It's touring season here in college world! There is a well established cycle when it comes to prospective student visits, with peaks in the fall and spring. Generally the fall is for high school seniors figuring out which schools they want to apply to, and the spring is a mixture of accepted students deciding where they ultimately want to go and high school juniors getting a jump start on the fall. This week began the shift from the former to the latter (which makes since since RIT deposits are due May 1!).
On Wednesday I showed around an accepted student who was getting a feel for Imaging Science at RIT and trying to decide between us and the optics program at a university down the road which shall remain nameless. I and a colleague showed her all around the building, introducing her to labs and students and any unlucky souls who happened to cross our paths. Knowing that she's also an active athlete, we made sure to connect her with students who have had to balance academic and athletic schedules. The tour was great, albeit a little overwhelming since we have so much going on here. One of the awesome parts of her visit was that after she left to get lunch, she and one of the students we introduced her to actually ran into each other getting noms so they chatted even more! (Man, we have the BEST students in this program. Though I shouldn't be surprised - the friendly atmosphere was one of the reasons I myself chose Imaging Science.) Overall, the prospective student's background and interests are very well suited for our program, and I could see her fitting in well here; so I'm hoping she will ultimately choose us! We will find out soon enough, I suppose, since deposits are due in a matter of days.
My hectic schedule of touring continued today with the daughter of one of CIS's research staff. Now, she falls under the category of high school juniors getting a leg up on next (academic) year. This tour was a little different than usual, because she actually wants to go to a community college at first to get a lot of requirements out of the way before (hopefully) transferring into RIT. She has a range of interests from IT/cyber security to computer engineering to Imaging Science, which although the programs do have similarities and can attract similar student profiles, they represent pretty different experiences and come from three different RIT colleges. So while we enjoyed the usual tour of learning about CIS labs and the research we do, the overall focus was more so on what different experiences can be expected between the different programs and what preparation is appropriate depending on the route she wants to follow. Later in the day she's visiting with other programs on campus, which should help give her a better feel for what she wants to do. While I'm not sure that Imaging Science is really where her passion lies, I am really glad she came to check us out because I think she has great potential with (at the very least) our other academic options such as minors and electives. Should she ultimately choose CE or IT/cyber security, I could see her building a powerful combination with Imaging Science. I hope to hear more from her in the future.
Touring season continues next week with another high school junior on Tuesday! Here's hoping my cold finally goes away once and for all so that I quit losing my voice.
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