fair... starting young

So, this week I participated in a college fair which I thought was going to be for high school students (possibly because the email invitation I received said it was going to be for high school students). Yes, I did find it a little confusing that the location was the middle school next door to the high school I thought it was going to be for... and didn't I already do a college fair for this high school's district, last fall?

Things started to make more sense when students arrived and turned out to be middle schoolers.

I think the other college representatives at the fair, of which there weren't many really, may have felt a little baited-and-switched. I sure did, at first.

But for me, this was a great opportunity. I actually prefer, in some ways, to do recruiting among younger students. In this part of the state, and in this part of the country generally, parents and counselors have almost no good information about how to prep for admission to a highly competitive college. It's very satisfying to give them advice while there's still time to use it. (Take the PSAT early and often! IB is preferable to Running Start in most cases! There's such a thing as need-based financial aid! Look out of state!) It just took me a few tries to get my spiel switched over and figure out how to talk to these much younger kids and their parents.

I think the community outreach organization that helped put on this college fair is in a bit of a bind... baiting and switching isn't cool, but if they worried that most colleges wouldn't bother to come for middle schoolers, they're probably right. A companion problem, however, is that most full-time professional college recruiters don't have a spiel for younger kids and their parents. I'll be interested to see whether this particular fair takes off or crashes next spring.