The OLINformer

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…

On Monday, the Olin community celebrated Olin College’s 10th birthday. In November 1997, we came into existence on paper- there were no buildings, faculty or students yet, but we were a college. The birthday celebration was a good opportunity to reflect on how far this college has come in such a short amount of time. The Board of Trustees and the President’s Council were on hand to celebrate with us, and one major event was the re-naming of the Olin Center. Those of you who have visited campus have been in the Olin Center, because that is where we in the Admission Office make our home. It is now named Milas Hall.

Larry Milas was hugely instrumental in getting Olin off the ground. He was the chair of the F.W. Olin Foundation, and had the vision and the drive to make a brand-new college appear out of thin air. In appreciation of his hard work, the Board and the President’s Council decided to surprise Larry by renaming the building in his honor. Judging by his reaction, he was incredibly surprised and touched. The students also presented a gift in honor of the birthday, and everyone had cake and ice cream. Happy Birthday Olin!

-Caitlin

Larry and his granddaughter revealing the new sign.

Every proper celebration needs an ice sculpture!

Hello!

Our annual Fall Open House was held on October 28th, and it was a resounding success. We had nearly 350 people come to campus to learn more about Olin College, take tours, chat with faculty, and listen to the Olin Conductorless Orchestra. It was truly a whirlwind day for us. Overall, the survey responses have been very positive, and people are already asking about next year!!!

Before we can start planning another Fall Open House, we have a couple of things to get done first. Namely, admitting the class of 2012!! Things are heating up in the Admission office, with mail coming from all over the world. All of the materials I have seen so far indicate that our winter months are going to be filled to the brim with reading, reading, and more reading. I’m very excited, because this is my first admission cycle as an admission officer, so while I have been told what to expect, I have never experienced it first hand myself. I love new challenges, and this one looks to be quite amazing.

Whenever I see the year 2012 written, I think about when I was a kid and everyone talked about what the new millenium would be like. Flying cars, interplanetary travel, and cities in space. My dad was really into Star Trek, and we would watch Next Generation with him every week. I always imagined my grown up life to be a lot like the life on the starship Enterprise. I would be friends with other species and we would communicate telepathically. I had it all planned out. Except for the part where these things hadn’t actually been invented or discovered yet. Now, the only other species I’ve befriended are my cats, Saturn is my car, and I live an Earthly life in a regular house on a regular street. Oh well. Maybe someone whose application I’m reading now will be the one to get us into space, flying cars, or discover a new species. You never know. In the meantime, perhaps I should just take Captain Picard’s advice: “Live now; make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again.”

Ciao!

Emily

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

While Olin’s application deadline is December 1, we are aware that many applicants from California may have had their lives disrupted by the recent devastating wildfires - please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have questions or concerns about how this might affect your ability to complete the application by our deadline. We will definitely make every effort to be as flexible as possible with regard to your situation.

Best wishes and we look forward to reading ALL of your applications!
The Olin College Office of Admission

It’s getting on towards November, which means that a) Olin students are passing around a NASTY cold b) mid-semester projects and midterms are coming due and c) it’s 70 degrees outside. The first two make sense, and there may actually be a cause and effect relationship going on there. Letter C is throwing me for a loop. The leaves have turned beautiful shades of red, orange and yellow, and many of them are starting to fall to the ground. The sun is going down earlier and earlier each day and yet…. most of the students I saw yesterday were wearing shorts and flip-flops. This makes Halloween costume-planning difficult because to me, it feels like August, and as everyone knows, Halloween is not an August holiday. Still, I feel the need to come up with SOMETHING because the Faculty and Staff Costume Competition is happening next Wednesday in the Dining Hall. Hopefully inspiration will strike in the next few days.

Since November is rapidly approaching, that means that there is roughly one month left before our application deadline! We have some work to do on our end as well. We have to process all the pieces of paper that come in the mail each day, all those recommendations and transcripts and test score reports that you’ve been sending us. We also have to go through application reader training, form reading teams, and then train those teams. We’re excited to start reading your applications, so make sure to submit your materials as soon as they’re ready!

-Caitlin

Photo Credit: Kelcy Adamec, ‘09

Caitlin Snow

Assistant Director of Admission

781-292-2212

caitlin.snow@olin.edu

So there’s a rumor amongst some students that the Admission Office is a “fishbowl” (the floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto the “O” may have something to do with that!)… and upon my return from lunch yesterday, I walked into a scene right out of The Little Mermaid…

(more…)

This month has been chock full of events in both External Relations and the Admission office at Olin. We have no fewer than THREE major events on campus this month, two of which were last week, and one next week.

On October 11, we had Career Initiatives Day, for which over 30 companies came to campus to recruit our students. Internships and post graduate plans were discussed, resume and career advice was plentiful, and a productive and successful day was had by all.

Here’s a photo of the action!

On October 12-14 we hosted our annual Family Weekend. 112 families came to join in the activities, which included a showing of the film “The Olin Bubble”, a fire art performance by the Olin Fire Arts Club, an Olin Phoenix Soccer Club game, a family Trivia challenge, tons of informative sessions for parents, and plenty of New Englandesque foods and cheer. It was an absolutely wonderful weekend, with striking blue skies and gorgeous foliage, and a good time was undoubtedly had by all.

Here is a photo of the Olin Phoenix Soccer Club in action:

Here’s a photo of the Phoenix huddle:

Next week, on October 28, we have our annual Fall Open House. We have a full house already, and the RSVP system filled up extremely quickly this year. We are looking forward to meeting everyone who has been in touch with us, and if you weren’t able to RSVP, please come and visit us some other time! We want everyone to have a chance to experience Olin in person, because we know that once you get here you will understand just how wonderful this community truly is.

We look forward to hearing from you through info@olin.edu, as well as through the comments section. Keep those applications coming before the December 1 deadline!!

So long for now,

Emily

Emily Tisei Moscol

Assistant Director of Admission

Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

Emily.Moscol@olin.edu

781-292-2207