Travel Kicks Off and an Application Delay

I hope everyone enjoys a wonderful holiday weekend as the unofficial end to summer is upon us
:(

The end of summer means the beginning to the college admissions recruitment season...things got kicked off today as Bonnie Hall headed to a program at the Academy of the Pacific Rim in Boston. Michelle and Karen will both being heading to international locations over the weekend; Latin America and India respectively. It promises to be a busy fall and we hope to see many prospective students on the road.

Interest in WPI remains very high with an increase of visitors over the summer and more than 17,500 students requesting information from WPI so far this year. We already have over a dozen applications in hand, with the first one coming in in mid-August. If you are one of the early birds hang in there...no decisions will mail until mid-December.

Speaking of applications, the Common Application and the Universal Application are up and running, however the WPI on-line application won't go live until next week. We had hoped to be live in August, however we've made substantial improvements to the application and testing has taken a bit longer than anticipated. If you prefer to use our application, hang in there...we'll be up and running by the end of next week...I promise:)

Enjoy the great weather and hope to see you at WPI soon!!

Ed

International Interviews

Our international interview locations were just finalized earlier today and added to the web. If you are following from overseas we may be coming to your hometown!! We'll be visiting 28 international locations and be offering the opportunity for prospective students and their families to meet with our WPI representative. If you are interested in setting up an interview
e-mail intl_admissions@wpi.edu.

If we are not coming to your hometown we are always willing to set-up a phone interview. The best time is typically in November as the travel season winds down. You can also e-mail intl_admissions@wpi.edu to arrange that.

Ed





PS - The domestic locations for interviews have been posted for a while and are filling up fast....e-mail admissions@wpi.edu if you are looking to make arrangements for a domestic location.

Move-In Day

While many of our first year students have already arrived over the last few days, Sunday is the big day for most of the families. Look forward to seeing many of you then.

While it may be a bit late for designing your residence hall room for this year a colleague forwarded this to me and I thought I'd share:

http://www.designyourdorm.com/

Enjoy!!

Ed

New Inquiry Form and Common App Supplement

The summer brings all sorts of projects...and we've been busy!!

Earlier today we launched a new on-line inquiry form. In addition to being more attractive, all students, whether they are first-year or transfer candidates, will go to the same form and complete only the information that pertains to them. If you been meaning to request some information check it out!!

Our supplement for the Common Application has also gone live. A pdf version will be available on our web site in the next few days. If you've started the Common Application you can access the on-line version directly through their web site. Don't forget our Early Action deadline has changed to November 10th!!

Last but not least our evening information sessions across the country have been finalized. Want to learn more? http://admissions.wpi.edu/Visit/infosessionsoff.html

Ed

Happy Days

You may have noticed the Princeton Review released their 2009 guidebook to the best colleges in the US. They pick 371 of us...not exactly sure how they settle on that number...but once again WPI was included in the prestigious group. http://www.princetonreview.com/college-rankings.aspx

What makes for better reading are some of the top twenty lists they compile...jock schools, best college radio station, best party school (we are not on that one!) and Happiest Students!! I am pleased to share that WPI made it to the top twenty for Happiest Students this year!!

If you are a current student reading this glad you are enjoying your 4 years...if you are a prospective student or parent come on out to Worcester and meet some of our happy students:)

Ed

Starting Salaries at WPI

WPI continues to rank near the top of the median starting salary list for US universities. Payscale.com compiles rankings each year that are typically picked up and "presented" by a number of different media outlets including the NY Times, Boston Globe and Forbes. A year ago the Boston Globe recognized WPI for having the 3rd highest median starting salaries of all colleges in New England and the 12th highest in the nation...don't forget there are about 4,000 colleges in the country!!

According to the new Payscale.com rankings WPI is now #2 in New England and #10 in the nation!!

The NY Times has picked up the new rankings info and released an article in the last few days. In addition to recognizing specific schools, they list the "Top 10 majors that lead to high salaries". 7 of the 10 are engineering fields..all offered at WPI and physics, computer science, and economics round out the top 10...all also offered at WPI:)

As I often say it's not all about the money, but great to see our graduates doing so well for themselves:)

Ed

Application Supplement

It's Friday!! But before I head out for the weekend I wanted to share that we are putting the final touches on new supplemental questions for the Common Application, as well as the Universal Application. Starting this fall, applicants to WPI will be asked to complete a few supplemental questions before submitting their application. For those students submitting the common or universal application on-line the questions will be integrated into the application. For those using a paper application there will be a link to a pdf of the supplemental questions which will be housed on the WPI web site.

Why are we doing this? The main reason is to better accommodate our Flex Path Option. Do you know that WPI went test optional three years ago? Students have the option to have their standardized test scores considered by the admissions committee, or if they feel that their test scores are not a good reflection of their potential for academic success at WPI, they can submit supplemental materials to be considered in lieu of test scores through our Flex Path Option. Learn more in our Applying to WPI section.

The supplement will give all applicants a chance to clearly state whether or not they want their test scores to be considered. In addition, we've added a few more questions to help the committee get to know our applicants a bit better.

We don't want to create more work for our applicants, but with applications essentially doubling over the past 5 years a little more information can be very helpful in our admissions deliberations.

The supplement should be live by the end of the month for all you early bird applicants!!

Enjoy the nice weekend:)

Ed