The OLINformer

On Monday, we were treated to a true rarity in the adult working world: a snow day. The snow started late Sunday night and continued on through Monday morning, so Olin was declared closed. Students don’t get back until next week, so class schedules weren’t disrupted at all. Since I had finished reading the application files I had brought home with me on Sunday, I spent the day shoveling, snoozing on the couch and watching back-to-back episodes of “Firefly.” (Fun trivia fact: Joss Whedon went to my alma mater, Wesleyan University.) The snow itself is gorgeous- here’s a picture from Boston.com, submitted by Kelly Best in Somerville.

(http://www.boston.com/news/local/gallery/011408snow_readers?pg=15)

Now that we’re back in the office, we’re busy tying up loose ends, meeting with our teams, and finishing reading all of our files. I hope you all are relaxing a bit, now that the January 15th deadline has passed and most of you are finished applying to schools. Take care!

-Caitlin

…The (belated) Fall 2007 Semester in Review, Part 1!

September:

Some pics from the annual Club Fair:

Visiting Asst. Professor of Computer Science Matt Jadud chats with Steve ‘08 and Ash ‘09 at the FIRST Robotics table.

Alex ‘08 displays his grilling prowess!

Eamon ‘09 and Kent ‘09 at the Olin Christian Fellowship Table.

Carisa ‘11 checks out the Knitting Club.

OK… so I’m not quite sure what Andy ‘10 is doing, but he’s on a unicycle with a weapon…

Learning the basics of poi from the friendly folks in Fire Hazard.

CORe (Olin student gov’t) poster children! Stefan ‘10, Anthony ‘08 and Tiana ‘08.

Mini Baja

What do you do on the last HOT day of the year?!? Pull out the kiddie pool and set up the homemade Slip-n-Slide!!

Photos courtesy of Arash ‘11

(more…)

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

It’s been another week of crazy New England weather! First the wintry blast on Thursday - and it took me a harrowing FOUR-HOURS to drive 10 miles! The scariest part was that I *really* thought I was going run out of gas. Who would have thought that it could take over an hour to move less than a 1/4 mile?!? But Caitlin wins the prize in our office, poor thing… it took her SIX AND A HALF hours to get home!

Today, er…yesterday, it was a Nor’easter, which is basically only good for staying inside, curling up and reading…lots of applications.

Actually, being cooped up inside also gave me a chance to fulfill my SERV Auction obligation for the month. I’ve just finished baking cookies and super-chocolate brownies for Leslie ‘09 (who is quite possibly one of the kindest human beings on the planet, but was rumored to have threatened people if they outbid her on my baked goods!). Speaking of, I’ll try to round up some pics from the auction and add them to my random-assortment-of-photos-from-the-last-month-or-so blog that I hope to post in the near future.

As the sound of city snow plows lull me to sleep…..
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!!

I’m not sure how many of you are obsessively checking your status page to see if/when we have received your application materials, but rest assured, we are working very hard to get everything into the system. Our office consists of four staff members, plus Charlie our Dean, and it takes a lot of manpower to open, process and file all that mail. We are fueled primarily by coffee and tasty holiday treats that have enough sugar to take down a small pony.

So-do not despair if the affidavit you put in the mail on Saturday or Monday hasn’t appeared in the “Done” category on your status page. It will get there! The same goes for test scores- your application will not suffer if everything in your file is not complete this week, next week, or even the week after that. Rest assured that the processing elves (that’s us, minus the pointy ears) will get everything done, hopefully before Christmas, at which time we will convert to Application Reading Elves. Thanks for your patience everyone, and thanks for working so hard to get your application into our hands.

-Caitlin

I couldn’t possibly let this week go by having only posted to notify you of the change in the deadline. (See previous blog for info.) I guess that I hadn’t realized how many Oliners read this blog, even (especially?!?) those who don’t specifically need information about Admissions! It’s interesting to hear feedback from the community, and I think that it points out what it’s “really like” here at Olin. There are so many different types of people, with different backgrounds, different opinions, and different interests, yet we have all found ourselves here for one reason or another, a pieced together community of people who enjoy not only the idea of Olin College, but the day to day accomplishments.

And the accomplishments are many!! Looking over all of the mail and credentials that have come in over the past few weeks, I am humbled by the intelligence and acumen of our prospective students. You all have remarkable lives ahead of you, and I wish you all the best!!

Now, to answer some questions that have come in of late:

1. I got an email that said that the deadline had been extended to December 3rd. Are you serious?

Yes! The deadline has been extended to December 3rd. No, this is not an installment of Punk’d. It’s for real. We wouldn’t do that to you guys!!!

2. Do I have to wait for Mrs. X, my super busy Physics teacher, to give me my recommendation in order to send everything together?

No! You can send in your credentials as you get them. You don’t have to wait for your science teacher to get back to you to send in the other stuff. Send it in as many installments as you need.

3. Should I hire an envoy to carry my application materials to campus to make sure that they are in your hands precisely at midnight on December 3rd?

No! Postmarked by December 3rd is fine. We won’t be here at midnight anyway (at least I hope not)!!!

4. I won an Oscar/wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning novel/restored a rare Van Gogh painting! Can I send it to you as a supplement?

Sure, you can send it, but we can’t give it back, and we don’t promise to be able to review it, though we will try.

5. I had College Board/ACT send you my scores a long time ago, but they aren’t showing up on my account! What do I do?

If it was a long time ago (as in several months) you should call and check with us. If it was a shorter time ago (as in several weeks) you can assume that they were sent but we haven’t got to them yet. If we never get them, we will let you know. We always follow up about missing or incomplete information.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email or call one of us. Our email addresses are listed on the website, and we are more than happy to help you out in any way we can. Now relax, finish those essays, and think of all the fun you are going to have over Winter Break when your applications are done!

Yours Truly,

Emily

Hello!

We wanted to share with you that the deadline has been extended to DECEMBER 3, 2007 - NO JOKE!!
This will give you a few extra days to fine tune your essays and resumes.

Good luck!!!

Emily

Here we are, working hard (Caitlin on L, Emily on R)!!!!!

Thanks to Susan Johanson for the pic!

• 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…