BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Buffalo National College Fair took a break for COVID and returns to the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center Wednesday morning.
It is a place where families can research colleges without having to travel far at all.
"Parents and students can come down, ask questions, gain insight about colleges from everywhere in the United States," said David Coates, this year's co-chair.
With 180 to 200 colleges represented, families can do research at the Buffalo National College Fair without leaving Western New York.
"This is a great opportunity to narrow your college list down to a reasonable amount to maybe then figure out I want to go look at these two or three colleges instead of having to go look at ten or 15 colleges," said David Coates.
David Coates is this year's co-chair. He is a retired school counselor and has been involved with the fair since it started more than 15 years ago. Coates says a lot has changed since parents applied for college themselves.
"Standardized testing is completely different as far as how that's concerned. The common application, how you apply, has grown to close to a thousand colleges. That wasn't in place twenty years ago. The fact of just having to look at things holistically has changed, so colleges look at not only your grades, but your extracurricular activities, jobs, sports, all the other things you've been involved in," said David Coates.
Coates expects six to eight thousand people to show up starting Wednesday at 9 a.m. They are also busing students in from 85 Western New York high schools.
The college fair is free and runs through Thursday.