Today marked the final day of the 63rd annual National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) Conference in Austin, TX. A handful of counselors from PC made the trek down to the Lone Star State to network with other admission and guidance counselors, to attend dozens of presentations on college admission issues, and to share ideas with other admission professionals from all over the country. Over 5,000 NACAC members made their way to Austin for the week in order to get together for this annual event, which provides us with the chance to catch up with colleagues who we may only see a couple of times per year while we are on the road.

Austin is the second National Conference that I have attended during my time at PC (the first was in Tampa, FL in 2005), and it is an amazing sight to see 5,000 admission professionals all gathered together to share their individual stories. The NACAC Conference featured a wide range of presentations, many of which focused on topics of college access and ways that postsecondary and secondary schools can work together to make the admission process less stressful for high school seniors. One of the panels I attended focused on the importance of honest communication between the college admission staff and their prospective students, and highlighted blogging as one of the ways to remove some of the mystery from the process. I hope that my blog has accomplished that to some extent for you, but if there are still some areas that you have questions about, I do encourage you to post them on this site and I will be happy to find the answer for you!

My favorite portion of the conference was a three-hour "college fair" for our colleagues on the secondary school side of the desk. The 500 or so colleges and universities represented at the conference set up booths as we would for a college fair for students, but we spent the three hours speaking with guidance counselors who visited our tables instead of students. This event provided a fantastic opportunity for guidance staff members to gain insight into how specific colleges handled their review processes, and also gave them the chance to learn more about colleges they might not have been familiar with. For me, it gave me the chance to speak with guidance counselors from high schools all across my different geographic territories, and gave me the chance to get to know their specific schools a little bit better. In addition, exchanging contact information with these counselors gives me a contact person to go if and when a student applies from their high school later on in the admission cycle. All in all, the fair is extremely helpful to college counselors on both sides of the desk.

So much takes place at this conference that it's hard to fit it all into one entry, so I will fill you in with more early next week. In the meantime, I continue to encourage you to check out the blogs that our students are writing and send along any student-related questions to them. Their blogs can be accessed from the menu on the left side of this page.

*Scott
9/29/07
Austin, TX!