Higher education was on the minds of many Wednesday night in the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center, as prospective college students and prospective college parents showed up for a night of lectures and visits with college admissions staffs.
Most of the students were juniors, since this year's seniors are mostly just waiting for acceptance letters.
There were colleges from as far away as Scotland extolling the advantages of attending their institutions or, for some, entering the military.
UB Educational Leadership Associate Professor Nate Daun-Barnett said students and parents have to understand the process better.
"I'll talk to students now in Buffalo public schools and most of them will all tell me they want to go to college. The disconnect between wanting to go and understanding how to get there is where we have to fill in the gaps and some of that has to be done with parents. A lot of it has to be done with students and it has to start very early."
That's often because students are coming from families with no history of college or are from immigrant families unfamiliar with the U.S. system or have enough problems with English that the whole process is complicated.
Rosa Ziolkowski is a teacher in Olmsted married to a Brockport professor with two kids, one of whom is a junior. She gets asked constantly, often in Spanish, for help with the college process. Ziolkowski said parents have to know there can be mistakes.
"Like I always tell them, I will go and ask for more information. So, I look for information and I say, okay, this is what I know about the subject, the topic and if we need more information. So, I am always looking for other resources. I try to help the parents as much as I can."
Ziolkowski is often asked for advice on a variety of educational topics, working in a dual-language program.