By: Jake Nicholson
Due to the inclement weather, the Transfer Fair at Frederick Community College on March 4 was cancelled. Luckily, The Commuter caught up with Marsha Mason-Sowell, the Transfer Services Counselor, to acquire all the information a student who plans to transfer will need. The Commuter obtained information on the next Transfer Fair as well.
Transferring can be an intimidating and confusing process. Many students have no clue where to even start. Fortunately, there are resources to help students get started and more resources to help students through the whole process of transferring.
One of the best places to start researching about transferring to a four-year school is our own homegrown FCC website. To access these resources, you just need to go to www.frederick.edu >> Resources >> Counseling & Advising >> Transfer Recourses >> Students.
In addition to the great content on the FCC website about transferring, there are links to two very helpful resources on the same page. The first resource is ARTSYS. This is great resource if a student plans to transfer to a Maryland public four-year college or university. The second resource is the College Board, which is great for searching colleges throughout the whole country.
The website for ARTSYS is www.artweb.usmd.edu. There, a student can find many useful tools. Some are course equivalencies, transcript evaluations, recommended transfer programs and searches for specific majors. These tools can help a student get started with the transferring process and help create a concrete plan for the student to follow.
College Board website is www.bigfuture.collegeboard.org, this is a great website for students who want to search through schools across the nation. Even though the College Board doesn’t have the same tools ARTSYS does, College Board does have great filters to narrow down schools that align with a student’s personal interest and qualities a student would want in a four-year school.
These tools and resources are a great starting point for finding out what college a student would want to attend. But these resources would never replace the usefulness of visiting the college a student wishes to enroll in.
Marsha Mason-Sowell attested to the importance of visiting a college campus. “It gives you an opportunity to feel the campus out, to see if you will be comfortable there,” said Mason-Sowell.
During the process of applying to the four-year colleges, students need to remember a few key things that are commonly forgotten. First, students need to remember deadlines for everything. This includes transcript deadlines. If students have AP credits, they need to send their scores to their prospective school as well. Students can also do this through College Board. Lastly students need to remember to send their final transcript in, even after they have been accepted to their four-year college of choice.
Transfer fairs are held once a semester at FCC. The fairs are always held in the first week of March for the spring semester and the first week of October for the fall semester. The spring transfer fair will not be rescheduled so the next fair will be during the fall semester, the first week of October.
Students seeking more information should call the admissions office of the prospective school they wish to attend. Also, students should set up an appointment with Mason-Sowell at the FCC admissions office. She is more than willing to help students accomplish their transferring goals.
