HHS Hosts 6th Annual College Fair

Hastings Senior High hosted its 6th annual college fair on October 10, which was available to high school upperclassmen in HHS and the four surrounding schools.

The purpose of the annual college fair is to help connect students with college representatives who can give information and answer specific questions.

“As counselors, we know a little bit about different schools, but these reps from these colleges, they know everything about that school,” Bittfield said. “So if a kid has a particular question about financial aid, different programs, housing, that rep can answer that.”

One benefit of having many college representatives in one place is that it makes it easier for students to compare different colleges they’re interested in.

“Yeah, I think it really helps show what their possibilities are just not just because of what school I go to, but also, depending on finances, they can see the different averages, prices and schools and stuff like that,” junior Ashton Hawes said.

The college fair has become an annual event at HHS, organized by the school counselors. 

“We work with an organization that brings registrar’s and mission reps, so they’re the ones that contact the different reps from the colleges and then let us know who’s coming, and then it’s on us at Hastings High to contact our students and different schools,” Bittfield said.

Many local schools were invited to attend the college fair at HHS, including Adam Central, Saint Cecilia, BlueHill, and Kenesaw.

“We’re very fortunate because we’re big enough to warrant hosting, so anything we can do to help these surrounding schools is great,” Bittfield said.

One benefit that stuck out to the 8th year HHS counselor is the opportunity to educate students on the different options out there. 

“A couple of years ago there was a student who really wasn’t thinking of going to college, but then he was connected with a rep and kind of got on that track and then found his passion,” Bittfield said. “This particular school had a nice program and so to get a kid who probably wasn’t thinking about going to college, to get him connected and then going into college is pretty cool.” 

Hawes appreciated that the fair gives students the opportunity to see the different options they have after high school.

“Probably seeing all the kids being really interested in the different opportunities and the different varieties of colleges,” Hawes said. There’s such a different variety of things you could go into outside of high school. It’s pretty cool to see. It was interesting to see different careers I could go into depending on where I went to college or even just what suited me best. I think it really helps show what their possibilities are just not just because of what school I go to, but also, depending on finances, they can see the different averages, prices and schools and stuff like that.”

The only improvements that students would like to see in the college fair are for it to be longer to give them the full opportunity to explore all the options represented and for college representatives to have a little more information to fully grasp all their options.

“I just wished that some of the groups had a little more statistics on their part. I mean, I asked them what kind of dropout rates and stuff they had,” Hawes said. “Some of them had it and some of them didn’t. But overall, they gave me the gist of what their colleges were like, and it was pretty good.”