The Bakersfield Convention Center held the annual College Night for students to get information from the attending colleges. With over 60 colleges and universities in attendance at this “meet and greet,” it allowed local students to talk to representatives from the four-year schools.
With over 4,000 students in attendance Evan Engle, the admissions counselor for Westmont College, enjoyed being there, “This is my first one by myself, so it’s kind of chaotic but it’s good.”
Highland High School senior Crystal Cravins gathered information from UC Riverside and UC Santa Barbara.
“At Riverside, I looked for agricultural info and at Santa Barbara, well it’s Santa Barbara.” Cravins felt it was an overall successful night.
Texas Christian University regional director of admissions for California and Nevada, Betsey Fuller Hayes, said that most people “know TCU for journalism, business engineering education and performing arts.” But according to Hayes, “Athletic training, kinesiology and social work” are just a few of their 100 unique areas of emphasis.
Rose Candelaria, 17, a senior at Stockdale High was looking at, “Mostly the Catholic colleges that are here.” Candeleria’s pamphlets included schools such as Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s College of California.
Celine Miernicki, the admissions officer at St. Mary’s, said of their transfer requirements, “We are looking at a minimum of a 2.3 GPA, 23 UC transferable credits and a C average in geometry.”
Ariel Hurtado, 18, a criminal justice major at Bakersfield College was searching for transfer information with schools that had his major; he found that Fresno State and Cal State Bakersfield offered what he wanted.
Fresno State has 22,000 students, and according to Desiree Molynuex, outreach counselor for the university, “Bakersfield College is our fifth transfer student population and a very large part of our population comes from Kern County. We’re very popular down here.”
Molynuex went on to say, “We also offer an enology degree, which is the study of wine making. We are the only university to have a winery on campus.”
Krystina Guinto, a 17-year-old junior at South High School, was searching for information on majors offered.
“I was looking for what different majors they had, to see if they had what I’m looking for, and it helps getting all the information I need to help me select a college since there’s so many of them,” said Guinto.
With Guinto was classmate Diane Valdez, who was also looking at majors offered at the different schools.
“I got info about the engineering school at Riverside which was pretty cool, I’m looking into that and they gave me some financial aid help.”
Valdez said of the night overall, “It was cool, there was a lot of people here but a lot of information too.”