The annual 57^th Assembly District Annual College and Career Fair was held from Sept. 20 to 25 online, helping high school students prepare for different colleges and future career paths.

For the first time in the College Fair’s history, this year’s college fair was a weeklong event, with each day of the week dedicating to a specific type of college along with an entire day dedicated to career paths and technical education programs.

“I went to the college fair on Monday and Saturday, so I went to the Community College Day and the Career and Technical Education day,” Senior Isabella Lopez said. “I wanted to learn more about the different community colleges available for me and what possible career paths I could go into.”

Each day of the week ran from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The day began with a Zoom workshop and students then moved into different representative breakout sessions depending on what kind of information or colleges they wanted to discover more about.

Representatives from colleges like UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC San Diego and UC Irvine were present on the Zoom call to give presentations about what their school has to offer and to also host a live Q&A with the students.

“For Community College Day, I went to breakout room two. In that room, the different representatives gave short presentations about Mount San Antonio College and Pasadena City College,” said Lopez. “They also had a Q&A session after the presentations, so it was a nice way to ask any questions to learn more about their campuses and whether these colleges would be suitable for me.”

Although the college fair remained virtual this year, representatives from various colleges and universities are still able to provide the guidance high school students need during college application season.