Several prospective students to Milligan College braved the cold and snow on Friday to learn all about being a Buff.

The college held “Be A Buff Day” to welcome the prospective students to campus so they could meet with professors, school administrators and students to get a taste for what the college has to offer.

“It’s a day for us to say this is who we are and this is what makes us different from everybody else,” said Campus Visits Coordinator Rita Booher. “It’s just a chance for us to showcase our college, our staff and our students.”

The college hosts a couple of these events each semester, Booher said. In March, the college will host a Be A Buff Engineering Day on March 20, followed by a Be A Buff Nursing Day on March 27.

During these events, prospective students get to meet in small group sessions with current students to learn about things such as campus life, the process for selecting a roommate, clubs available on campus and how to balance studies with extracurricular activities. Parents get the chance to attend a financial aid workshop to learn about the types of grants and scholarships that are available as well as how to apply for them.

The visitors and their families also get to take a tour of the campus and eat lunch in the dining hall to get a real taste of student life.

Then in the afternoon, the visitors attend an academic fair that allows them to meet faculty and staff in the college’s different programs. If the prospective students are interested in college athletics they also get the opportunity to speak with the college’s coaching staff.

On Friday, 13 prospective students and their families took part in Be A Buff Day.

“The weather kind of hurt us a little bit,” Booher said. “We appreciate those who braved the weather to be with us.

The group of visitor included some local high school students as well as families from the Knoxville area and nearby Virginia, Booher said, adding there were also families from as far away as Texas and New Jersey who attended the event.

Brian Sackett, Jr., and his father, Brian Sackett, Sr., made the trip from Long Beach Island, N.J., to visit Milligan College on Friday.

“We’re between two schools right now,” Brian Sackett, Jr.,  said, adding that he was “leaning toward” Milligan.

The Sackett family first learned about Milligan College a few years ago when Brian Sackett, Jr., attended a summer camp in Tennessee. The family then began looking into college and decided to pay it a visit.

“I was looking for a Christian college I could still compete in athletics at,” Brian Sackett, Jr., said, adding he is a competitive swimmer and would like to continue that in college. “From the beginning I liked it.”