“College Hunt USA,” a reality TV show from India, will come to Geneseo from April 27 until May 1 to catalog the college visits of two Indian applicants who want to study in the United States.
Director of International Student Services Mary Hope said that the show is an initiative by the United States Consulate in Mumbai, India to encourage students to study in the United States as many students often choose to study in the United Kingdom.
“The consulate said, ‘Let’s get some visibility for the unique features about studying in the United States,’” Hope said.
Hope and Assistant Director of International Student Services Michael Sweeney decided to apply to be one of the schools featured on the reality show.
According to Sweeney, the application was roughly seven pages and asked for information about campus life and the academics offered.
After making it past the top 10 and top five schools before spring break, the consulate chose Geneseo, along with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Ohio Wesleyan University as one of three schools for the applicants to visit throughout April and May.
Hope and Sweeney are working with the show’s production team, scheduling events for the students that will highlight Geneseo’s strengths alongside the program’s message.
“When you listen to the television crew talk about this program, they talk about following the dream,” Hope said. “What they want to show is a young person with a huge dream and aspiration and that they can realize it in the United States.”
According to Hope and Sweeney, the two applicants will be filmed participating in admissions interviews, attending class with current students and going to events with Shakti and Model United Nations.
The television crew wanted to “put the students who are visiting out of their element and challenge them with an experience at Geneseo,” according to Sweeney.
The applicants will also experience campus jobs through Campus Auxiliary Services as well as a scrimmage with the men’s basketball team.
Hope and Sweeney said that they are thankful that the college administration and students are on board with the program and see this as benefiting the campus as a whole.
“We are positioning ourselves as an elite undergraduate institution,” Hope said. “We aren’t as well-known as we’d like to be. The visibility with the U.S. Consulate alone … is very powerful. Geneseo is getting a lot of free promotion simply because we were selected.”