Online college fair

An online college fair, or virtual college fair, is an online event held by colleges in the US, where colleges jointly give information to potential students. An online college fair operates according to several of the usual conventions of a “brick and mortar” college recruitment fair: there are event halls, schools have booths that prospective students or parents can visit to exchange information, and there are speaker sessions by various admissions and education experts. The entire fair is contained online, and therefore an online college fair can also have many of the characteristics of a virtual world.

History
The first such online college fair was organized by the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) and held on October 9, 2001. Approximately 200 institutions participated; the number of participating students is unknown. This first online college fair was widely considered a failure as the number of students trying to log on overloaded the system. NACAC, which planned on conducting online college fairs on a regular basis, discontinued the program after the initial event.

Gradschools.com hosted an online college fair in conjunction with a live fair. This event also ran into technical difficulties; namely firewall problems and recruiters that were not prepared to use the online chat features. In November 2002, the Big Apple College Fair also had an online college fair in conjunction with a live fair.

In October 2007 BusinessWeek, which produces annual rankings of United States business school Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs, held MBA Expo 2007 for prospective students with the tagline “Find the B-School that fits you best.” A total of eight US and international business schools attended.

CollegeWeekLive entered the market on November 13, 2007. CollegeWeekLive grew 67% in 2012.

On March 23 and 24, 2011, CollegeWeekLive conducted the largest online college fair up until that date, with over 60,000 event attendees. The fair allowed attendees to interact with college admissions officials and college students from 250 schools via instant messaging and video chat. The fair also included 15 keynote speakers addressing several topics including financial aid, diversity, college essays. etc. Speakers included Lynn O'Shaughnessy, college blogger at CBS MoneyWatch and Harlan Cohen, author of The Naked Roommate.

Univision Media, in collaboration with CollegeWeekLive, held a virtual college fair in 2012, with several presentations in Spanish.

CappexConnect launched in 2013. Part of the Cappex group of websites, CappexConnect hosts online college fairs and online open houses. On September 10, 2013, and October 9, 2013, CappexConnect hosted a fall fair series that included over 15,000 student attendees visiting online booths from over 90 colleges and universities.