As part of the College Representative Visit Program, the Upper School Deans Office has organized visits for college representatives to meet with juniors and seniors throughout November. Representative visits will take place both in-person and through Zoom, depending on each college’s preference.

The College Representative Visit Program gives students the opportunity to learn more about schools they might be interested in attending. As of Sept. 9, the school has scheduled 85 visits with different colleges and universities.

The deans said they plan to add more college representative visits and are updating the list almost every day.

Louis Hess ’22 said that he sees the value in having college representative visits, as current seniors did not have the chance to tour college campuses last year because of the pandemic.

“I know that I was one of the people who didn’t get to visit colleges over the summer when I intended on doing it,” Hess said. “I was going to take a flight out to the East Coast and just tour the whole place, but their tours closed down and I didn’t get to do that. I think that getting to talk to [college representatives] and listen to them will be helpful, more so during this time.”

Dean Sara Miranda said the school has so far filled roughly two-thirds of the time slots set aside for representative visits and attributes the uncertainty of the college representative visits to the pandemic.

“Usually all the college reps scramble to sign up to come and see us, but I think there’s been some hesitation to make choices around visiting high schools this year,” Miranda said. “Many schools are still coming to see us in person, which we think is a testament to their interest in physically coming to school, making connections with students and everyone being a little Zoomed-out.”

Cosette Shamonki ’23, who has attended a few of the college representative visits, said she appreciates the effort the school has put into preparing students for college.

“I think that while I have a very good idea of where I would like to go, the [college representative] visits are a great opportunity for me to discover new places that I would have never otherwise considered,” Shamonki said. “I can’t wait for the independence and opportunity to live on my own as well as the chance to further explore my interests and passions.”

Miranda said that the newly implemented block schedule was helpful in not having representative visits conflict with a class.

“It used to be that a student would have to make a choice, like ‘Do I want to learn about Lehigh University or do I go to my AP Physics class?’ ” Miranda said. “We changed it because we didn’t want students to have to give up the opportunity to learn [in a classroom] to learn about college. We want to make sure that students have free reign to ask any questions they have without the stress of feeling like they are missing something.”