The OLINformer

OK…

So there have been some questions - When can I visit campus? How do I set up a visit? What can I expect to see/do during my time on campus? Is there a way for me to attend a class? Do I need to have an interview before I apply? What the heck is Candidates’ Weekend anyway?!? 

So without further ado… 

Visiting Olin College:  

Details available on our website. 

In a nutshell, the Office of Admission is open for visits during September, October and November; our office hours are Monday through Friday, from 9:00 am until 5:00 pm. We offer a group information session each day at 2:00 pm and a student-led tour will immediately follow (usually around 3:00 pm). We are also open on a handful of Saturday mornings - October 21st, November 11th & 18th - and offer the information session/tour combo starting at 10:00 am. The information session will give you a good overview of the college (a little history, the curriculum, admission process, financial aid) and the tour is the perfect chance to pick the brain of a current student about all the other stuff on your minds (like student life, extracurricular activities, why he/she decided to come to Olin, etc.).  

There is also an AWESOME opportunity to visit in a more organized and in-depth way! We welcome families to attend our annual Fall Open House. It is a great way to interact with our current students, alumni, faculty and staff as well as learn about our unique curriculum and check out our state-of-the-art campus. 

If you are a high school senior and would like to attend classes or spend the night on campus, all you need to do is email hosting@olin.edu to request an overnight or classroom visit.

Interviews:

Any interviews that take place before Candidates’ Weekends are informational. In other words, think of them as a one-on-one information session with an admission counselor and they do not carry any weight in the admission process. It is a great way to get your personal questions answered in real time, by a real admission professional! We do not offer interviews in our office; we provide them primarily as a resource for those students we meet “on the road.” Our staff will also be conducting interviews in various cities this fall, so watch your inbox and mailbox for information about interviews in your area. If you don’t have an interview this fall, don’t worry! The VAST majority of our applicants do not interview with us prior to Candidates’ Weekend. 

Candidates’ Weekends (Abridged):

I’ll go into more detail later (and we’ll have some more info on the website about it soon) but the basic idea is as follows…

After we review all of the applications during the month of January, the Admission Committee will select a group of finalists – known as “Candidates” – to continue onto the next portion of our 2-part application process. Approximately 170 Candidates will be invited to the Olin campus (on February 23-24 or March 2-3) for Candidates’ Weekend. Each CW involves the same information and activities, but we divide the group in half so that students and families can have more meaningful interaction with the Olin community and get a better sense of what it means to be at a college with only 300 students! Each Candidates’ Weekend includes LOTS and LOTS of information about Olin (for both Candidates and parents), a Design Build (led by our current students – waaaay fun!), a 25-minute individual interview with members of the Olin community, and a couple of group facilitation/interaction exercises. Oh and we feed you like there’s no tomorrow! The whole thing runs from Friday afternoon until Saturday evening; then we send everyone home.

It is after both Candidates’ Weekends that the Admission Committee reconvenes and makes decisions regarding admission to the College. We will admit approximately 120 Candidates and place about 10-15 on the Waitlist. So although an invitation to Candidates’ Weekend does not guarantee admission to Olin College, about 2/3 of the Candidates are offered admission.

So here’s my 2-cents (and if you’ve met me, you’ve heard me say this before): Our Application for Admission is a bit of a misnomer… it’s really an Application for Candidates’ Weekend! Your goal right now is to be one of those 170 students who become Candidates; don’t think anything beyond that at this point. We DO read your essays – very closely, in fact. We DO look at your performance in non-math/science classes. We DO care – a great deal – about your passions outside of math, science and computers!! So make sure your voice comes through in your application… we’ll be listening…

Have I sufficiently freaked you out yet?? I hope not! We just want to give as much information as possible, so you know what you’re getting into. We care alot about this process and we hope you do too.

Go out and frolic in the autumn leaves,
Allison

allison.bahme@olin.edu
781-292-2203
IM: OlinAdmission
www.olin.edu

Just kidding!

Actually, I’ve just returned from the annual NACAC (National Association for College Admission Counseling) Conference in Pittsburgh, PA. Other than the nasty cold I caught - and the corresponding raspy Kathleen Turner voice that developed! - it was a terrific trip. I’ve been attending the conference for several years now and it’s a great way for ALL college counseling professionals (on both “sides of the desk”) to share ideas and discuss the various issues facing everyone involved in the college search process - students, high school counselors, and colleges alike.

One of the highlights of the conference is the Counselors’ College Fair, which provides an opportunity for all national conference attendees to network with colleagues and meet with representatives from approximately 425 colleges and universities. Now, I’m sure that many of you have spent several hours wandering the aisles of your local college fairs, filling out information cards and asking probing questions! This time, it was your counselors’ turn and, luckily, they didn’t have to fill out hundreds of information cards - in this case, we chat and answer questions and in the end, the counselors leave us with their business cards so that we can send more information.

Duncan Murdoch, Western Regional Director, and I manned the Olin College table with pride (and a fair amount of coffee in our systems)! I would like to say that I managed some engineering magic with a binder clip and paper clip - The representative from Franklin & Marshall didn’t have a table we figured out how to hang her pennant (with the aforementioned clips, dug out of the bottom of my travel bag) and create some space for her. HEY! I’m not an engineer, so let me relish the small victories! At any rate, it was a really good fair and we got to talk to a ton of counselors… we were so busy, that that we lost track of time and the powers that be had to dim the lights to get people to leave!

Another highlight was a presentation on the “Blog Revolution.” Moderated by Matt McGann at MIT (yeah, yeah, I’m sure many of you are familiar with Matt and his blog!) with presentations by Ben Jones (MIT), Daniel Creasy (Johns Hopkins) and Emily Roper (Tufts University, formerly of Olin College). It was fascinating to see how important blogging can be in the college search/admission process and how it is literally changing the face of some college’s admission websites.

So with that in mind, thanks for reading! And please stay in touch - leave a comment, send an email or IM me!

Take care,
Allison

allison.bahme@olin.edu
781-292-2203
IM: OlinAdmission
www.olin.edu

Hello everyone!

I am your guest blogger for the day! Let me introduce myself, my name is Emma Goodman. I am an Assistant Director of Admission and an alumna of Olin, Class of 2006 (the first graduating class, whoo hoo!). I am currently pursuing a career in acting in Boston, and the Admission gig is my day job so I can eat, have a roof, get benefits, and so I can give back to the school that gave me so much while I was there.

Enough about me. Recently, Oliners had a day off from classes - not just for some holiday. It was a day which we call Career Initiatives Day, where students learn more about different career paths, how to find a job or apply to grad school, how to use some of the resources we have on campus, which major they should choose, and have a chance to talk to visiting employers in our Career Fair where we had 25 companies come to campus to recruit from our student body of 304. That’s 12.16 students per company! (although I wouldn’t want to a student divided into .16’s)

The day was a huge success, and I think the students liked having the day to pursue their internships and jobs without having the stresses of class.

Here are some pictures from the day to show you a little more what it was like:

This is the obligatory picture of myself at Career Initiatives Day. Now you know who I am, and I get my picture on the website. Oh yaaaaaah. I helped out Leslie Larocca, Director of Post Graduate Planning, and her team in PGP with catering for the event. We had cappuccinos available in the morning for students, staff and faculty.

Between sessions and before the Career Fair started, everyone got together with their advising families (students and their faculty advisors) and had bag lunches from the cafeteria. Corporate guests were invited to join families for lunch as well. It was a beautiful day, and I must say, doesn’t Ben ’07 in the bottom right corner look content?

Speaking of Ben, here he is with Christine Kelly, Assistant to the President. Christine gave a well-attended talk about networking for students earlier in the morning.

Now on the Career Fair. I was not the only Olin alumni at the event that afternoon. Not only was there an alumni panel for current students to ask questions from, but two of our corporate guests were alumni! Here is Mikell “Miks” Taylor, Class of ‘06, with a colleague and two students - Christie ’07 and Meena ’08. Miks was there representing Bluefin Robotics and had some large robots for some of the students to play with.

Bluefin wasn’t the only company with items to attract engineering students. The representative from Case New Holland watches as Madge ’07 looks over some examples from the company.

Here are Andrew ‘09 and Matt ‘09 with the representative from DRS Technologies. Don’t they look happy? I always liked Career Initiatives Day because it was a day where you could see everyone dressed up in their duds to impress their future employers.

Here’s Joe ‘09 with the representatives from Bose. Companies try to give away lots of free things at career fairs to attract students to their company as well as use cool gizmos, and Bose was not an exception! You can also see how companies can go “all-out” by seeing the large display from the company behind Bose.

Overall, it was a good day. I hope you liked my little intrusion here in Allison’s Blog. Maybe I’ll be a guest blogger again at some point in the future.

-Emma