Check out schools at transfer day

Mt. Hood will hold its annual Oregon Transfer Day on Thursday, Jan. 30, from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. in the Vista Dining Hall, to highlight what is required to transfer to a four-year college or university.

Students have the chance to meet advisers from different schools around Oregon, Washington and Idaho, said Calvin Walker, MHCC academic adviser.

“This is an opportunity to talk with advisers face to face,” Walker said. “Otherwise, students find themselves looking at websites, and you don’t know a lot of the information.

“You’re searching on the website for an hour, and normally what would take you an hour could take 15 minutes here,” Walker said of the event.

He encourages students to attend even if they aren’t sure of their academic future.

“Maybe this will be the influence that will allow you to make up your mind to transfer to [an] Oregon state school or university, be it public or private,” he said.

Walker said the traveling Transfer Day event is coordinated each year by a different Oregon school.

This year, Central Oregon Community College is staging the event, to be held at all 117 campuses in Oregon, said Seana Barry from that school’s admissions and records department.

In each case, the target is “current community college students getting ready or even thinking about transferring,” Barry said.

She said that transferring students should start planning their moves promptly. They should make sure the classes they are taking at their current college will transfer, she said. “But if you don’t know until later in the game, or are in your second term, start looking as early as you can,” she said.

Walker said Transfer Day is a great opportunity for students to learn about what other colleges exist in and around the state of Oregon, and also what types of majors and programs – and flavor – they have to offer.

“All schools have a unique quality,” he said.

Walker said Mt. Hood strives to help students succeed, wherever they attend classes.

“We want to make sure that students who come here get something from having to spend anywhere from a year-and-a-half to two years getting an education, and then, hopefully, transferring on to a four-year college or university,” he said. “It just makes you more competitive in the workplace. You have a better life.”