Goodbye and Good Luck

Over the past two days I've conducted interviews, answered phone calls, even gave an information session.  Business as usual.  But behind the scenes, well -- business is not as usual.  Today is my very last day at Harvey Mudd College.

I'm excited for the next chapter in my life, of course, but it's still heartrending leaving my Mudd family.  It's been a good five years.  Below are a few of my favorite memories.

DDR with Jamilla.  She's better.  Good thing I rock at Skeeball.

   

This is what happens when you leave the admission staff alone for a late-night data entry party.

Peter enjoys the admitted student chats so much.  And we enjoy Peter so much.

The tour guides!!!!  Triple heart this group of Mudders.

All set up and ready to go for our biggest event of the year, the Admitted Students Program.

Thyra's birthday, celebrated oh so classily.

This year's senior interviewers.  The Class of 2012 was "my" class -- the first I admitted at Mudd, and the only cohort I'll have seen through their entire four years at the school.  Hence they were (and are!) very special to me.

Just a typical committee.  Well, usually we have more food than this.  Must have been a light day.

Risa and Katie staying cool this summer.  Katie's last day was Friday -- now she's mentoring for Summer Institute.  It is a noble purpose but we miss her already.

The Class of 2016 Admit Packets prepared for mailing!

Admission Edition will shortly be moved into the brand-spanking-new admission website (due to be rolled out sometime in August).  My hope is that all the archived posts will move to the new location, so classics like the controversy over the age of our admission readers will be preserved for posterity.  At that point the entire admission staff intends to blog, so you have much joy to anticipate.

For the past two years, this blog has been a wonderful way for me to connect with prospective students and families.  I'll miss all of you.  Carry on and do great things.

Interviews and other items

Summer at Mudd continues to truck along.  The new building has a second story, the ice cream bike is making its rounds, and our visitors are being treated to that dire heat I mentioned in my last post.  It's toasty.  Good thing I have vacation coming up.

Before I head off to Moose Lake, Minnesota, I wanted to jump in with a few tidbits about interviews.  With Mudd's increasing popularity, we've had more interviews than ever this summer -- which means that if you want an interview on a particular day at a specific time, you should plan to book an appointment early (especially for August, I'd urge three weeks in advance if possible).  And please, be punctual!

I've written about interviews before, but there are a few things that bear repeating.

1. Dress comfortably.  Unless wearing a suit feels like second nature, you'll be much happier (and much less fidgety) in everyday clothes.  
2. Don't feel compelled to bring a resume.  Some students do, and that's fine, but don't be offended if it doesn't inform much of our conversation.  I'm more interested in delving into the why than the what.
3. Rest assured that we will see resume material later in the application process.  Rather than trying to find a subtle way to work your awesome SAT scores into conversation, use these twenty minutes to talk about what we won't learn about you from statistics.
4. Be prepared to discuss something that was difficult for you.  I know you want to show yourself in the best possible light, and I promise you that I'll try to keep 95% of our conversation positive in tone.  But since nobody glides through college without having a single challenging moment, I want to know how you react when things get tough.  
5. Spend some time reflecting on the kind of college you're seeking.  You don't need to have your college list finalized, but if you're still considering forty or fifty schools, you may not be ready to interview just yet.
6. Come prepared with a question or two.  This will show me that you've done some research into Mudd and/or have considered what kind of college will make you happy (point #5).  
7. Relax (if you can).  My goal is for you to leave the interview feeling like it was a friendly chat, not an interrogation.
8. It's okay to be a normal human being.  You don't have to spend all your free time saving the world and reading improving literature.  Like to hang out with your friends and read Harry Potter?  Guess what -- we do too!

If you're interviewing on campus this summer, good luck, and we look forward to meeting you.

PS If you're coming on a Thursday, bring change for the ice cream bike!

SoCal Summer

"What dreadful hot weather we have!  It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance."

- Jane Austen

(courtesy weather.com)

It could be worse -- and no doubt will be soon.  August in SoCal is not for the fainthearted.  But we're coping well, as you can see.

Risa and Katie rigged up a sunshade for the check-in desk.

Louie got a summer clip (and a Cone of Shame).

And today, Dean Chris and Mike Edwards brought joy and delight to the entire campus, in the triumphant return of the ice cream bike. 

This week we'll have about 450 visitors; next week we're expecting more than 300.  Things are busy.  And toasty.  But everything is better with ice cream.

Be Our Guest

Okay, here's a quiz for all of you who didn't grow up in the golden age of Disney musicals: did you immediately hear the voices of Lumiere and Mrs. Potts the moment you read that title?  No?  Just me?

Anyway, I just wanted to alert you to the myriad summer programs here at Mudd; you may have already received several e-mail advertisements, but in case not, here's a list of the upcoming fun.

First up, this Sunday: a Claremont Colleges reception for SoCal students and their families.  As of right now we have 1279 signups and will be using two overflow auditoriums.  So if you haven't already registered, perhaps you wish to visit another day.  Like, say, next week.

Next week, as you may already know, is Greater Los Angeles Science and Technology Week, which we've coordinated with Caltech for the third or fourth year in a row.  While it's always been possible to visit Mudd and Caltech on the same day, this is the week we make sure it's foolproof. 

Coming up in July, we have two dates for Mudd Unveiled: Discovery Days (notice the acronym?).  I was disappointed that we redesigned the invitation this year, as the old one had particular nostalgia.  And because I can't resist, here was the old interior:

There’s a scientific formula for everything else in the world; why not for your college search?


Σ(α + β – γ + δ + ε + ξ) = Harvey Mudd College
α = top-notch majors in math, science, and engineering
β = classes in humanities, social sciences, and the arts
γ = pesky graduate students
δ = 81 professors/730 students --> enviable faculty-to-student ratio
ε = 4 neighboring undergraduate colleges
ξ = extensive research opportunities

Does this equation correlate with your idea of the perfect college? If so, we invite you to come join us to meet the faces behind the formula. During our On-Campus Day program you’ll have the opportunity to interact with students and professors, learn more about admission and financial aid, and hear about Mudd’s academic and extracurricular offerings.

Fiela Gutierrez '07 and I got such a kick out of writing that copy.  Oh well.  Point is, there are endless opportunities to visit Mudd this summer, and if you think it's hot out now, just wait till August.  June is positively civilized.

And to give you a better sense of the delights that await you on campus, please observe:

Yup.  A flying port-a-potty!  While I can't guarantee you will get such a treat, it certainly enlivened our day.  Small joys.

Retreat! Retreat!

Totally unrelated photo.  I just happened to think this was cool.  Can you spot the unicycle and the rhino?

Last week the HMC admission staff went on Part I of our annual retreat, spending time in not one but two exotic locales*.  I actually look forward to the retreat all year, and not just because there are endless snacks and homemade deanly treats for our delectation.  See, my favorite part of admission is tackling the meta questions.  Who are we trying to serve?  How can we best make this happen? 

In addition to the meta questions, there are also the Big Plans for next year.  Some will come to fruition, some won't.  The elaborate Communication Flow painstakingly crafted by Falone and Raissa?  Amazing if we can pull it off.  A second Fall FAST?  Maybe we can find the funding this year, maybe it won't kick off until 2013.  The entire staff blogging on a regular basis?  I'll believe it when I see it. :-P

By far my favorite moment of Staff Retreat Part I was the Travel 2012 Draft.  There haven't been significant changes to our travel and reading territories for five years, and so it was time for a complete all-cards-on-the-table overhaul.  Wow.  Intense.  And fun!  Most of us are keeping at least one or two former territories, but there were plenty of shakeups.  There were also plenty of impromptu geography lessons as various valleys were explained to the non-Californians (San Gabriel, San Fernando . . .) and those who had not been to Texas learned that Dallas is closer to Oklahoma City than to Houston.  It was also China's first time being an official draft pick geomarket, so go China!  (And yes, China is bigger than Texas.  I checked.)

Now we're back to our regularly scheduled admission lives, with plans for Staff Retreat Part II in the works (August, maybe?) and maybe even an Iron Chef Staff Social (#1 draft pick: Falone).  Good thing we have some leftover retreat snacks to power us through the upcoming busy-ness of two big summer programs and a soon-to-be-packed roster of interviews.  Dibs on the pita chips!

*A meeting room in the Pomona College alumni building and the Dean of Faculty's conference room at Mudd.  Not really "exotic," but the Dean of Faculty conference room is pretty swank in a sixties mod sort of way.

Wesleyan University Drops Full Need-Blind Admission

Read the article from Inside Higher Ed here.  What's surprising to me is how little public push back the school seems to be getting so far.

It certainly makes me appreciate how lucky I've been to spend my whole career in the rarefied world of need-blind admission.  I take it for granted, but it's not the norm; a 2010 article I found cites only 46 need-blind schools (and many, including Mudd, are not need-blind for international students). 

This ties in well to the current NPR series on the American Dream.  Personally, my American Dream is for all qualified students to have the opportunity to go to an accredited, nonprofit college, and for our public education system to become a priority so that schools produce nothing but qualified students capable of tackling college coursework. 

And if you think that all public schools are just fine and dandy -- well, you haven't read college applications for eight years.  One of our incoming first-years hails from a California school where six percent go on to four-year college.  SIX PERCENT, people.  In one New Jersey suburb, that same figure is ninety-six percent. 

Okay.  Off the soapbox.  Moving on to more neutral topics, here is a photo of a Western Fence Lizard (not the lizard in residence in Kingston, who is the Roadrunner of reptiles, and cannot be caught):

And another one of the construction:

It looks more and more like a real building every day.  And even with one floor it already beats the square footage of Thomas-Garrett by a significant margin.

Tuesday in a Nutshell

Failed attempts to catch a lizard in our office: 3
Number of people involved: 5
Number of days Pat speculates the lizard has been in residence: 30
Odds that the lizard is currently hunkered behind the water cooler: excellent