More than 1,500 students and parents filed into the Santa Fe College gym Wednesday night, swinging white bags filled with college information and scanning the booths for something interesting.
Wednesday night was College Night at SFC, and visitors took advantage of the chance to visit with more than 70 university representatives from across the country.
Cheyenne Sutton, a junior at Newberry High School, was surprised that she could speak with representatives from the featured colleges on a one-on-one basis, she said.
“I was expecting to sit down in an auditorium and just have colleges come and talk about their programs and admissions and that sort of thing,” Sutton said. “I wasn’t expecting them to be personally talking to people as individuals and not as a group.”
Willie Finklin, an admission recruiter for the Florida Institute of Technology, said the event was a great opportunity for high school students to talk with an adviser and narrow down their college search.
He thinks the biggest mistake that students make is changing the questions they ask from booth to booth.
He said students asked a lot of questions about programs and leisure activities.
Parents want to know about finances.
“All of this is good information, but you want to kind of compare the colleges, so you want the same information of what’s important to you,” Finklin said.
Stacey Ledvina, the College Night coordinator, said the most important facet of the event is that it gives students a chance to become familiar with a variety of opportunities.
“It’s important that they know their options,” she said.
Paul J. Crawford, a representative from the University of South Florida, said the best part of his job is interacting with students and parents.
Rather than giving a speech to the people who visited his booth, he focused on answering their questions about college in general.
“It’s one of those times in a life where really, it could go either way for the students,” he said.
It’s nice to help students find the right path that helps their future success, Crawford said.
