Lazarus Blog

I am going to attempt to raise my blog from the dead! I have just returned from a 2 city recruiting venture for the college that yielded some material for a diary post. The national college fairs provide a large venue for students to meet with representatives from hundreds of institutions in a central location. The National Association of College Admissions Counselors coordinates the events and estimates that 1/2 million students attend them each year. This year's fall fairs were located in:

• Birmingham, AL
• New Orleans, LA
• Baton Rouge, LA
• Cincinnati, OH
• Phoenix, AZ
• Long Island, NY
• Minneapolis, MN
• Milwaukee, WI
• Chicago, IL
• Indianapolis, IN
• Jacksonville, FL
• St. Louis, MO
• Washington, DC
• Ft. Lauderdale, FL
• Boise, ID
• Atlantic City, NJ
• Seattle, WA
• Philadelphia, PA
• Baltimore, MD
• Spokane, WA

The fairs in Philadelphia and Baltimore that I attended last week always attract an extremely diverse crowd of students in huge numbers. I think it is worthwhile to define what I mean by "diverse" in this sentence. In the college admissions lexicon- "diversity" often means the absence of white people. Baltimore City Public Schools, for example, are 87% African American and it is hard to argue that this represents a "diverse" population. The term "diversity" in its admissions context focuses on how recruiting in such schools can increase the level of "diversity" in a particular college. With that said, Baltimore City Schools represent a fountain of "diversity" for predominantly white institutions.

It was a scheduling anomaly that led to an eye opening experience during this year's Baltimore National College Fair. The Monday November 7th college fair included a morning and an afternoon session. The morning is always heavily attended and very "diverse" (almost exclusively Black). Baltimore City Public Schools bus upwards of 10,000 students to the Convention Center over the course of a three hour period. The evening is typically attended by a diverse (without quotation marks) crowd of students and parents. The following morning buses filled with a "diverse" group of students begin arriving again for the final four hours of the 2 day fair schedule. This year was different. November 8, 2011 was an election day and all Baltimore City Public Schools were closed. This resulted in much smaller and much whiter crowd. What does this have to do with class? Here goes....

The students attending Baltimore City Schools are predominantly poor with 83.9 percent of students eligible for subsidized meals in school. In the absence a yellow bus ride to the convention center, very few of these students were in attendance during the final day of the college fair. I can't prove this. I am basing this assumption on the decline in the number of students in attendance and the corresponding decrease in the number of "minority" students that came. I am also not making the simple generalization that the students that did NOT attend Baltimore City Schools were generally wealthier and more mobile but- I think they are. One reason for this is the fact that all schools in Baltimore were not closed on Tuesday. Private school students arrived in uniform and in reasonably large numbers.

There were two important distinctions between the private school students and the Baltimore Public kids beyond the ethnic composition of the classes. First, college fairs are less useful to students in private schools. The college fair is a recruitment tool that is rapidly going the way of the cassette tape and the ice box. There is very little that is made available in the college fair setting that isn't found just as easily online or in the school guidance office. Private school students generally have greater access to online college resources both inside and outside of school. Private school students can use college fairs more as a networking opportunity than simply an information gathering exercise. The approach of the public school student is markedly different. The handshakes and introductions that are common from private schoolers are replaced by practical questions from the Baltimore City group. While both groups of students are obviously concerned with the programs that are available at a particular school, students in private schools tend to arrive at the fair already armed with this information. It is also important to note that some of the most selective and prestigious institutions in the country are conspicuously absent on the national college fair circuit. The Ivy Leaguers do not tend to mingle with the state universities and second-tier privates in the competition for students. They are as selective in their recruitment activities as they are in their review of their applicants. Private school students are FAR more likely to receive personal visits from admissions representatives at very selective universities and are able to use the college fair for purposeful conversations rather than information retrieval.

The private school contingent that enjoyed free reign of the fair in the absence of the several thousand public schoolers that would typically compete for the attention of representatives essentially participated in mini-interviews with schools of their choice.