The OLINformer

… my vote goes to anyone involved in FIRST Robotics!

I’ve just returned from my second trip to the National FIRST Robotics Competition in Atlanta, GA. This year, I definitely had a better idea of what to expect but the energy and passion of everyone involved in FIRST never ceases to amaze (and inspire) me!

So I now present the weekend in pictures:

For those of you living under a rock (or don’t listen to the news much) downtown Atlanta was hit pretty hard by a tornado last month, and I must say, several buildings looked rather beat up… okay, that’s perhaps the understatement of the year. But at least the hole in the GA Dome was fixed and folks were able to find other hotel arrangements - I cannot imagine what would have happened if such a large even would have been canceled! Anyway, a shot of the downtown skyline (courtesy of Ash ‘09, from whom I’ve stolen many pics since she let me share her camera over the weekend - THANKS, ASH!)…

Nerd trading cards… (that’s what Ash called them)…

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For the past two weekends we have had the pleasure to host our annual Candidates’ Weekends at Olin College. Candidates’ Weekends are a chance for those Candidates selected by the Admission’s Committee to come to Olin to meet us.  We showcase Olin’s unique community through a Mini Expo, Faculty Chats, Variety Show, and tours. Candidates are interviewed, both individually and in groups, and participate in a Design Build exercise that is not (really, it’s not!) evaluated!
This year, both Weekends were equally fantastic. I got to meet people whose applications I had read, saw a FWOP show for the first time (Into the Woods), and connected with people in the Olin Community that I hadn’t had a chance to work with yet. One of the most special things about Candidates’ Weekends is that the entire community gets involved. Faculty, Staff, Students, Alumni, and Parents all help out to make the weekends informative and exciting for the Candidates and their families.
Hopefully, if you came to Candidates Weekend this year you had a good time. We are hoping to post some pictures on the blog, so if you have one that you would like to see here, please email it to me. I can’t promise to post every picture I get, but I will try to pick one or two that most reflect this year’s Candidates’ Weekends.

Now, we just have to wait………
Emily

emily.moscol@olin.edu

Just a quick FYI regarding Candidates’ Weekends notification, as we receive many questions about how/when we mail the decisions:

1. We mail invitations to Candidates’ Weekends via UPS overnight for domestic students and USPS International Express for overseas students. Sadly, it is not unusual (due to things beyond our control!) that the packets don’t arrive the next day.
   That said, see #3.
2. All other decisions are mailed via standard US Postal Service.
3. Decisions will also be available online through your application account on Monday, February 4, 2008 at 9pm EST.

We will mail ALL decisions no later than Friday, February 1, 2008.

Regards,
The Olin College Office of Admission

I bet you’re wondering what happens after you click the “SEND” button on your application! So here’s the low-down on our application review process…

Early December through early January - APPLICATION PROCESSING:

1. You submitted your electronic application (with uploaded résumé and essays). After we receive your application, we go into our files and pair your application with any other credentials you have sent us: your transcript, your standardized test scores, secondary school report (Form A), teacher recommendations (Forms B & C), current senior grades (Form D or equivalent) and any supplemental materials.
2. You check your status online. After submitting your application, you can see what credentials we have received by logging back into your application account and checking your status page. We update these accounts as soon as we can, but please be patient! I cannot stress this enough! Every piece of mail must be manually opened, sorted and entered in the database - so it takes some time. Remember that, in contrast to other schools you may be applying to, we are a VERY small Admission Office. So be kind to us!
3. You’re complete! When our office has received all the required pieces of information, your status page will show your application is complete. Your application folder (containing all the cool and interesting stuff you’ve sent us) is then ready to be reviewed and your folder is assigned to a reading team….

…So what the heck is a reading team?!? There are four reading teams made up of about seven faculty and staff members and, in some cases, alumni! Each reading team is captained by a member of Admission Office - Dean Charlie Nolan, Assistant Directors Emily Moscol or Caitlin Snow, or myself. Applications are divided amongst the reading teams based on where you attend high school; each of us takes a diverse group of states as well as a portion of the overseas students.

NOW through late March - APPLICATION REVIEW, CANDIDATES’ WEEKENDS and FINAL DECISIONS:

1. Right after the deadline, we actually started reading some of you eager-beavers who were already completed! Throughout December and January, we will read ALL of the applications.
2. At least once a week (sometimes more) during the month of January, the reading teams meet to discuss the applications assigned to their team.
3. In the last week of January, the reading teams make recommendations to the Admission Committee regarding which applicants should be invited to Candidates’ Weekends (CW). The Admission Committee is made up of 5-6 members including faculty, the Dean of Students and Dean of Admission - all of whom also serve as readers on the aforementioned reading teams.
4. The Admission Committee determines which applicants will become “Candidates” and will be invited to CW. All students are notified of their status in early, early February - we’re shooting for February 1st but that’s not a guarantee at this time! We’ll keep you posted on that timeline…
5. Candidates flood campus for CW (February 29-March 1 or March 7-8) and learn more about Olin, participating in a design/build exercise, interviews and group exercises.
6. The Admission Committee reconvenes to review information gathered during Candidates’ Weekends by the CW interviewers - a group of faculty, current students, staff and/or alumni. The Admission Committee determines which Candidates will be offered admission, who will be placed on the waitlists and who will be denied.
7. Notification letters will be sent sometime toward the end of March.

As elementary as I’ve tried to make sound above, it is insanely difficult to do! While this process is not exactly “rocket science,” it is very nuanced, subjective and agonizing at times. Because we strive to create a holistic approach to the application process, it is not as cut-and-dry as admitting all the students with perfect SAT/ACT scores or those with straight-A’s on their transcripts. That would be too easy and far too simplistic… and not very Olinesque! Our review process is extremely labor-intensive but it is the best way for us to build the kind of intellectual and creative community that makes Olin unique!

Learning about each of you is fascinating; the hard part is that we feel like we’ve really gotten to know you after reading your essays and hearing what your teachers have to say about you (or if we’ve met you in person). The reality is that we only have a small number of spots in each class… and unfortunately we just don’t have room for everyone.

I constantly have to remind myself (and others!) that things typically happen for a reason, even if the reason is not clear at that moment… When I was a high school college counselor, one of the most heart-wrenching aspects of my job was when student came to my office devastated by a disappointing decision from their dream school. It makes my heart ache just thinking about it now (melodramatic, but true, I swear). But the funny thing was that in the vast majority of those cases, the college that a student ultimately chose to attend was just as good for her/him as the original first-choice institution… and in some cases, it was an even better match!

Our applicant pool is one of the strongest in the nation and each of you will have tons of amazing opportunities come April - whether at Olin or somewhere else. I truly believe in our application process; it is perhaps one of the most personal ones out there. And though no admission process can be perfect, I think Olin’s process is pretty darn good!

I hope you feel a bit better (or at least better informed) about our process. I really want to convey the level of dedication that the entire Olin community puts into our approach to admission - from the application readers to the interviewers and presenters at Candidates’ Weekends, we put a lot of ourselves into the process.

Whew! I’m exhausted. That’s it for now. I’m working on posting more pics soon…

Enjoy the weekend and Happy New Year!
Allison

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

So we now present some helpful tips to get you (and us!) through the next few weeks:

1. If you would like to know the status of your application, log onto your online account and check the Status page.

PLEASE DO NOT FREAK OUT IF THE STATUS PAGE SAYS YOUR APPLICATION IS NOT COMPLETE!!

• Remember - we WILL accept your December SAT and/or ACT results! Go ahead and submit your application online by the deadline; if we don’t have your test scores by the end of December, we’ll let you know! All test scores need to come to us on an official score report from the College Board or ACT. If you haven’t had your scores sent to us yet - contact the College Board or ACT as soon as possible and request that they be sent to Olin College
• We do not need official AP Scores. Just fill in the box on the application and we’re good to go. If you’d like to send a photocopy of your AP scores from the College Board, that’s perfectly fine.
• Some of you have been wondering about “superscores” - i.e. combining your highest scores from each section of a standardized test. Yes, we do take your highest individual scores! And yes, even on the ACT.
• You may submit the signed Affidavit at any time. You don’t need to wait for us to receive all of your other materials. A good rule of thumb might be to send the Affidavit when you submit the online portion of the application.
• Again, we don’t need a Mid-Year School Report but we do need some kind of official documentation of your academic performance in your senior year - by using Form D or an official copy of your first quarter/six weeks/trimester report card - that’s all we’re looking for. Oh and be sure to send all of your transcripts to us, including those from any college courses you may have taken.
• The December 1st deadline is for submission of the online portion of the application. Although we’d love to receive all the pieces of your application around that time, we realize that’s not always possible! Supporting credentials - letters of recommendation, transcript(s), senior grades - may arrive after the deadline.

T-2 weeks until we start reading all those applications…

As the application deadline approaches… some topical/timely questions that many of you have been asking…

1. May I submit music/art/other extra stuff for my application?

We are certainly open to supplemental pieces to an application! However, please note that anything sent to us becomes the property of Olin College (i.e. we won’t send it back) and that we cannot guarantee that any supplemental materials (excluding letters of recommendation) will be reviewed. Given the size of our applicant pool, there are simply some things that we cannot get to in our short reading season if we’re to actually read ALL of the applications submitted!

2. May I send additional recommendations? Do you prefer a science or math teacher for the second teacher recommendation?

The simple answer is the first part is… Yes, most definitely! But don’t go crazy - we don’t need letters from every teacher you’ve ever had or the department chairs or headmaster/principal of your school. It’s about the quality of the letter and how well the person knows you, not the title underneath the signature.

If you’d like to submit an additional recommendation, it should still add dimension to your application. And since it’s supplemental, it doesn’t have to be academic. So ask your boss or Scout Master; consider your band director or coach; essentially, any adult mentor in your life would be a great addition to your file. Remember: an extra letter of recommendation is just that - icing on the cake! We do not require it and you won’t be at a disadvantage if you don’t submit an additional recommendation.

With regard to the second part of the questions above, we encourage you to consider asking a non-math/science teacher for the second letter of recommendation. The purpose of the Teacher Recommendations is to give us some perspective on what you’re like as a student. If have both of your letters come from teachers math and science, we often times get a rather one-dimensional view of you. So think about asking your English or history teacher (or some other humanities or social science instructor) - even if you didn’t make your best grades in those classes, those teachers often have great insight to share with us and can help flesh out your application by providing us with a different angle. But if you’d like both of your letters to come from math/science teachers, that is perfectly fine! We promise!

3. How strict are the 500 and 300 word limits on the essays?

We are not militant about the essay length, but we do expect students to abide to those guidelines as closely as possible. The word limits are guidelines; however, please don’t go too crazy over the limits. They exist so that we don’t get bogged down in really long essays and are actually read everything in everyone’s application files. If you go over by a few words, no worries - we can assure you that we do not sit around counting the number of words in each essay and then throw out the ones over 300/500 words!

4. Will you accept my scores from the December SAT and/or ACT?

Absolutely! As we’ve noted on the website, we are accepting scores from the December 1st SAT and the December 8th ACT test dates.

However, be sure that you submit your online application by the December 1st deadline (less than 3 weeks away)!

So those have been some of the hot topics of late. Hope you found these answers helpful. Good luck and we are getting really excited about reading all of your applications!!

~The Olin College Office of Admission

Yes, it’s true. I admit it. And if my involvement at our recent National Association for College Admission Counseling (a.k.a. NACAC) Conference in Austin was any indication, I’m a hopeless case! So consider me “Julie, your Cruise Director” for College Search/Admission Resources…

…(if you don’t get the reference, brush up on your 80’s TV shows)…

First of all, I don’t think I ever explained in my blog post last year what NACAC actually does. Silly me! Our mission:

The National Association for College Admission Counseling will support and advance the work of counseling and enrollment professionals as they help all students realize their full educational potential, with particular emphasis on the transition to postsecondary education. NACAC is committed to promoting high professional standards that foster ethical and social responsibility.

Last year, I joked that our national conference is where all of your counselors and college admission folk sit around and talk about YOU, but of course that’s not entirely true…heheh… Actually, one of the things I enjoy most about being at such a small place like Olin is that when I run into one of your counselors and I’m asked about one of our current students, the chances are very good that I not only know who s/he is talking about but that I probably have recently had a conversation (or lunch or played soccer) with that student! I *love* that! But I digress…

Secondly, what made this year’s conference different for me was that I am now a member of a NACAC committee (there are also state and regional associations/committees) and we meet several times a year, one of which is at the national conference. I’ve still got a lot to learn, but just listening to my committee colleagues and taking the opportunity to observe the Assembly - our governing body that initiates, advises and provides consent on association and professional issues - in session was quite educational!

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I am beginning to think that Erico Guizzo has a bit of a crush on Olin College! I kid, I kid… but the IEEE Spectrum Associate Editor has written yet another glowing blog about Olin - this time, in response to the recent New York Times Magazine article.

So take a look. And yes, feel free to mock my shameless marketing of other people’s impressions of Olin.

P.S. Thanks to Ash ‘09 for giving me the heads up on Mr. Guizzo’s newest Tech Talk post!

Feelin’ the love,
Allison

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

My original post from 9/21/2007:

So thanks to my Google Alert, I stumbled upon this blog post from IEEE Spectrum Online. Yes, of course, Olin is mentioned! But - more importantly - it touches on how some schools have taken note of the high dropout rates in engineering programs across the nation and are making an effort to shift away from the “boot-camp model of engineering education” and toward “experimental courses” that incorporate “new education models.”

Check it out! And have a good weekend.

Allison

• So maybe you read the letter we mailed to you after the PSAT…
• We think there’s a pretty good chance that our “duct tape” prospectus in the very cool (and reusable!) anti-static bag may have caught your attention…
• If you’re reading this, then you’ve likely been keeping an eye the blogs…
• And there’s even a small chance that you haven’t immediately deleted all our spam-y emails…