The Challenge
Limited Reach
For the first two years, The Cornell University Graduate School Resources Fair was hosted on campus. However, it was challenging to reach and bring all admitted students, esp. international students for a campus visit prior to them deciding whether to accept their offer of admission.
Coordinating Multiple Visits
The Graduate School offers over 80 different academic programs. All of these programs hosted campus visits for admitted students at different times. It was challenging for the recruitment office to coordinate these tours and ensure offices providing graduate students with services and resources were fully represented.
Equity and Accessibility
Lastly, the Graduate School accepts applications and welcomes students from across the globe. However, not all admitted students were able to travel to campus to participate in campus visits. This situation limited access to the necessary information for them to make well-informed decisions about their offer of admission. As a result, on-campus visits also created inequity in how the admitted students were prepared to transition to graduate school with the help of available resources.
Solution
Hosting a virtual event
To bring everyone together and create an inclusive and engaging environment, the Cornell Graduate School decided to take the resource fair virtual. All the participating offices and programs set up virtual booths and designated their representatives to host their booths during the live event. Students could drop by and initiate a chat to ask the booth reps questions. Each booth also offered content, including videos and documents to participants that featured key functions and resources that those offices offered. Students could download and save the documents and links for future reference.
On-demand Access to Content
Although the live event takes place in March when most admissions decisions are made, the exhibit hall remains open and available to the registrants until mid-April. This allows the admitted students to explore the booths if they were not able to participate in the live event or return to the fair to reexamine the information ahead of their admission decision deadline.
Accessible Exhibit Hall View
In addition to making the event accessible geographically, the Cornell Graduate School aimed to create an inclusive experience for attendees with disabilities. The vFairs virtual platform complies with the internationally recognized Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). A custom-designed ‘accessible view exhibit hall’ was integrated into the main navigation menu, allowing admitted students with disabilities to adjust settings such as color contrast or text size according to their needs.
Games to Boost Engagement
To keep attendees engaged, the team introduced a virtual scavenger hunt. Cornell-focused items and clues were hidden throughout the virtual venue, including the exhibit hall, individual booths and the lobby for the fair participants to find. This added a fun element to the resource fair, with around 2,000 attendees, who already participated in the game.
Overall, the virtual resource fair helped Cornell reach a wider audience, make information accessible for all, and ensure the event was inclusive and engaging.
Event Gallery
Why vFairs?
The Cornell University Graduate School has been hosting resource fairs with vFairs since 2018. They continue to use the platform because it meets their needs for functionality as well as intuitive design and navigation. Additionally, vFairs allows them to track the event activity and share that information with the participating university stakeholders.
They haven’t made many significant changes to their events over the years. However, when they receive feedback or offer their own recommendations, they discuss them with the vFairs team to promptly and effectively implement the proposed changes.
The resource fair has a consistent number of returning exhibitors and welcomes new ones each year. The new exhibitors accept the Graduate School’s invitation to participate or request to join the event after hearing positive feedback from their colleagues. This enthusiastic response clearly indicates high user satisfaction and an amazing experience with the virtual event and its interface.
Results
With a virtual resource fair, the Cornell Graduate School connected the participating admitted students with offices and programs that deliver important services for graduate students within one platform and event. The level of interaction within the booths was encouraging. Here are some key results from the most recent, 2024 event:
- Total registrations: 864
- Total attendance: 526
- Booth engagement: 12443,
- Unique booth visits: 4364
The total number of registrations and attendance is an important indicator of success from a student engagement perspective. The recruitment team also makes sure that participating exhibitors are satisfied with the fair results. The post-event reports from the vFairs platform made it easier for them to prove the value of the event by sharing specific booth engagement metrics.
The level of engagement varied based on the department. While the dining office was busy with questions in chat, the off-campus team had interactivity across chat and document downloads.
The event reports reveal metrics like document views, chat logs and clicks across the various tabs associated with their booths. This level of depth allows booth reps to contextualize success for their respective department.
