Students interested in graduate school will have the chance to speak to representatives at the Graduate and Professional Schools fair hosted by the University Career Center.

The fair will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Oct. 2 at the third floor of Union Building East.

As of Tuesday, 72 university representatives that have confirmed their attendance at the fair. The University of Texas at Austin Graduate School, Texas Tech University school of Law, St. Mary’s Law School, Northwestern University, Purdue University, University of Norte Dame and UTEP Graduate School are some of the universities that will be in attendance.

Areli Guajardo, graduate assistant at the UTEP Career Center, said that this is an opportunity for students to prepare for the next step in their educational career. She said the center has invited schools with programs that are not offered at UTEP.

“It is a really good opportunity even if they are not graduating yet,” said Guajardo, a graduate social work major. “Even if you are just thinking about grad school you can go and learn more about it and what programs are out there, like what are the requirements ask about scholarships. Just start planning ahead.”

Although UTEP does offer pre-law and pre-med programs, the university does not house an actual law or medical school.

Guajardo said that this event draws many universities that want to recruit UTEP students.

“The registration closed because we reached the capacity of tables that we could have, and more schools started asking if they could reserve a table,” she said. “Since this is an event that happens every year, some schools say they have recruited UTEP students and I guess have had good experiences and have been able to recruit great students from this fair.”

Guajardo said last year’s fair helped her to decide to become a graduate student.

“It was a great thing to see schools that had really great opportunities and to have different options was great,” she said. “At the end I did decide to stay here at UTEP but it was nice to broaden my horizons and to learn about other programs and schools that are out there.”

A complete list of the schools attending the fair can be found here.

Amanda Guillen may be reached at [email protected].