Undergrad Students Seek Direction and Swipe Swag

By Megan Schmidt

When it comes to picking the right graduate school, it’s never too soon to start gathering information. That was Danielle Thomas’ reasoning when she decided to attend VCU’s annual Graduate and Professional School Fair on Sept. 27 at the University Student Commons.

“I’m a junior and one of the professors said that it’s better that you start looking at this now instead of waiting until your senior year to figure out where you want to go,” said Thomas, a forensic biology major at VCU. “I’ve actually kind of been planning, but I’m trying to expand on those plans a little bit.”

The annual fair helps students such as Thomas better prepare to transition into the workforce by first pursuing a graduate education. Prospective programs enticed students this year with friendly smiles and swag-strewn tables covered with logo pens, cups, bags and candy.

The diversity of colleges and universities present gave students a wide range of education options to explore.

“We usually have at least 13 or 14 VCU tables that include entire schools,” said Whitney Lovelady, recruitment coordinator for the VCU Office of Graduate Admissions. “We’ve got a bunch of health sciences schools, medical schools, other schools of education and a lot of general graduate schools from around the country. And we’ve even got two international schools here.”

Australia and Scotland were represented by the University of Queensland in Brisbane and the University of St. Andrews in Fife, respectively.

“There’s a nice kind of feeling that people get when they see Australia, and American students seem to like it,” said Christalla Havadjia, a representative of the University of Queensland. “There’s an exotic feel to it since it’s so far away.”

For students looking to stay closer to home, VCU had plenty of graduate programs present at the fair.

“One thing about the VCU family is that we do stick together,” said Agnes Mack, director of admissions for the School of Medicine. “As I look around and I see all of this black and gold, we do have representation from other schools, but VCU still wants to get the information out to their students also. Our graduate programs are wonderful.”

Akeem George, a first-year medical student, joined Mack at the fair to talk to students about his firsthand experience in the medical program. The decision to continue his studies at VCU, after graduating with a degree in biology, was an easy one for George.

“I love VCU. It’s actually the only medical school that I applied to,” said George. “Most people apply to 15 to 20 schools, but I knew that I wanted to come to VCU. I fell in love with the campus and I was impressed by the innovation.”

He also liked the fact that medical students get clinical exposure in their first year and by the second semester are paired with an instructor out in the Richmond community.

Jared Navarro, a senior majoring in psychology, was excited by the convenience of having colleges come to campus as opposed to having to travel to all of them individually.

“I was actually planning to visit the School of New Jersey this weekend,” said Navarro. “I’m still planning to, but I wanted to see what they had here. It saves on gas to visit with these colleges here on campus.”

While some students had the fair marked on their calendars, other students attended on a whim just to see what information was there.

“I actually heard from one of my friends who is a senior here,” said Sonam Dua, a policital science major. “He just posted a status on Facebook actually, so I just decided to come out.”

Regardless of what motivated students to attend, all of them left with a little more information, direction and swag than they arrived with.

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