We all remember being a Senior in high school and the fall being such a stressful time. However, college tours and open houses were a seemingly perfect way to physically envision if you could see yourself going to a particular school and learn more about the school.
COVID-19 has impacted every sector of life, if you are a high school senior right now usually in the world without the pandemic there wouldn’t be any thought into the safety of you and your families health while visiting a college campus, But in the world today that’s not the case.
For about five months college administrations all across the country had to figure out a lot. For example, if they were having in-person classes, virtual classes or a combination of both, how to keep their campuses safe.
But if you worked in the admissions office on a college campus you had to figure out how to welcome prospective students and their families to your school’s campus in the fall. Luckily for students interested in Cabrini our school’s admissions team has figured it out to keep everyone safe.
Cabrini’s admissions department still offers its normal undergraduate admissions events but with a covid-friendly twist. “Since April, we’ve been doing ongoing virtual opportunities for high school students,” Kimberly Lewis, executive head of admissions, said. “So we had our accepted students stay fully online, we had a series called conversations with Cavaliers online, we’ve done information sessions online and our counselors are doing high school visits online.”The admission department has open houses the next one takes place virtually on Nov.12.
Cabrini still offers in-person tours for prospective students and their families but it’s required to wear a mask at all times and tours welcome up to five students and each student is allowed to bring only one guest. During the tours their guests are only limited to enter several buildings, guests aren’t able to enter the residence halls and the dining facilities on campus.
To register for a tour the admissions office does have a requirement saying you must register for all tours 48 hours in advance. They offer tours Monday through Friday at 9:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. but only on Mondays and Fridays do they also offer at 3 p.m. Cabrini also offers Saturday tours for Nov. 14 and Dec. 5th, those tours start at 10 a.m., 11 a.m. and noon.
If prospective students and their families would like to see the residence halls and the dining facilities on campus, Cabrini offers a 360-degree interactive tour of the entire campus located on the school’s youtube page. While watching the video you can toggle with your finger or your mouse to get the full experience of what the room or building is like, just like on an in-person tour.
The video tour is narrated by Joan Owiaski, a graduate from the Cabrini class of 2017. The video gives an in-depth tour of every building of campus and what each building offers for the students of Cabrini.
“We work closely with our marketing department,” Lewis said. ”We wanted a campus tour to be one of the first things we did when we went out on quarantine because that we knew that that would be a piece that families would miss immediately. So it was really important for us to have a great campus tour. Families when they come here, talk about how beautiful Cabrini is so we knew that we had to share it. And that even if we couldn’t have people on campus, we needed a way to show it. So I’m grateful that marketing was able to pull together a tour.”
