Application Review

With Thanksgiving just around the corner we are busy starting to review applications here in the Office of Admissions at WPI. Our Early Action Round I deadline passed a week ago today and it appears that just about all the applications have been loaded or hand entered into our database.



Yes, we still get paper applications...how many you ask? We received over 1,650 early action applications and 70 of them were paper. Last year, 1,627 early action applications and 97 were paper. As you might imagine the numbers continue to shrink each year.



If you are one of our early action applicants I would encourage you to check your application status on-line. The portal will tell you what support materials have been received and if we are missing anything that will keep us from reviewing your application. Keep an eye on your e-mail for your user name and password that will be sent to you. We'll also sent some updates on any missing materials to the e-mail address that you provided in your application.



Curious who is doing the initial review of your application? Meet the staff!!



Ed

A rainy October day

I thought it was supposed to be another beautiful fall day today...guess I haven't been following the weather closely enough.

Hard to believe Halloween is almost upon us as well as our early action deadline of November 10th. I just sent off our annual "15 days and counting" e-mail to remind prospective students of the upcoming deadline. Seems that I just sent the same e-mail a few months ago. Just a reminder that we did change our Early Action Rd I deadline to November 10th this year. We've been doing our best to get the word out. If you have questions just let us know.

We are in the midst of the transition from recruitment and travel to reading applications. The staff is starting to show up in the office again and we actually have more than half the staff on campus today!!

Still a fair amount of travel to go...Cape Cod, Vermont, Massachusetts, Europe and Asia...you haven't seen the last of us just yet:)

Have a great Halloween:)

Ed

WPI Alums do the Most Interesting Things

While the majority of WPI students graduate with a degree in math, science, engineering, business or another technological field, not everyone makes a career out of it. I am a good example...a civil engineering degree and I have been working in higher education for the last 15 years. Aleksandra and Adam, who are part of the admissions team here at WPI, both WPI graduates.

Aside from the thee of us you'll find lots of interesting people across the world engaged in a wide variety of careers.

But if you want to see something a bit out of the ordinary check out: http://www.vimeo.com/7067250 You'll find a few very cool videos posted by one of our alums, Ali Kabas. Ali resides in Turkey and is a professional photographer. You can google him to see some of his photography. His clients include American Express, Ritz Carlton, EMI Records and British Airways.

Feel free to share the link with friends.

Ed

Time Flies

Whether you consider time in the micro or macro sense it sure does fly!! I find it hard to believe that I am already well into my 5th admissions cycle as director of admissions here at WPI. It seems like it was just yesterday when I moved into the "big" office as the new director of admissions. A lot has happened over that time here at WPI. Thankfully almost all of it has been good:) Even in this relatively short period of time it is amazing to think about how I spend my days and how that has changed over the past few years. Yes I still read files and I still travel and recruit, but what about everything else?

Here are some of my upcoming meetings for next week:

A meeting about a new template for our blog page on the Web

Meeting with a video crew on campus to shoot a new admissions virtual tour

Signing off on a new design for our admission packets that better incorporates information on our admitted student microsite and Facebook presence

A call with College Week Live to set-up a web cam for my talk on their upcoming event

Finalizing the details of a new Global Scholars program and discussing how to get the word out about the program

Now if I had written down this list of meetings 5 years ago, and shared it with a colleague, half of the meetings wouldn't have made any sense....the topic areas barely existed. I guess that's why time flies in admissions...things are always new and exciting.

Time in the micro sense? We are open until 3PM today and I had 4 or 5 projects I was hoping to wrap-up in between our presentations....other than this post and meeting with families not much got done....time flies!!

Ed

New Blogs

With all of our student bloggers graduating last year we reached out to find some new students to share their WPI experiences with you. We have 5 new student bloggers and a new home page for the student bloggers: http://wp.wpi.edu/admissions/.

I hope you'll check it out. We'll be making several enhancements to the web page over the next couple of weeks, but enjoy the posts:)

Ed

College Fairs

In addition to the 600 or so high schools we will visit, the 15 evening information sessions we are offering, and the close to 50 nights of interviews planned around the globe, WPI will be represented at about 200 college fairs around the world.

Even in this day of high tech gadgets and on-line applications college fairs are still they way a high percentage of our students learn more about WPI and all we offer. It's a great opportunity to ask some of your questions face to face and to meet one of the admissions staff and/or a current student and alum. Will we be at your local college fair? Check out our fall listing of college fairs that went live earlier today.

Ed

New Blogs

If you are wondering what's happened to our student bloggers...wait no more. With all of our bloggers graduating last spring there's been a bit of a lull in the student voice over the summer. We'll have some new blogs up next week, along with a nice new look for the student blog page.

Visit www.admissions.wpi.edu/blogs.html next week when we are up and running!!

Ed