During the second semester of junior year, the one common thought everyone has is about college. To ease this stress for the second year in a row, co directors of college counseling, Daron Gallina and Matthew Cave, hosted a junior retreat on Wednesday Jan. 18 from 8-12 p.m. in Langford Hall. Gallina and Cave brought two special guests, assistant vice president of admissions at Catawba College, Mark Fox, and executive director of admissions at Florida Institute of Technology, Mike Perry. Fox and Perry were brought to Maclay to help the junior class learn what the people working at admissions think and look for during application season.
“What interests me most about working in admissions originally was the travel,” Perry said. “I also love meeting students and being able to share the excitement in going to college.”
The junior retreat was split into two parts. To start off the morning, the juniors played a game called GPA sorting. In this activity, eight juniors were chosen to hold a card with a different GPA on it. On the inside of each card, there was a list of activities the hypothetical student did or did not do. The eight students would then shift around in a line depending on questions being asked. This game was played to show juniors how GPA is not the only factor in getting into college, extracurricular activities and clubs for example matter as well.
“I thought it [the junior retreat] was good,” junior Parker Lambert said. “It gave us some experience of what it’s going to be like when people are looking over our college resumes so it helps me know what to put in in order to stand out.”
After the GPA sorting game, the junior class split into three groups. Each group was given a folder with three hypothetical student’s resumes. The juniors then needed to decide amongst their group who they were going to accept, waitlist and decline for a hypothetical college.
“I feel like the case study format gave the students an inside glimpse of what kind of happens behind the closed doors of the admissions committee,” Cave said.
Once each group came to a conclusion of which hypothetical student they were going to accept, waitlist and decline, each group went on stage and presented their reasoning for their choices. Finally the junior retreat ended with a Q&A with Fox and Perry and a big group picture by the oak tree.
