First week of reading!

Hello everyone. This was the first week that the counseling staff was able to take files home to read. The veterans in the office are shaking a bit of rust off their reading glasses, and cozying back up to their favorite home work-space. As the rookie in the office, I'm still getting used to this part of the job, but so far it's been a pleasure to read your applications!

After all the travel, the silliness, the promotion, the interviews, the tours, the school visits...this is the real "meat and potatoes" of our year. Each one of us takes this season very seriously. Students often articulate the most personal, sensitive, and formative subjects of their lives in college applications. Admission counselors are strangers to you. We are not your family members, your best friends, your mentors. We are not the people one might expect to be privy to the kind of emotional investment that many of you put into your applications. But here we are, reading about your personal triumphs, family tragedies, sports injuries, paradigm shifts, "a-hah!" moments, and bold aspirations. The day we forget how meaningful this exchange is, will be the day we quit our jobs.

I'll be writing more about reading season in the weeks ahead. I hope that the second half of your senior years are materializing in memorable, happy, and productive ways. Have fun!

January Interviews

I hope everyone had a relaxing and meaningful Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend! The rest of the admission staff and I spent the weekend scattered across the country holding the last interviews of the year. We had counselors and/or Admission Fellows in San Francisco, Emeryville, Seattle, Washington D.C., and Chicago. (We'll be wrapping up in Portland this coming weekend). All added up, we did approximately 300 interviews in one weekend! Thanks as well to all of our prospective students who took time and energy to schedule an interview with us on the road. We love meeting you and hearing your stories!

We worked and traveled over a long weekend which, for most people is a holiday, because we really value the opportunity to interview as many of our applicants as we can.

Returning to the office today, we saw the parking lots and dining halls full of students who returned from winter break while we were away. The campus has energy and life again, despite the rain. Yes! Rain! Do not adjust your screen, you're reading correctly. It's been pouring, by our standards, for a couple of days now. Rain in the desert is often bewildering, and many of us are joking about the "awful weather." The truth is, however, that the rain is also a critical part of the ecosystem that we inhabit and so it's nice to see the plants and animals soaking up the much anticipated water.

While I was in Chicago for interviews I got to check in with some Pitzer College alumni!
From left: Caitlin Pierce '09 is a first-year corps member of Teach For America in Saint Louis, MO; Yael Berenson '08 lives in Chicago and works for Youth Outreach Services; Ben White '08 also lives in Chicago and works at Easter Seals Therapeutic Day School; I am me; and Kevin Garvey '08 just moved to Chicago after teaching English in South Korea for a year and a half.

What a great opportunity for some Pitzer propaganda! But really, it was fantastic to see the good work that Pitzer alumni are doing in the world. Keep it up!

For the next month or so, the admission staff will be reading the applications that you have all put so much time and energy into. It is a labor of love. Though it may seem strange, I encourage you to take this time to relax as much as you can. Not so much that you start failing classes, but enough so that you can enjoy the second half of your senior year. The process is now truly out of your hands. Read fun books, ride a bike, stay up late with your friends, write songs, eat meals with your family.

...and let us know if you have any questions!

Where's my application!?

"I submitted my application online, but my teachers mailed in my recommendation letters themselves...do you have everything!?"

"Did you get my Art Supplement!?"

"I took the SAT and/or ACT more than once, do you have all the correct scores!?"

"I heard there was a glitch with the Common App...is my application OK!?"

"My messenger pigeon came back without my college application, does that mean you received it!?" [True story.]

If you have any of these questions, or others like them, then Cecil the Sagehen has something to tell you. Click here!

Also, for those of you who miss the "Beyond Buzzwords" days, check out this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education and then my Letter to the Editor in response. Let me know what you think!

Our turn

Welcome back from a great break! The Office of Admission took a nice little vacation for the holidays and now we're back to work. Most of you have already submitted your Regular Decision applications. Congratulations! Some of you may have had some trouble submitting online if you waited until the last minute. For this reason, if you began your application before the deadline, YOU MAY STILL SUBMIT before midnight Pacific Standard Time on Sunday, January 10. If you have any questions about the Common App glitch, give us a call at the office.

We're really proud of all the hard work and energy that went into your applications.

Now it's our turn! For the next couple of weeks we'll just be opening mail, sorting, alphabetizing, and entering information into our computer database. Here's some footage from our "back office" this morning where some of our staff are working alongside some dedicated student workers to sort all of your information!

After Early Decision Committee

Yesterday the Admission Committee met all day to discuss our fantastic Early Decision applicants. We had more Early Decision applications than ever this year and it was a pleasure and an honor to read each one. After 6 intense hours around a table, which included much discussion and analysis, our committee reached consensus in order to admit the first students to the class of 2014! For the rest of the week we'll be preparing and mailing our decision letters.

Some of you will be very happy to see a letter from Pitzer in the mail. Congratulations! Some of you will be disappointed. One of our policies as a committee is to make honest and fair decisions with our Early Decision applicants; we don't defer or wait-list many students from the Early Decision pool. If we can't make it happen for an applicant, then we want that person to fall in love with another school. We don't make these decisions lightly. Each one of us appreciates the time, energy, and emotion that you put into your application.

Our current students are finishing their finals this week, and the Office of Admission is calm today. The sun is shining in Claremont, and the air is mercifully clear. We've even got some snow clinging to the peak of Mt. Baldy just north of campus! In true Pitzer fashion, I decided to make an "Orange-person" this morning, rather than a "snow-person." The impressive results are pictured below.

For all of our Regular Decision applicants, I encourage you to finish and submit the applications by the January 1 deadline. Dramatically waiting for the clock to strike 11:59pm on New Year's eve to click submit on the Common App will undoubtedly appear to be a terrible decision when your power goes out...your internet glitches...or you forget that you're not in the Pacific Standard Time zone...or some other catastrophe befalls you, causing your laboriously constructed and manicured application to bounce back at you unceremoniously.

Get the picture? Those of you expecting to make a New Year's resolution to stop procrastinating should begin that process sooner rather than later.

Done and done!

Some Holiday Wackiness

For college and high school students alike, final exams are imminent. No matter where you are in the country, your weather was awful this week. Most importantly, the January 1 Regular Decision application deadline is rapidly approaching! Feels like we need a break, doesn't it?!

We had some early fun here in the office in preparation for the coming holidays. Below are pictures from our Student-Staff holiday party!Above, members of the counseling staff raffle off iTunes gift certificates for lucky student-workers!
Our wacky student-workers! Looks deceptively fun! Arnaldo Rodriguez, Vice President for Admission and Financial Aid, tests out a beautiful piece of "Pitzer flavored" furniture (handmade by Admission Fellow Tim Campos '10!). Below, Cecil cozies up to a bready reindeer head! Yum!So breath deeply. Eat the eyebrows off a bready reindeer head, and relaxe as we head into winter craziness. Season's best from the Pitzer College Office of Admission!

Beyond Buzzwords, part 4

At last, we come to the end of our journey through Pitzer's core values, and how applicants might better come to understand what we mean when we repeat them. So far we've discussed Social Responsibility, Intercultural Understanding, and Interdisciplinary Learning*. The final core value that is central to the Pitzer College experience is Student Autonomy.

*Briefly, though, I want to pass along this article for anyone who is interested in reading more about the debate (oh yes, there is a debate!) over interdisciplinarity and its future in higher education.

And now back to the task at hand...This idea of Student Autonomy was born, like our other values, from the experiences of the individuals who founded our college in the early 1960s. Student Autonomy has many meanings, and is manifested in several ways both philosophically as well as practically here at Pitzer.

Most liberal arts educations are based on a "core curriculum," which is a fancy way of essentially saying "general education requirements." These core curricula may comprise the first one, two, three or even four semesters of one's college education. The idea behind the core curriculum was to give all students the same basic introduction to college-level work by teaching the "foundations of a good liberal arts education," often without giving students any choice in their own course schedules.

Not at Pitzer.

Rather than force students to check courses off of a list of requirements, our letter of admission is a vote of confidence in our students that they are capable of imagining and navigating their own educations. We do provide some guidelines to ensure that students expose themselves to a breadth of subjects (32 Sociology courses, however fun, do not comprise a robust liberal arts education). For example, Pitzer students take at least two courses in the Humanities and Fine Arts, two in the Social Sciences, one in the Natural Sciences, and one in Formal Reasoning. Within those areas, however, the specific courses that students choose to take are up to them. Easy, right?!

You'll notice that I didn't say "Math." If you're anything like I was in high school, you are constantly asking yourself what does geometry...calculus...trigonometry have to do with what I am going to do in the world. The principle behind Student Autonomy is that everything we do here at Pitzer should be related to making the world a better place. Not everyone is going to use a graphing calculator to make the world a better place. Some of us will. The result is that we've hired some outstanding faculty to teach courses such as Math, Philosophy and the "Real World," The Mathematics of Gambling, Mathematics in Many Cultures, and more. If you want to do Dynamical Systems, Chaos, and Fractals, we've got you covered there, too! The point is, you have choices. By the way, Math, Philosophy and the "Real World" was one of the best courses I took in college.

Another manifestation of Student Autonomy on campus is the presense of student input at the highest levels of administration. It is not uncommon - at all - to find students in heate debates with each other, with faculty members, and with administrators over institutional decisions, policies, and current events. The fact that debate even exists between students and administrators is evidence that students have real agency in every aspect of the governance of the school. Students are required to sit on every governing committee at Pitzer including the Faculty Executive, Budget, Academic Standards, and Judicial. If you love Student Government, if you're passionate about the direction of your institution, and if you're courageous enough to engage in conversation then you will likely be encouraged by the autonomy you find at Pitzer.

So for prospective students, we want to see your leadership, your independence, your initiative. Are you the kind of person that does well with autonomy? Are you curious and excited about taking courses in whatever subjects you choose...even if it means turning a course you end up disliking into a learning and growth opportunity? If so, then show me! We want to see all of those moments when you've stepped out onto a limb by yourself. We want to hear about the hard choices that you've had to make. We want to know that you're excited to thrive in an autonomous environment.

I hope this exploration beyond the buzzwords has been helpful. As we head into Winter, keep coming back to Admission Unpeeled to follow your application through our office. Blog posts will be more frequent as we begin reading heaps of applications. We know that this is a stressful time. So if there's anything we can help you with, please don't hesitate to contact us here at the office.