By: Steven Smeall
Many high school students gathered at Algonquin’s Woodroffe campus throughout the secondary school March break week to get a look at the college.
Algonquin hosted a day of tours and information sessions on March 11, 13 and 15.
“Overall I think it went well, it’s a little more streamline than it was before,” said Jody White, event organizer.
White said that much planning went into these events to fit the schedules of the guest this year.
This year’s event was focused on improving on last year’s event.
“When we did this same event last year, there was a lot of backtracking,” said White, “We had a residence tour, a general-area tour and an interest tour so there was a lot of going back over the same areas.”
Each of the sessions started off explaining the next steps for an accepted student to take and just how they can go about with the financing of their education. Following that they were able to go on a general campus tour or could choose to go on a specific area-of-interest tour which would cover the school that the possible students were most interested in.
There were eight broad areas-of-interest tours that possible students could choose.
Grade 12 student Montana Lamb has been accepted to Algonquin’s pre-health science program, so she took part in the tour that covered just her interests.
“I thought the tour was interesting and cool since we got to see the simulation labs,” said Lamb.
There were tours for smaller programs too. For instance, the veterinary technician and veterinary assistant tour was only available on March 11 while hair stylist and esthetician tours were only available on March 13 and 15.
March break was chosen for the tours because the students will have the most time to stop by for a visit.
“This is usually the week that students will tour around to different colleges and see what the differences are,” said White.
White said that upwards to 110 possible students had showed up for the Monday tours while Wednesday and Friday were much of the same.
With the success of this year’s tours, the March break tours will be a key period for student recruitment at Algonquin.