Written by Kyle Poudyal
Montgomery College’s Transfer Fair will be reaching the Germantown campus this Wednesday, March 1, from 10 AM to 1 PM. The transfer fair provides students with the opportunity to speak with representatives from four-year programs at the fair that interest them.
The annual event will take place at the newly expanded DeRionne P. Pollard Student Affairs and Science Building.
The fair will have representatives from more than 34 colleges and universities, both online and face2face institutions. The colleges include representatives from colleges in Maryland, Washington D.C., and 10 other states.
Students will be able to speak to representatives from large and small institutions, private and public colleges, Historical Black Universities and Colleges, and an all-woman’s college.
Justin Edgar is the Articulation and Transfer Program Manager across all three Montgomery College campuses. He says that the transfer fair is “about creating access and equity for students [and] to be able to connect with the four-year partners. Instead of asking questions to the staff members and faculty members here at MC, it allows the students to meet with the representatives from the four-year institutions to ask about the important questions.”
He also views the fair as an opportunity for students to be able to discover schools that they might have never even heard of.
“A lot of students think of just your Maryland schools, but we have schools from across the country. In-state, out-of-state, private, and public. So, there’s a lot of schools students may not have heard of as well.” The fair offers a wide variety of schools to students, according to Edgar.
“A lot of the schools we invite are ones we have official partnerships with. There are also schools we reach out to that we know our students are interested in, or these other schools have reached out to us saying, ‘we have your students coming, and we want to have more of a presence.’ We have the Fashion Institute of Design and Management that comes. There’s the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design that our art department has a partnership. So, there are more specialized [institutions] as well,” Edgar states.
For students that feel that the transfer fair will not have or does not have what they are looking for, it is not the only opportunity to seek out other four-year institutions.
Edgar says, “The pandemic actually brought on some opportunities for us outside of just the standard in-person transfer fair to create more accessibility and access for our students to a variety of four-year partners. Between the in-person transfer fair, we have and the virtual transfer fair, which not only allows a larger scope of institutions that come, but it creates more flexibility for our students as well.”
Edgar acknowledges that the three-hour window for the in-person transfer fair may be difficult for many students, so they are doing whatever they can to allow students to have access to these resources.
“Not only are we doing the in-person fairs now, but we are also partnering with other community colleges [for the] one-day virtual transfer fair [on] March 30 as well,” he adds.
“We’ve also expanded our virtual information sessions and virtual advising options of our four-year partners that want to give that option to our students. I think it’s not just about the transfer fair, but the collection of resources we have for our students,” he told the Globe.
The transfer fair is not just for those seeking to transfer from Montgomery College at the end of the semester.
Barbara LaPilusa, a transfer counselor at the Germantown campus who oversees the campus’ transfer fair on Wednesday, recommends that all students should attend the transfer fair.
“There’s a myth out there that you don’t need to think about transfers right away. I think students might say, ‘I just started at MC, I don’t know where I want to go.’ Well, that’s the time to think about transferring,’’ LaPilusa states.
“You should think about transferring as soon as you start at MC so you can follow a path, and everything will transfer. The sooner you go to a transfer fair, the sooner you can start investigating and exploring those options,” she notes. It’s better if students go multiple times, instead of just once, she adds.
LaPilusa and Edgar agree that the institutions offered at the transfer fair, along with the many other resources, benefit most students at Montgomery College.
“If you look at our top transfer institutions, they are all represented, almost overrepresented at the transfer fairs,” Edgar explains. “We know where our students are going, and we ensure that at least the top ten, if not top twenty schools, are all represented. They know our students are coming to them, and we know where our students are going, and we try to line that up.”
“The numbers don’t lie; this is where our students are going,” LaPilusa adds. “We have the universities there that most of our students want.”
For students who cannot attend, a virtual fair will be held on March 30. Students can also attend the other fairs at the Takoma Park/Silver Spring campus, or at the Rockville campus.