We’re Back; Now Come Visit

5

Wow, I can’t believe it has been three months since our last blog post. I feel it is finally time to break our blogging hibernation now that it is summer and 2012 is halfway completed. It seems like it was just yesterday when we were releasing regular decision notifications and posting frequent entries with information for our applicants to the Class of 2016.

So what is the reason for our absence? I could explain it by describing a complicated story about how we were placed on a three-month ban by the internet police. Or that Admissions_Shannon and I were negotiating our free-agent blogging contracts. Or an alien abduction. Or just say that we lost our password. But to be honest, the simple explanation is that we have been quite busy and also in need of some time off.

A whirlwind of activity has taken place since our blogging re-cap entry on the last day of March. The 30 days of April just flew by. It felt like one minute we were releasing decisions, the next minute the Homewood campus is inundated with visitors, two SOHOP programs went by like a hail storm (both literally and figuratively), and when we finally caught our breath we had made our class. May was witness to the end of the fall semester, fall recruitment travel, Commencement, transfer admissions decision release, and the decision not to admit any students off the wait list. June was a time for us to catch our collective breath, take stock of the past admissions cycle, and casually begin the next recruitment cycle. And now it’s July and it all begins again.

The silver lining to all this mayhem is that all the hard work truly paid off. Admitting the incoming Johns Hopkins Class of 2016 broke an array of records:

-      Highest-ever yield, 37.5%
-      Record-breaking applicant pool, 20,504 applicants
-      Lowest admit rate, 18%
-      Highest combined SOHOP attendance, 930 admitted students and 1,770 total guests

Further highlights are discussed in this recent JHU Gazette article: Class of 2016 nets highest yield at Homewood.

Now the question is: where do we go from here? Well, recruiting the Johns Hopkins Class of 2017 and beyond. Though we have already started this process with our spring recruitment travel and welcoming high school juniors and sophomores to campus for the past few months, once a class is “put to bed” as we have done with the Class of 2016, all of our motivation and focus turns to the start of a new cycle. Throughout Mason Hall the Admissions staff is engaged in three main tasks during the summer. First, we take much-needed vacation time to relax and re-charge. Second, we plan. Planning means everything from arranging fall travel, brainstorming about changes to our application, or committee meetings on a range of topics from campus visit programs to communications and marketing agendas. And third, like we do at all times of the year, we welcome visitors to Homewood.

If you are a prospective student considering applying to Hopkins this fall, or in the future, then you should consider visiting this summer. Each Saturday in July we are offering our Hopkins Preview events. These three-hour programs consist of a two-hour information session followed by a one-hour campus tour. The session includes academic presentation by faculty members, a student panel, and an overview of the application and financial aid processes by Admissions staff. A Hopkins Preview program is an excellent and comprehensive program for a first-time visitor exploring whether Hopkins could be a good fit. You can still register for one of the programs here: http://www.hopkinsadmissions.com/hopkinspreview.rsvp/.

If your Saturdays in July are booked, no worries. The Admissions Office is open every weekday in the summer (well, except tomorrow, for Independence Day) and we offer campus tours and information sessions each day. Further details on our weekly guided tours and information sessions are posted here: http://apply.jhu.edu/visit/guidedtours.html. Though reservations are not required, we do encourage you to review our Google calendar of visit opportunities to verify our schedule on the day of your planned visit: http://apply.jhu.edu/visit/visit.html.

And to entice you even more to come visit, watch this quick video invitation:

 It’s good to be back and blogging, and we promise no more three-month hiatuses.

5 Comments

• By HopkinsMom, July 4, 2012 @ 2:53 PM

  Yay! Welcome back, Daniel! I imagine you’ve been busy trying to find housing for the extra 85 freshmen who ended up accepting the offer of admission. Does that mean the Class of 2017 will include fewer offers to reduce the size of the overall school?

• By Admissions_Daniel, July 5, 2012 @ 7:22 AM

  @HopkinsMom:
  Thankfully it is not my responsibility to house our incoming freshmen. The housing office came up with easy and efficient accommodations for the extra freshmen. This is something we dealt with three years ago, so it is not a major concern. As how the larger than expected Class of 2016 will impact future admissions selection there is no way to determine that at this point. When we over-enrolled the Class of 2013 it had no impact on our target for incoming freshmen the next year, and that is the expectation as well. A target for the Class of 2017 will not be set until the winter at the earliest.

• By HopkinsMom, July 8, 2012 @ 11:02 PM

  Thanks for the answer Daniel. Here’s another…do you know if freshmen are supposed to be receiving the Freshmen Book in the mail?

  http://web.jhu.edu/orientation/bookread.html

• By Admissions_Daniel, July 9, 2012 @ 7:22 AM

  @HopkinsMom:
  According to the last paragraph of the Freshman Book Read website, the JHU Parents Fund will provide the book to the incoming freshman. In previous years that has meant the book has been mailed to the students. However, the Freshman Book Read is run by the Office of Student Life and you would need to contact their office directly for accurate information. The Office of Admissions has nothing to do with the Freshman Book Read or Orientation events.

• By Steven, July 26, 2012 @ 2:18 PM

  Daniel,

  I just wanted to thank you and all the admissions staff for the work you have done the last year. My son is excited about starting at JHU in a month! He applied to and was admitted to several schools, but I must say that the information you provide and the speed that we got questions answered definately played a big part in him choosing JHU. Thank you very much! I am a proud JHU parent.

Other Links to this Post

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

*Name

*Email (not published)

Website