College Fairs Might Seem Ho-Hum. Until You Meet the Rural Students at This One.

Flagstaff, Ariz.

The admissions officers were coming, and they would need water. So on a Wednesday afternoon in late October, Katherine Pastor drove across town to buy some.

At Sam’s Club, the high-school counselor rolled down the beverage aisle with a headful of concerns. Early-admission deadlines loomed. Some seniors were struggling with federal-aid forms. And hours earlier, a distraught young woman pulled her aside to say that she was being bullied by another student.

Still, someone had to run this errand. Someone had to get everything ready for tomorrow night’s big college fair, hosted by Flagstaff High School. Each fall, the event attracts about 100 institutions of all kinds. Teenagers from far-flung towns — towns that few, if any, admissions officers ever visit — travel many miles to grab some brochures, shake some hands, and, if they’re lucky, learn something that helps them reach the right campus. Or any campus at all.

A college fair might seem superfluous in places where colleges abound. But in this mostly rural swath of the Southwest, where many families don’t live close to a single four-year campus, the Northern Arizona Region College Night spans the distance between higher education and a realm it often overlooks. For some lucky students, applying to college is routine; in outposts such as Lake Havasu City, Prescott, and Winslow, it can feel like tackling a riddle in a foreign tongue.

Pastor, a sincere 42-year-old with highlights in her brown hair, didn’t mind loading three heavy packages of bottled water into her cart after a long day. A counselor with a caseload of 500, she lives and breathes logistics. For her, the fair was an affirmation. All students, regardless of where they live, deserve a chance to meet face-to-face with college reps. To stand in a gym full of colorful banners and think, I can do this.

Pastor grew up in Flagstaff and graduated from Northern Arizona University, where she later worked in the financial-aid office and earned a master’s degree in counseling. When she started her job at Flagstaff High, in 2005, only kids with a 3.0 grade-point average could attend the fair, which took place during school hours, further limiting turnout. That, the counselor knew, was no way to open doors. So she helped speed the fair’s evolution into its current form, open to all and held in the evening, when more parents might come, too.

College Night is now a widely promoted regional get-together. Whether you live amid Northern Arizona’s pine-rich forests, or in its sprawling deserts, or at the far corner of one of its many Indian reservations, you’re welcome to come join the bustling pre-college spectacle.

But first you have to find a ride.

Jade Knight woke up early the next day feeling feverish — bad enough to consider staying home from school. But that would mean missing the school-sponsored bus trip to the college fair, 100 miles to the west. No way, she thought.

Knight, an eloquent 18-year-old with bright-blue eyes, hadn’t been to a college campus since she was 2. She grew up in Woodruff, which some outsiders call a ghost town. The community of fewer than 200 residents has a church, a library, and a post office, but no grocery store. Behind her family’s one-story house live two goats in a pen, and open fields spread a quarter-mile to the Little Colorado River.

That October morning, Knight and her mother, Shannon, made the half-hour drive to Holbrook High School, home of the Roadrunners. The name is apt: Some of her classmates travel by car for an hour just to catch a school bus they ride for another hour.

Holbrook, a city of 5,000, is located in Navajo County, one of the state’s poorest. In 2017, it had a median annual household income of under $39,000, (compared with $60,366 nationally). Just 16 percent of residents 25 or older have a bachelor’s degree; in Flagstaff, it’s 45 percent. Northland Pioneer College, a community college, has a campus in Holbrook; the nearest four-year campus is 90 miles away.

Knight’s school enrolls about 650 students, a majority of whom are Native American. Because so many students qualified for free and reduced lunch, a state grant now extends the benefit to all. Families sometimes must choose between gassing up their home generators and filling up their vehicles. No gas, no school.

Knight, a senior at Holbrook High, had a 4.0 grade-point average. She hoped to major in biomedical engineering, go to graduate school, and design the artificial organs and replacement parts that help people live. But when weighing the cost of a four-year college, she wondered if she should go at all. Her parents, both teachers, were still paying off student loans while raising six children.

She refused to sink them further into debt, or take on a lot herself. Though some students dream of faraway colleges, she didn’t want to move more than a few hours from her family, from a place where she knew everyone, and where the night sky reveals every star. And as far as she knew, out-of-state colleges were too expensive.

Given those constraints, Knight figured that her only option was an in-state university, where she had the grades and ACT score to snag scholarships. There was one catch: She hadn’t taken a foreign language.

Courses are limited at small high schools like Holbrook, and that can put students in a bind. Knight, who calls herself “super competitive,” had taken a slew of Advanced Placement and dual-enrollment courses, putting herself on track to graduate with 38 college credits. But her ambitious schedule left her with no free periods when the school offered Spanish.

The three in-state universities Knight was considering required two years of another language for admission. “I don’t think I’m going to college,” she told her school counselor one panicked day in September.

Later, admissions officers at those universities told her that although she would still be admitted, the hole in her transcript meant that she wouldn’t get the full-tuition scholarships for which she would otherwise qualify.

Knight had no desirable way to fix the situation. She could take a CLEP exam in Spanish, which she didn’t know well, in hopes of earning the language credits she needed. Or she could take night courses at a community college, which would cost her time and money.

Her recurring thought this fall: Maybe I’m totally screwed.

Even so, Knight felt hopeful when she walked into her first-hour calculus class the morning of the Flagstaff fair. Soon she would board a yellow bus with her school counselor and 20 other students. Her college options, she had long believed, stopped at Arizona’s borders. She wanted one thing: “To see what else was out there.”

Maybe she wouldn’t find much. Or maybe she would find opportunity in a place she hadn’t known to look.

They don’t know what they don’t know. Counselors often say that about the underrepresented students they advise. A careless listener might tune the phrase out, or fail to grasp its implications.

Teenagers already struggle to find straightforward answers to questions that they do think to ask, like, How much will it all cost? Go on, Google “cost of attendance” or “affordable college,” and read the dizzying results. Or type in “self-reported SAT scores” to see how much colleges’ policies for what applicants should report — and how — vary.

Now try Googling the answer to … a question that’s never once crossed your mind. Impossible, right? That’s what many rural students experience.

The region surrounding Flagstaff was full of teenagers who didn’t come from a collegegoing culture, as Katherine Pastor knew well. That’s why she threw herself into the college fair. If she didn’t do it, who would? Sure, the National Association for College Admission Counseling sponsors a huge college fair way down in Phoenix, two-plus hours to the south. In the top half of the state, though, College Night is the only game in town.

It’s also a labor-of-love production.

Just before 1 p.m., five hours before the fair, Pastor raced through the halls in her pink Adidas as if trying to steal seconds from the clock. She rolled a cart loaded with the three cases of water and a spool of string down to “the dome,” a big, bright gym with basketball hoops. Forget fancy convention centers: College Night happens among exercise bikes and worn wrestling mats.

Shelly Stearns, a charismatic social-studies teacher, came with a crew of student-volunteers in tow. A few boisterous young men helped Pastor arrange four long rows of plastic tables, unfold dozens of metal chairs, and drag volleyball poles to the end of each row. After tying a long run of string between the poles, a tall fellow in rainbow shoes hung a sign for each college above the tables.

Picking up trash from the polished wooden floor, Pastor looked up and frowned. Some signs weren’t in alphabetical order. “Wait,” she said. “Embry-Riddle goes after Eastern Washington!”

Pastor, an award-winning counselor, believed such chores served a deeper purpose. She wanted students to feel ownership of the fair, to see that it didn’t come together magically. She also wanted to help them become leaders who felt comfortable conversing with adults, a skill many haven’t practiced.

They don’t know what they don’t know. That applied here, too.

Outside the entrance to the dome, Pastor shared some tips with four student-council members who had volunteered to sign-in the admissions officers. “Say, ‘Hi,’” she told them. “Ask if they need any help. Make sure you smile!”

Around 4:30, the first rep, from Sierra Nevada College, arrived with a suitcase full of brochures. A ninth grader named Bella greeted him warmly and led him to his table, where a bottle of water and a meal ticket awaited. When she returned, Pastor high-fived her: “Nice job, Bella!”

Over in the kitchen, where a pot of marinara simmered away, students got a similar lesson in hospitality from Pastor’s aunt, Patti Pastor, the culinary teacher. She and a handful of students had made 10 trays of lasagna, 95 brownies, 55 cream puffs, and three bowls of salad. Soon they would serve dinner to the road-worn travelers used to eating at Panera.

At 5, the admissions reps were arriving faster than students could greet them. So Jenny Bland, a school counselor with a calm manner, grabbed a sign-in sheet and entered the fray.

By 5:35, the sun was waning, and the crowd was swelling. Many guests had taken city buses, which provided free rides to and from the fair; that’s the only way that some families could come.

At 5:44, more than 100 people crammed the hall outside the dome. Five Native American students kicked a Hacky Sack. Football players returning from a game ambled to the nearby locker room, cold pouring off their green jerseys. A young woman in shorts, just off a bus from a much warmer town, pulled a blanket around her shoulders. Two teenagers posed for selfies with plastic bags — donated by a local store — they soon would fill with pamphlets, free pens, and other admissions swag.

When the doors finally opened, families flooded in. Bland shouted encouragement: “Ask good questions! Get good answers! Write them down!”

At 6:13, a college rep who hadn’t registered showed up. Pastor raced to her office to make him a sign.

Bland followed her down the hall. “Wait,” she said. “Kat, slow down!”

Pastor turned around, but kept walking.

Reps from 105 colleges and service academies had filled the dome, all because of a tireless counselor and many others who helped make the fair happen.

“You did good,” Bland said. “That’s a win.”

“That’s a win,” Pastor said.

On the other side of the building, the bus from Holbrook High pulled up to the main entrance. An aspiring biomedical engineer on board wanted to find out where her future might lead.

Jade Knight, wearing a gray Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, stepped off the bus and looked around. She saw that Flagstaff High was much larger than her own school. Unsure how to get to the fair, she and her classmates meandered around, stopping to marvel at the indoor swimming pool.

“Why do they have a pool?” one student asked.

“Because they have a swim team,” another said.

Their school did not.

Students at Holbrook, Knight thought to herself, could never stay out this late for extracurricular activities. Many teenagers there had no way to get around after hours; even if they did, it would take so long to get home.

Two schools, two worlds. Each year, at least 60 to 70 admissions officers from all over visit Flagstaff High. About a half-dozen in-state institutions come to Holbrook.

That limited how much information Knight had the chance to hear. Accomplished students like her who want to study engineering are supposed to have many options, but she felt like she had few.

At long last, the visitors from Holbrook found the dome, a maelstrom of nervous laughter and hi-there-hellos. She saw signs for unfamiliar campuses, in Oregon, Illinois, and New England, soaring overhead.

At first, the scene felt overwhelming. A teddy bear wearing a “Hugs From Adams State” T-shirt sat on a pompom atop the table closest to the door. A poster of a woman with luxurious curls drew the eye to Empire Beauty School. The rep for the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa sported a red bow tie.

Knight walked into the noise. Though some of her friends planned to stop at every table, she saw no need to inquire about colleges in other time zones. Or those that didn’t offer the program she wanted.

“Do you have biomedical engineering?” she asked one rep.

“No,” he said, pointing, “but UNM does.”

U-N-M. Knight had heard a couple students say those letters before, but they never registered. She wasn’t even sure of where the university was: “It was, like, this mythical school,” she would recall later.

But the University of New Mexico was real. And so was Josiah Martinez, who stood behind the university’s table. Yes, he confirmed, UNM had a biomedical-engineering major.

Knight hesitated. She couldn’t swing out-of-state costs. Tuition alone was $23,000 a year.

Then Martinez told her something surprising: Out-of-state applicants could qualify for the in-state tuition rate, around $7,500 a year. They just needed a 3.0 grade-point average and a 23 on the ACT. She met both requirements.

Then she learned that she could qualify for another scholarship that, along with federal aid, would reduce her out-of-pocket costs to approximately $5,000 a year. That was roughly half of what she would pay at the in-state university she liked best.

When Knight told Martinez that she hadn’t taken a foreign language, she got more good news: No, it wouldn’t keep her from being admitted, nor limit the aid she got. A worry she had carried for months? Gone.

Encouraged, Knight sat down at a table and completed an application. She handed it back to Martinez. Then it was time to head home.

Back on the bus, Knight felt waves of relief. OK, she thought. I’m not totally screwed.

A college fair isn’t transcendent. It can’t rearrange the facts of an applicant’s life. No one would call a three-minute chat between strangers in a deafening gym profound.

The ritual is often maligned. One former admissions officer calls college fairs “excruciating, soul-snatching hellscapes.” Anyone who spends weeks on the road answering the same four questions from damp-palmed 17-year-olds is forgiven for questioning the value of the exercise.

Still, it’s a luxury, even a privilege, to assume that all students who come to a fair think it’s a waste of time. For those already saturated with information, it can be; for others, it’s a meaningful moment.

As 8 p.m. approached, the fair was winding down. Tony Cullen, Flagstaff High’s jovial, silver-maned principal, sat by the door, bidding families goodnight.

“Thanks for doing this,” one father said, extending his hand.

“All right, buddy!” Cullen said.

A Mexican American family waved goodbye.

“Adiós!”

College Night had been a success, drawing about 800 people. After the last rep left the building, Katherine Pastor leaned into a volleyball pole and moved it back where it belonged. Jenny Bland took down the string and the college signs. Cullen helped Pastor’s husband, Troy Lorents, rearrange all the tables: Tomorrow, students would take standardized tests in the dome.

After picking up some empty water bottles, Pastor gave Cullen a thumbs up. At 8:16, he cut the dome’s lights.

When she got home, Pastor took off her pink Adidas and put on her slippers. That day, according to her Fitbit, she took 18,945 steps.

Under a sky of dull stars, buses full of high-school students rolled away from Flagstaff in various directions. Sarah Skemp, a school counselor at Lake Havasu High School, headed west on I-40 in the company of a few-dozen sophomores. “I didn’t know there were so many colleges,” one told her.

Before going to the fair, the group visited Northern Arizona University, in Flagstaff. Seeing a campus for the first time, one young man said later, “changed my perspective on what college looks like: I had thought a college was, like, one big building with many people crammed in.”

Skemp had tried for years to bring a group of students to the fair before finally succeeding. The first few times, she couldn’t get the money, $1,000 or so, for the 400-mile round-trip journey. Then her school district couldn’t find a driver who wasn’t maxed out on hours, or hauling sports teams to games on the same night as the fair.

Sometimes, you just can’t find a ride.

There are literal miles. Then there are figurative ones.

Being far removed from colleges often limits a student’s understanding of what’s possible after high school, Nicole Warner knew. “When you’re remote to everything,” she said, “it changes the way you view your whole life.”

On the bus back to Holbrook High, Warner, the school’s college and career-readiness coordinator, heard students excitedly discussing their futures. Awesome, she thought. In the weeks ahead, she would come to think that the fair had residual effects. The students who attended it seemed more motivated, focusing on things that she had been telling them to do all along, like completing their federal-aid forms.

Riding home, Warner counted the mile markers on the highway. She thought about the students who couldn’t make the trip only because they had no way to get home afterward. She thought about the students she had known who, seeing no future for themselves in small towns, came to her with a question. Can you help me get the hell out of here?

Many end up staying, though. They attend a community college, or work at the county office building, in hotels and fast-food joints. Some who could’ve attended in-state universities don’t go because, she said, ”going to the other side of the state, leaving a comfort zone, terrifies them.”

Warner was happy for Jade Knight, whom she had advised for months. But she knew that Knight was, in many ways, exceptional.

After a quick stop for dinner, Jade Knight ate some Chinese beef and broccoli and finished a biology assignment. For her, the fair was calming. Overhearing other students trying to figure out their future made her feel less lonely, and she felt more in control of her own.

The bus dropped everyone off at the high school after 10. Knight drove home in the car her parents had left in the parking lot. A half-hour later, she stood in their bedroom and said, “I’m actually gonna be able to pay for college!”

In early December, Knight was waiting to hear from the University of New Mexico, and she had every reason to expect an acceptance. She liked what she had read about the university’s offerings, its biomedical-engineering program, and even the climate in Albuquerque.

She also liked the idea of living in another state for a few years, on a campus she once thought of as a mythical place. The university was 246 miles away, but somehow, it didn’t feel that far.