Travel planning & other mysteries of life

It's the start of the school year, which means in just a couple of weeks my colleagues and I will hit the road to bring Mudd to the masses at various high schools and college fairs across the country.  Even though this is my eighth (gulp) year working in college admissions, I find travel season daunting every single time.  It's not surprising, when you think about the logistics of planning, in my case, two days of college fairs, five blocks of interviews, and fifteen days of high school visits, for a grand total of twenty-four days on the road (which is actually light by HMC standards). 

Recently I was feeling incredibly productive and important when I managed to book about ten high school visits in a row.  I proudly recorded each confirmed appointment in my notes, highlighting the start time in bold Book Antiqua font.  And then deflated when I realized how many more schools I had to contact: fifty.  Eeesh.  So I'm taking it in stages, and trying not to panic that Oregon is so far a big blank space on my calendar.

So where am I off to this year?  Well, here are the regions that Assistant Director Smith will be gracing with her presence:

Logically, these territories probably don't make a lot of sense as a group, and maybe even less so when you learn that I decided to lump New Jersey and Michigan into the same excursion since, as you can see from the above map, they're so close and all.  But a variety is actually nice, especially since I'll ultimately read applications from these states.

And as for the individual schools that I'm visiting?  These are determined largely by data: travel notes from years past, the number of students on our mailing list from a particular high school, whether we've seen applications and/or matriculants from an institution.  Sometimes a counselor will contact me about a potential visit, or I'm lured by something intriguing, like a championship all-female Science Olympiad team (go St. Mary's!) or an up-and-coming IB program.  And, of course, we tend to cluster our visits in major metropolitan areas; even though we have some awesome Mudders from Ashland High School in Oregon, it simply doesn't make sense to drive five hours from Portland (each way!) to pay a call at a single school. 

Sometimes the decisions probably do seem a bit haphazard to an outsider.  For example, after visiting Minnesota for nearly a week four years straight, I'll be skipping the state entirely this year.  We simply haven't been yielding many students, so it's hard to justify the time and expense.  It helps, of course, that there is a team of talented and articulate alumni to conduct interviews and offer an HMC presence in the Twin Cities (thank you, 3M, for hiring our graduates).  And I'm replacing Minnesota with Michigan, because we've seen an increase in interest and applications from that state, and, you know, they both start with the same two letters, they're both located in the Midwest, and they both border Canada.  It makes perfect sense.  I'll miss the extraordinarily gracious and accommodating counselors at the Twin Cities high schools, though -- and my hotel Starbucks.  Please observe:

The proximity to Brit's Pub and other Minneapolis amenities didn't hurt either, but in my mind Minnesota will always be associated with pumpkin spice lattes.  Michigan, you've got a lot to live up to.

PS Not from Oregon, New Jersey, Michigan, the East Bay, or Orange County?  You can see a complete list of our staff travel territories here. 

Image credits: 1) USDA; 2) Googlemaps