What's Happening Now

- The "Final Questions" chat with the admitted students and current students Christian, Jennifer, Sagar, and Tasha.  Fun times (and good pizza).

- Our entire professional staff has been scattered for programs across the country.  I got back this morning from six days in the Bay Area, doing college fairs and case studies (sample applications) with juniors (juniors!) and their parents.  I leave again on Sunday for more of the same in SoCal.

- Waiting and watching for the enrollment decision forms from admitted students.  That was the first thing I did upon returning today - even before switching on my computer - was head straight for the mail.  Four more days until the deadline!  Eep!

- President Maria Klawe in the news!  CNN and PBS in one week!  (As if the NYT article wasn't cool enough.)

- This is alumni weekend.  The annual Foster's Run for strawberry donuts (on unicycles) is taking place tomorrow morning.

- Someone went by my window earlier in a motorized children's wagon.  At Mudd, nobody even asks why.

- Classes are winding down and Presentations and Projects Days are next week.  If you want to see Mudders spiffed up and fabulous, these are the events for you.

- We just hired the next crop of senior interviewers - and a full-time summer interviewer too! 

- This is also bad because it means this year's senior interviewers are graduating.

- A comprehensive and unbiased poll of four Mudders (see the list in point 1) has just concluded that Clinic is the coolest thing on campus.

- Women's Ultimate is going to nationals!

ASP in pictures (or not)

I'm dying to show you all the photos I took at the admitted student program this weekend.  Here they are:


this one:


and this one:


and this one:


and lastly my favorite:


Nope, your computer isn't having any loading issues.  You just saw the entirety of the photos I managed to snap of the Admitted Student Program.  Well, except for this one, of my beloved tour guides, looking dapper as ever:

But seriously, that's it.  Pathetic.  I committed the classic rookie error of arriving at work before consuming any caffeine, which rather restricted my ability to operate a simple point-and-shoot camera and alphabetize nametags (Hayden has been sworn to secrecy on the latter incident.  I'd like to keep my diploma in English lit).  So I'll just have to tell you about the event.  If I don't have pictures, then I guess I owe you a thousand words.

Saturday.  PSP Event.  After Falone convinced the finalists that they were about to embark on a Jeopardy-meets-Hunger-Games deathmatch, the selection interviews with faculty probably seemed pretty tame.  As a staff we mostly tried to stay out of the way and let our current PSP scholars interact with the finalists; they're much better advertisements for the scholarship and the school than we could ever hope to be.   Personally I'd enroll at Mudd tomorrow if I thought it would turn me into Sarah Ferraro.  And finally we treated our guests to the finest cuisine available in Southern California . . . sushi, three-foot-long burritos, pear and gorgonzola pizza, and In-N-Out Burger.  We're nothing if not fancy.

Sunday.  Admitted Student Program, Day 1.  Goal: get our guests so disgustingly sick of Galileo Hall that they are desperate to see construction on the new building accelerated, and are seized by a sudden desire to donate twenty million dollars to the college to facilitate this.  Okay, that wasn't exactly the scheme, but there are definite downsides to holding a large program at an institution with a grand total of one capacious lecture hall.  Fortunately our visitors were patient, and hopefully the students and faculty were lively enough to make up for the blandness of the physical space.  Mathemagics would be mind-blowing in pretty much any location, I think.  Here's a behind-the-scenes item of note: guess how many bag lunches were left over?  One.  And that was after Raissa increased the order a few days ahead of time.  Whew. 

Monday.  Admitted Student Program, Day 2.  Overall, more low-key than Sunday, but families are starting to ask tough and important questions as they evaluate whether Mudd is the right place for their students.  Students sit in on classes and eat in the dining halls and try to imagine themselves in this setting for four years.  Day 2 may be lower intensity, but it's no less emotional. 

Tuesday.  The guests have gone home, but our work isn't over.  Tuesday is PSP Selection -- a three hour process.  It's admission committee all over again, complete with strongly voiced opinions and agonizing choices. 

And now it's a waiting game.  The power is in your hands, admitted students.  We made you sit (im)patiently for four months; now it's your turn to make us run to intercept the daily mail (Judy and Aileen have been known to chase off overeager staff with letter openers) and lose sleep contemplating all that could go wrong with yield.  We've put our most positive-yet-honest foot forward; now it's your turn to decide whether this is what you want for the next four years.  Whatever you decide, we wish you the best.  (But really, you should pick Mudd.)

Admitted Students Program!

If you got this

then you might be coming to this

And it might be extremely awesome.

Looking forward to seeing you all soon!

(ASP photos from last year's event)

What admission counselors do in April

1. Check the RSVPs for our Admitted Student Program several times daily -- or, in my case, several times hourly.  I always have a short list of favorite admits I'm hoping will choose Mudd, and ASP tends to be the first clue as to whether the students in question are considering HMC as a serious option.  So far this year it looks like I'm 50/50 for disappointment and elation.  Must try to keep enthusiasm in check at ASP.  I don't want to scare the prefrosh.

2. Gear up for ASP.  All of us are involved in some way, but Raissa takes on the lion's share of the work.  I invited her to guest post the long, long list of things she does to prepare for the arrival of the prospective students, but she didn't think that sounded like a fun motivational tool.  So I'll just mention that she's been working overtime every night since we mailed decisions (as opposed to the rest of us who are sometimes able to clock out at the decadent hour of five).  Thank you, Raissa.

3. Prepare for spring travel.  Apparently there are juniors planning to apply to college next year.  Shocking but true.  Every single person on our staff will be traveling at the end of April, doing programs and college fairs in New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, Atlanta, St. Louis, Los Angeles . . . truthfully, just thinking about having to travel again makes me feel a bit ill.  It's not taxing work -- in my case, the college fairs and case studies are just a few hours each night -- but still.  Travel.  Ten days.  Ugh. 

4. Meet with admitted students (and some students on the alternate list too).  This I like.  I'm not ready for the juniors quite yet -- my head is far too full of the Class of 2016 -- but I enjoy following up with the seniors.  Last week we hosted an online chat for the admitted students, and there's another one tonight.  If you follow the HMC After 5 Twitter account then you'll already have seen Lowell's photo, but here are a few I snapped of the event.

Lowell and Roxie, senior interviewers

Tito, first-year class president and PSP scholar

Lowell again with Katie, tour guide extraordinaire

5. Stress over yield.  This is mostly Thyra's domain.  Personally, I'm greedy; I want every student for whom I fought so hard to enroll at Mudd and have four happy successful years here.  Fortunately or unfortunately, this does not happen.  (See point #1.)  Students applying to Mudd have amazing options; we tend to overlap with Olin, Ivies, UCs, and a couple of tech schools in Pasadena and Cambridge that shall remain nameless.  So for every student who chooses Mudd, there's another who decides a competitor school is a better fit.  Someone asked what would happen if every student we admitted decided to enroll.  This simply doesn't occur at any college or university.  There is literally no mainstream institution with 100% yield (the highest is Harvard at 75.5%).  When Thyra has nightmares about over enrollment, her worst fantasy is ending up at some exorbitant number like 210 (a whopping fifteen over our target).  At a school as small as Mudd, that would be a huge headache, and the faculty would not be pleased -- but, like the current junior class which came in at 207, we could ultimately handle it.  Without resorting to the Rodeway Inn. 

Okay.  Back to ASP prep.  Any ideas for ways to artistically serve delivery pizza?

All About the Alternate List, Redux

There's so much rumor and misinformation floating around about the alternate list.  At Mudd, we try to combat this by including an extremely detailed FAQ sheet with your alternate list letter.  (If you chucked this in the recycling bin without reading it, you might want to e-mail us for a new copy -- it's important!) 

Before I post last year's article about the alternate list, I wanted to add two riders: first, we did admit students from the alternate list last year!  More than twenty students, actually -- and while it was a little chaotic having our admission cycle stretch into June, it was so satisfying to make happy phone calls and get a chance to finally admit some of my favorite students.

Second, in last year's post I didn't speak at all about financial aid.  Full need based aid (though not merit aid) is still available to all students who are admitted from the alternate list, which is why it is so important to make sure your documentation is complete; we want to be able to send you a financial aid package with, or immediately following, your offer of admission. 

If you have questions about the alternate list, please ask! 


REPOST: All about the alternate list
Originally published April 1, 2011
 
I'm going to be writing a lot this month about the admitted students. That's just what happens in April, what with yield events, the Admitted Student Program, and the chance to win everlasting glory by sweeping the betting pool we have going for the number of deposited first-year students by May 1 (I've got my money on 187). But there's another group that is still very much on my mind, and that is the alternate list. I know there are a lot of misconceptions about the alternate list, including why we even have one in the first place, so bear with me while I try to explain how exactly the alternate list works. And, of course, if there's anything I left out, please leave your question in the comments section, and I'll update the post with your suggestion.

First, let's talk about the depressing stuff. The reality of a selective college admission process means that there are many deserving students who are not admitted to HMC. There just isn't space. To keep our classes small and our dorms at reasonable capacity, we can only admit a fraction of the students we find compelling. Then we cross our fingers, do a rain dance, and hope for the sake of our jobs that we will yield a class of 195 students or fewer.

Here's where the alternate list comes in. We've set 195 students as our target goal for the Class of 2015. If, say, 228 admitted students decide to enroll, then we cry and turn over our offices as auxiliary dorm space -- and nobody gets admitted off the alternate list. If, however, the May 1 deadline passes, and there are still spots left in the first-year class, then we can turn our attention to the alternate list. This is, in fact, the outcome we want -- it's much better to come in under the target and add more students one by one than it is to run the risk of over enrollment. And on a more personal level, we'd all be excited to be able to pull some of our favorite candidates into the class. So that's the best case scenario -- May 1 arrives, we reconvene the admission committee, we make happy phone calls.

An artistic interpretation of the happy phone call (hamster optional)

For the sake of honesty, I need to tell you that for the past several years, there have been no happy phone calls. But before you roll your eyes and/or spit at the computer screen, let me explain why this does not necessarily predict this year's outcome. In addition to the natural fluctuations that occur in any process involving real people (and a relatively small sample size of real people, at that), we also made a conscious choice to admit fewer students this year. 23 fewer students, to be precise. While this made for some difficult selections at the end of the regular decision committee -- I can tell you, just off the top of my head, 23 students I wish were in the class right now -- it means (we hope) that we will be able to use the alternate list. There's no guarantee. It's possible that all 228 students I used as an example earlier will decide to enroll, and I'll be blogging from under a shrub next year instead of my comfortably climate-controlled office with a mini-fridge. But please know that we've tried our best to make the alternate list a viable possibility.

Unfortunately, the most frustrating hallmark of a wait list is waiting. We won't have any new information to give you until after the May 1 response deadline. But in the meantime, there's one important thing you can do -- and that's update us. If Mudd is still a school in which you're interested, tell us! Send us a quick e-mail or a letter reiterating your interest and giving us a few updates on things happening in your life. Things can change quickly senior year; maybe your interest in chemistry has solidified since you wrote your essays back in December, or maybe the debate team you joined on a lark has turned out to be a serious interest. By all means, tell us. And tell us prior to May 1, because if we're able to move to the alternate list, we'll do it quickly; there won't be any lag time between "Guess what? Spots have opened up" and "Congratulations! One of them is yours."

In the meantime, this is your chance to explore your other college options. You just might find, as I did, that the "extra" college on your list turns out to be your dream school.

Picking up the pieces

This isn't my favorite time of year.

Later this month, during the adrenaline rush of the admitted student program, things will be different.  I'll finally have faces to match with applications (nobody ever looks as I imagined, but that's part of the fun).  I'll see the excitement in the faces of our current students as they welcome the prefrosh to campus.  Come mid-April, I'll focus on the 17% who might choose Mudd this fall. 

But right now, I'm still stuck on the other 83%.  You know, the ones we didn't -- couldn't -- admit.  "Couldn't" not because they wouldn't be wildly successful students at Mudd, but because we're tiny.  Because we have dorm rooms, lab spaces, mailboxes for a class of 195.  Culling 195 first year students from over 3500 applications is nothing short of a preposterous task, and there are a few decisions in particular that have my heart twisted. 

Here's what I'd like to add to Thyra's letter posted last week: admission decisions do not make sense individually.  They are only comprehensible in the context of a seventeen percent admit rate.  As Peter put it in our final agonizing hours of committee, "shaping the class" felt like cutting into bone. 

The most common question we get from students we turned down: what did I do wrong?  And the answer is nothing.  The only thing you did "wrong" was to apply to a school with an admit rate below twenty percent.  It wasn't you.

We know that you'll be successful wherever you go.  That you will find a dream school, even if it's not the one you originally envisioned.  And when I see your name someday as a Watson fellow or Putnam high-scorer, I'll cheer for you, wholeheartedly -- but I won't be surprised. 

Tomorrow I'll post more about the alternate list.  In the meantime, take this New York Times article with a grain of salt.  At Mudd, we don't care when you put your name on the alternate list (as long as it's before May 1).  Please do not make a video.  And I can promise you that unlike Duke, we do not have 3,382 students on the alternate list.  Craziness.

If you're still waiting for a letter . . .

. . . then you have the VP's permission to call our office to request an e-mail decision, and our deepest apologies for the delay!