Take One Small Step…Onto Our Campus: Fall Visits

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It’s about to get real around here. Starting this week, the Class of 2016 will storm the campus for Orientation 2012. They’ll move into their new homes in the residence halls, say a (probably tearful, and that’s okay) goodbye to their folks, and launch into the great adventure that is life as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University. Orientation at Johns Hopkins is a fun-filled week of activities geared towards getting students acquainted with the campus, the city, and, most importantly, each other. At some point during Orientation, or maybe after First Night (a tradition held after the first day of classes, where upperclassmen welcome the new members of the Johns Hopkins community in a candlelight ceremony that’s followed by an evening of fun around campus), I think every freshman will have a quiet moment where he or she realizes that life is about to change. It’s exciting. It’s scary. And it didn’t happen overnight.

That's a lot of newbies at orientation!

Whether you’re just starting your college search or you’re a senior (or a parent of a senior) getting the college deadline jitters, the process of finding the “just right” school can be overwhelming. Where do you start? And why does it seem like everyone else is so far ahead? Take a deep breath. What our incoming freshmen can tell you is that it all starts with a small step, and then another, and then another, until you start to see a little more clearly what you really want in a college. Something else veterans of the college search process could tell you? It doesn’t have to be a chore. All stresses aside, starting your time as an undergraduate will be one of the most exciting times of your life; the process of getting there should be as well.

One of the most interesting—and informative—parts of the college search is the campus visit. Not only is everyone happy to see you and wants to know more about you, but they usually give you free stuff just for showing up. You’re a celebrity! People get dressed up just to tell you all about the university. You get to look at pretty buildings and sometimes your tour guide will even walk backwards, all because he or she wants to get a better look at you. Most importantly, though, you get a real sense of place. You can meet people, like real live students, and talk to them about their experiences. You can see where you might be going to class and hanging out with friends you haven’t met yet. For many students, the campus visit is what makes them decide to apply.

Fall is a lovely time to come visit us!

Maybe your one small step into the admissions process will be visiting campuses this fall—or maybe you’re ready to make some final decisions and want to get a better look at a few places. In either case, there are lots of opportunities to visit Johns Hopkins in the coming months. For seniors, imagine this: at this exact time last year, the 1,300 or so members of the Johns Hopkins University Class of 2016 were in your shoes. And now, just one short year later, they’re moving into dorm rooms, meeting new classmates and greeting JHU friends they’ve met over the summer. They’re exploring Charles Village and Baltimore having a blast during Orientation. In less than a week, they’ll be heading to their first college classes. That’s a lot of small steps that lead to something life-changing.

Swag bag: Your gift for visiting us. (Design/style might change, and the orange chair I'm using for background isn't included.)

So, come see us and hang out for a while. We think you’ll like it.

Fall Visit Options:

Open Houses: September 29 and October 20. These are our signature fall visit programs, with a full day of programming that includes faculty showcases, student panels, campus tours, and an admissions and financial aid session. Plus…free lunch! (Registration required.)

Saturday Sessions: September 15 and 22; October 6 and 27; November 3. In these Saturday programs, you’ll get an information session and campus tour. (Registration required.)

Daily visits: Weekdays (see calendar for any exceptions). We offer information sessions and tours on most weekdays. (No advance registration is required, but check online for any schedule variations.)

Overnight visits: September 25; October 2, 16, and 23. Overnights are for high school seniors only. It’s a chance to spend the night in the residence hall while you’re learning more about the university. (Registration required.)

Coming soon: Check our website frequently for updates on new programs. We’ll be posting dates and information about special engineering tours and humanities tours that will be happening in October soon.

If you can’t make it to campus, check out our off-campus visit schedule, including Group Travel dates and Explore Hopkins events (these will be posted soon!). While nothing replaces a campus visit, there are tons of ways to start learning more—remember, small steps!—online, including our virtual tour and, of course, Hopkins Interactive.

Hope to see you on campus soon!

We’re Back; Now Come Visit

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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.

Were we lost among all this stuff?

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

SOHOP Crowds on Decker Quad

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

More of the SOHOP crowd, now in the Rec. Center

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/.

Come visit us in Mason Hall.

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.

Overlapping Roles

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Most of the visitors to the Hopkins Insider Admissions blog this time of year are current Regular Decision applicants for the Johns Hopkins Class of 2016, or parents of such students. This post though is not for you all, rather I will be writing to the other members of our readership who are prospective applicants to the JHU Class of 2017 or beyond. For the RD applicants all I can share right now is that there is no new news on which date notifications will be released. Everything I wrote in my March Admissions Madness post back on March 14 still holds true right now. Continued patience is appreciated, and please know that as soon as there is an update I will post a new blog entry.

For the juniors in high school or even younger I applaud you for starting your college search process early and for finding this helpful resource. Obviously, I also applaud you for having excellent taste in universities. I’m not one to brag but Johns Hopkins University is the #1 social media college in the country (see!) and in the coming week our Men’s Lacrosse team will be ranked #1 in the NCAA Division I polls (due to a thrilling OT victory over Virginia this past weekend.) As you all watch the upperclassmen in your schools fret over the release of admissions decisions throughout the month of March your own college search stresses have begun to take form too. Senior year course selection. SAT and ACT exams. Which SAT subject exams to take and when? When to visit colleges? What is this “fit” everyone keeps talking about?

Plan a Visit Soon

As springtime arrives, every high school experiences the ending of one college cycle for the seniors and the starting of a new cycle for the juniors. These same dual cycles are occurring in all Admissions Offices as well. In mid to late February as the Admissions counselors are hunkered down reading applications 24/7, the number of campus visitors grows exponentially week after week. Once the calendar turns to March and the Admissions counselors begin the arduous committee deliberations, weekly tours and information sessions are busting at the seams. It is not until April that the true collision of those starting the admissions cycle and those finishing it is truly seen. It is during the 30 days of April that droves of high school juniors begin to make their first official college visits, just as seniors are attending special admitted student events to determine their eventual destination. When I started in Admissions fourteen plus years ago there was a bit of a break between the end of a cycle and the start of a new one … not anymore. Overlapping cycles is the norm and I must say at times it can be taxing on the mind and body of even the most seasoned Admissions professional.

As I said at the onset of this post, the coming days and weeks most of my focus will be on communicating with high school seniors and their parents, and specifically helping admitted Regular Decision students determine whether becoming a part of the Johns Hopkins Class of 2016 is right for them. But if you are a future applicant for 2017, 2018, or further in the future know that you matter as well. We might not have as much time for you in March and April as your elder classmen, and we might not provide you with as many in-depth visit opportunities, still know you matter and that attention will be lavished on you in due time.

Explore Hopkins Spring 2012

In fact, in spring 2012, admissions representatives from Johns Hopkins University may be coming to town near you just to speak to prospective audiences, not current applicants or admitted students. We will be holding eight Explore Hopkins presentations throughout March and April to help interested students and families learn more about academics, student life, the application process, and financial aid. When and where you ask:

Austin, Texas – March 31
Houston, Texas – April 1
Dallas, Texas – April 4
San Antonio, Texas – April 5
Charleston, South Carolina – April 16
Detroit Metro Area, Michigan – April 24
Boston Metro Area, Massachusetts – April 28
Santa Barbara, California – April 28

Full details and online RSVP forms can be found here: http://apply.jhu.edu/visit/explorehopkins.html?slide.

Personally, I highly recommend the Boston area program as yours truly will be the star of the show. And don’t worry, we may not be coming to an area near you in the spring but we will triple the number of Explore Hopkins programs we hold in Fall 2012. In the meantime, you can always consider planning a campus visit: http://apply.jhu.edu/visit/visit.html.

So congratulations on getting your college search moving along early and we hope to see you on the road or on the Homewood campus in the near future.

While the counselors are away…

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Note: Today’s guest author is Shelly Placek, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions’ Web and Publications Marketing Specialist. Shelly has guest authored a few times in the past, once introducing you to our amazing student videographers and another time detailing her main role in our office as publications master.

It’s 2:00 p.m. on a Tuesday and I have a question for Admissions_Daniel. I pick up the phone and dial his extension. No answer. I trot over to the other side of the office. I’m greeted by a silent, lonely hallway lined on both sides by closed office doors.

A sad sight: the closed door of Admissions_Daniel’s office.

“Hello?” I yell, my voice booming in the empty space. “HELLO??” No response. I panic. Where have all of the admissions counselors gone?

Hellooo? Is there anyone home? This lonely hallway will be a lot less boring in a few weeks.

[Important note: That opening paragraph was exaggerated for dramatic effect. I know exactly where the counselors are—and if I have a question for Admissions_Daniel, I’ll just e-mail him and he’ll respond promptly from his ever-present iPad. (And the question was most likely American Horror Story-related and not urgent anyway.) Furthermore, if I had yelled down the hallway like a crazy person, at least a few voices would’ve yelled back, “What!? And why are you yelling?” because many of the counselors have student workers or volunteers who happily camp out in their offices and take care of things while they’re away.]

Anyway, back to my fake panicking. Had the zombie apocalypse come and taken all of our admissions counselors? Was it an office holiday that I didn’t know about (this has happened in the past—darn you, day after Thanksgiving!)? Nope—none of these things. It’s simply fall at the Johns Hopkins Office of Undergraduate Admissions and many of our hardworking counselors are on the road attending college fairs, visiting high schools, and giving presentations to get the word out about Johns Hopkins. (Explore Hopkins presentations are still happening throughout October—see if there’s one happening near you: http://apply.jhu.edu/visit/explorehopkins.html.) Soon the counselors will be back and begin the task of selecting the Class of 2016, but while they’re traveling around the country and internationally, the rest of us back here at the office are busy greeting prospective students and their families and speaking with them on the phone, planning events, entering names into our database, starting to process application materials, and doing many other things to get ready for the busy months ahead. All throughout the office, people are energetically and enthusiastically working to keep things running smoothly.

Our event staff keeps things lively during this busy recruiting season.

As the application materials come pouring in, they’ll find a home in the appropriate counselor’s bin.

Many of you are probably prepping for busy months ahead yourselves. Maybe we can help. There’s still time to visit if you haven’t already: We’re holding Open Houses on October 22 and 29, plus you can come see us any weekday.

Our PR staff is always prepared for the crowds. Will you be getting one of these folders at an upcoming event?

Already visited and decided Johns Hopkins is for you? We’re ready for your applications (and good choice, by the way)! See the application page for all the necessary information you need, or visit the Early Decision FAQ if you’re feverishly trying to finish your apps in the next two weeks. Stuck on your essay? Find some essay-writing tips and inspiration on our “Essays that Worked” page.

Soon these (and many of their friends) will be set up and holding YES! acceptance folders as they’re prepped for mailing.

So, we hope to see you or hear from you soon—otherwise, our jobs get really boring. Happy fall from Mason Hall!

Homewood Expansion

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Today (Monday, August 29, 2011) is the start of the fall 2011 semester at Johns Hopkins University and the official start of the 2011-2012 academic year. This is now my ninth “first day of school” working for Johns Hopkins and it is always exciting to see the seniors begin their last year, the sophomores and juniors experience their own milestones, and the freshmen acting all wide-eyed and curious. This year’s freshman class, the Class of 2015, arrived at Hopkins with two unwelcomed guests. First, at the onset of move-in week last Tuesday, Baltimore and the entire East Coast were hit with a surprising magnitude 5.8 earthquake. Then, over the weekend during the most active time of Orientation, category 1 Hurricane Irene struck. Thankfully, the Homewood campus and Baltimore weathered both acts of Mother Nature, but it is clear that the start of their collective college experience has been unique for our new freshmen.

Mason Hall Earthquake damage: 1 lacrosse frame

Hurricane Irene aftermath: One huge tree knocks out sculpture garden fencing.

Hurricane Irene aftermath: Check out those roots.

With the return of students the Homewood campus is once again bustling with activity, much different than during the summer when the campus remains pretty quiet. The one main activity this summer at Homewood has been new construction, and as the students returned they were greeted by a number of structural advancements to their campus. As I seemingly do each year, since Homewood is constantly expanding, I thought I would provide a brief overview of what’s new around campus. Though many of the projects are still in progress, Homewood continues to transform for each incoming class. What will this place be like for the Classes of 2016, 2017, 2018, and beyond?

Brody Learning Commons
On Sunday, June 6, 2010, more than 200 guests assembled on the south patio of Homewood’s MSE Library to celebrate the groundbreaking for the Brody Learning Commons. In honor of the university’s 13^th president, William R. Brody, the Commons is an addition to the MSE Library. It will be a four-story building connected to all levels of the current library and will feature flexible group and individual study areas, interactive media rooms, a 100-seat quiet reading room, and a new 75-seat café. Completely wireless-enabled, the Commons will increase the library’s seating capacity by a third, adding more than 500 new seats. The building is set to open in the summer of 2012, and progress has been quite impressive. The Sheridan Libraries has set up an impressive website documenting the entire project including a live construction web cam and regularly updated blog with construction photos. Check it out: Brody Learning Commons.

Brody Learning Commons: Opening next summer.

Brody Learning Commons: Expansion of the MSE Library

Brody Learning Commons: A Massive Undertaking

Cordish Lacrosse Center
On April 23, 2011, during halftime of the Johns Hopkins-Navy men’s lacrosse game at Homewood Field, a ceremonial groundbreaking took place for the $10 million 14,000-square-foot Cordish Lacrosse Center. Being built at the east end of Homewood Field (the most legendary stadium for college lacrosse), the center will be the new home for the women’s and 44-time national championship men’s lacrosse programs. The first facility of its kind, built solely for a university’s lacrosse program, the Cordish Center will house locker rooms and coaching staff offices, a 50-person theater, a conference room, and academic center and a training room. A reception area on the second floor will lead to a patio overlooking the field for game day spectators. The teams will occupy the center following the 2012 season. Additional details can be found here: Baltimore Sun article.

Cordish Lacrosse Center: Breaking ground soon.

New Homewood Field scoreboard; ready for the 45th national lacrosse championship in Spring 2012.

Undergraduate Teaching Lab and Biology Research
Kicking off in June 2011, the new Undergraduate Teaching Lab and Biology center will be a 105,000-square-foot facility connecting the courtyard that currently houses Mudd Hall. A glazed façade of the new facility will be incorporated to provide ample daylight and a wonderful view of the Bufano Sculpture Garden. A new student gathering place and coffee bar will be created on the rooftop of Mudd Hall, acting as a community space for students and faculty focusing on the natural sciences. The focal point will be undergraduate teaching labs for biology, chemisty, neuroscience, and biophysics. Target date for occupancy is Summer 2013.

Expansion of Mudd Hall for undergraduate teaching labs.

ve undertaking, this one to expand labs and research centers for natural sciences.

And that’s not all. In the coming months the university will break ground on the south end of campus: Malone Hall  will be a 56,000-square-foot, four-story building adjacent to Mason and Hackerman halls and designed for interdisciplinary work in emerging engineering fields. And by the new year, Baltimore City will begin a massive three-year Charles Street reconstruction project which will redefine the eastern border of the Homewood campus. Check out this recent JHU Gazette article that details all the construction going on around Homewood: A Summer Growth Spurt.

Malone Hall footprint: space for interdisciplinary engineering research coming soon.

If you are a prospective student, what better time to come visit the Johns Hopkins but this fall to check out these construction projects and the majesty that is our Homewood campus? Here are our various on-campus visit programs: http://apply.jhu.edu/visit/visit.html?main.

Visit Homewood: Best Decision You Can Make

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As I write this blog I am sitting in the passenger seat of my Trailblazer on Interstate 95 heading north from Baltimore to Providence. My Mom is in the driver’s seat and Soze, my dog, is in the back resting. We are heading up to New England so that I can attend summer college fairs at Brown University and Harvard University over the next couple of days. This is an annual mid-summer trip for me and I am lucky that every couple of years my Mom chooses to join me. (A few years ago my Mom actually wrote a guest blog for the Hopkins Insider following one of her trips with me … you can read it by clicking here.)

On the road again, though I wish I was back in Baltimore.

This summer recruitment travel always marks an important point in the admissions calendar year for me. It is a turning point, when my focus switches completely to the next admissions cycle. In the rear view mirror is the incoming Johns Hopkins Class of 2015 and in front of me is the future prospective applicants for the Class of 2016 and beyond. Even though I have been communicating with and meeting with prospective students since the early spring, my focus was always split with tasks related to completing the freshman class. Now that it is early July and I will be meeting close to 1,000 prospective students over the next couple of days it is a perfect time to turn the corner.

One of the most frequent comments I will make to students who come up to my college fair table over the next two days is that they really need to come visit the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University. Beyond my comments, I will encourage visits to campus by handing out brochures with extensive campus pictures and my iPad2 will be playing a slide show of stunning photographs all around the Homewood Campus. One can learn a lot about Johns Hopkins University by talking to an admissions representative like me or by visiting great web sites (such as the main Undergraduate Admissions site and Hopkins Interactive), but nothing can provide as comprehensive of an overview of what makes Hopkins unique as a visit to Baltimore, Maryland and 3400 North Charles Street.

Mason Hall: Hands down the most amazing Admissions welcome center in the country (and that is not just my opinion).

A few weeks ago, I was reminded of this notion of the importance of a campus visit during two separate conversations with prospective families who were visiting Homewood. I was the “On Call” counselor for the day which meant I was the speaker during our two daily information sessions at 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. (These sessions are followed by our student-led campus tours and details about these weekday visit programs can be found here: http://apply.jhu.edu/visit/guidedtours.html. Following the morning information session and campus tour I was sitting at the Mason Hall front desk chatting with one of my colleagues when a family from Denver returned from the tour and asked to speak with me briefly. They shared with me that their son was interested in International Studies and they had planned a week-long vacation to the east coast to see tourist attractions and visit colleges in the Washington, D.C. and Boston, M.A. regions. They explained that over the last two days they had been in D.C. visiting three schools and while there a couple of people mentioned they should check out Johns Hopkins University too, as the school has a top-ranked International Studies program. So the son did a bit of research online the night before in the hotel and the family decided to change their reservation and delay their flight to Boston so they could visit Baltimore and Hopkins the next day. The Dad mentioned they read some of the blogs and were intrigued by the International Studies offerings but even more how Hopkins “was so much more than medicine.” The reason they wanted to chat with me after the tour was to just thank me because their three hours on campus had really changed their mind about Hopkins. The son was actually now talking about possibly applying Early Decision, and the daughter (a rising sophomore in high school) mentioned that Hopkins was now her top choice school too. Their last question for me was where was the Bookstore as they wanted to buy some Hopkins apparel before heading to BWI airport.

Later that afternoon, as I was just finishing my 1:00 p.m. information session, another family entered the Mason Hall lobby exasperated. I overheard them telling the student worker at the front desk that they had visited a school in D.C. in the morning and were heading to Philadelphia for an afternoon college visit but had hit traffic and knew they would not make it to Philadelphia. (I later learned that the family was from the Seattle area, which makes sense that they wouldn’t understand I-95 traffic and the distance between cities on the east coast.) After the daughter did a bit of searching on her iPhone they realized that Hopkins was only 15 minutes from where they were on I-95 North so they decided to pay us a visit and “not waste their afternoon.” They were all apologetic that they didn’t have a visit reservation (one is not required) and they were worried they had missed the chance to visit (they hadn’t as we got them out on the 2:00 tour). Upon their return they had some questions so I came downstairs to chat with them. The daughter had loved the tour and really wanted to learn more about academic and student life from current students and professors. I explained that there were no further visit options for the rest of the day but inquired as to what their plans were for the remainder of their trip. They were going to head up to Philadelphia that night and visit that other college the next day which happened to be Friday. Since there flight back to Seattle wasn’t until Sunday I suggested that they might want to return to Baltimore and attend our Hopkins Preview Saturday visit program. They agreed because they had loved the look of the campus and really enjoyed the tour. A got an e-mail from the daughter the next week that said she loved the Hopkins Preview program, had met a current student who was from the west coast and interested in Mechanical Engineering just like her, and that Hopkins was now one of her top choices.

JHU Tote Bags (for visitors only): Another of the many reasons to visit Homewood.

I share both of these chance meetings because they represent so well what a visit to our campus can do. It can dispel myths. It can correct misconceptions. It can show what a friendly and welcoming environment our community can be. It can help solidify impressions or adjust preconceived notions. It can help make you decide whether Johns Hopkins University is a fit. Because the campus visit is so crucial to understand our university we are open nearly every weekday and a number of Saturdays throughout the summer. Check out our visit schedule for full details: http://apply.jhu.edu/visit/visit.html. And if the summer doesn’t work, we have an array of fall visit programs that you can consider. Do note that we will update our visit program web sites by the end of August with full details on our fall visit options like our Open Houses, Overnights, Engineering Tours, etc.

As I have been writing this entry we have passed from Maryland into Delaware and now we are on the New Jersey Turnpike. My Mom and I have counted at least 6 different vehicles where we predicted the families were on summer vacations which include visiting colleges. If you are a 15, 16, 17, or 18 year-old high school students these days I can safely assume that a good percentage of your “vacation-time” will be spent on college campuses watching students walk backwards with great skill and listening to admissions representatives like me who hopefully don’t just sound like a audio recording of the school’s viewbook. (I really hope I don’t sound like that!) Enjoy these times and be discerning. A campus visit will be the best chance you get to assess a university’s strengths and weakness, so come prepared and constantly ask yourself the question of fit.

Hope to see you at Homewood soon.

You have to visit Homewood, even the Conan Blimp visited last year.

Walking Backwards

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Posted by Admissions_Shannon

If someone were to ask what I liked best about working in admissions, it would absolutely be working with the Blue Key Society tour guides. They are a constant reminder of what a dynamic, engaging, diverse, enthusiastic, and determined student body we have here at Johns Hopkins University. They inspire me to seek out students just like them–students who will contribute not only to academics at the university, but also to the campus community.

There's Katy, giving a tour during an Open House!

We begin recruitment for admissions volunteers during the summer before students even arrive on campus! Through orientation and Facebook postings, we spread the word about volunteering for our office and ask students to fill out a form. We also have a table at the Student Activities Fair held during the first week of classes. Then, in September, we have an introductory meeting for all who would like to get involved. Once we have collected a database of emails, we send out applications to anyone interested in October. Students have the month to fill them out, and are then asked to sign up for an interview with a member of our tour guide executive board in November. Through this process we receive applications from and interview approximately 150 students. Generally, we accept about 50 new guides each fall. When they return from winter break for the spring semester, training begins! New tour guides are required to attend group sessions, shadow two tours, tag team two tours, and then be evaluated. If all goes well, these new guides are up and running (or should I say up and walking backwards) by our admitted student events in April. As a guide, each student volunteers (that’s right–they aren’t paid!) to give one tour a week, plus assist with weekend sessions, Open Houses, and special events.

We give interested students more info about Blue Key at places like the Student Activities Fair.

Overall, we have about 150 tour guides on campus who give their time each week to show prospective students and their families what life is like at JHU. These tour guides are from all over the United States as well as several different countries including Canada, England, and the Netherlands. They are a variety of different majors–some humanists, some social scientists, some natural scientists, and some engineers. We have guides who are involved in Greek life, student publications, varsity, club, and intramural athletic teams, community service, cultural dance groups, performing arts groups, politically oriented groups, research, internships, study abroad and more.

Many name tags for our many tour guides!

When it comes to the tour script, there really isn’t one. We have a manual which gives some facts to students because, of course, everyone does not know about everything. Guides are sure to cover the basics–information about class size, the library, athletics, housing, and dining. However, beyond that, the tour is theirs to give. We encourage them to make it their own with personal stories and stories from friends. After all, this is your chance to get to know a student and learn more about campus life (all of the nitty gritty information about academics and admissions can be found in the information session).

Keeping all of this in mind, here are a few pointers so you can make the most of your time with your Hopkins tour guide:

1. Arrive on campus ready with questions. Tour guides LOVE to answer questions.
2. Don’t make a snap judgment about a university based on your tour guide. Like I said above, we have over 150 guides, all of whom are different. Just because your tour guide isn’t like you or isn’t the same major you want to be doesn’t mean that there aren’t people like you with similar interests on campus.
3. Be prepared. Rain or shine, hot or cold, the tour must go on. While we have fancy blue Johns Hopkins ponchos available and bottles of water on hand during the summer, we don’t have sunglasses or gloves to pass out. :-)

Who wouldn't want their very own JHU water bottle?

Come visit soon…our tour guides are excited to meet you!

The Johns Hopkins On-Campus Interview

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Editor’s Note: Today we asked one of the Admissions counselor, Mark Butt, to discuss the on-campus interview at Johns Hopkins University. Mark, along with another counselor, Amy Brokl, run our Admissions Representatives program, also known as our student interviewers. Here is some insight on what to expect if you come to the Homewood campus and Mason Hall to have a prospective student interview.  

Interview Chairs

The interview is a way for prospective applicants to really show their personality to the admissions committee.  Here at Johns Hopkins, we have on-campus interviews, which are an elective part of our admissions process.  Students may schedule on-campus interviews from February of their junior year until February of their senior year. A limited number of appointments is available each weekday at 11:00 a.m., noon, 2:00 p.m., and 3:00 p.m. and may be scheduled up to three days in advance, though two weeks advance notice is recommended.

The purpose of an admissions interview at Johns Hopkins is for us to get to know you a little bit, for you to let us know of any unique situations that may have occurred in your high school experience, and also for you to provide us with information that will not be captured within the papers of the application.  In that sense, our interviews are much more informational (for prospective students) than evaluative (for the admissions committee).  However, the admissions committee does receive a write-up about the interviewing student if he or she chooses to apply. 

The hallway to interviews on the second floor

Once the interview has been confirmed by the admissions office, the student and family arrives on campus to Mason Hall, where they are kindly greeted by our staff and the oversized Johns Hopkins signature, which is a cast-iron replica of his original signature.  Students then fill out an on-campus interview sheet.  This sheet lets us know the student has arrived and then it waits at the reception desk for an Admissions Representative to pick -up.  It asks you some general information which allows your interview write-up to be matched with your application.  You also have the opportunity to pick up materials on our wall—all of which can be helpful in determining if Hopkins is just right for you!

Admissions Representatives (ARs) are a group of current Johns Hopkins juniors and seniors. These students must apply and be selected to join our wonderful on-campus interview team.  The students also have the opportunity to obtain leadership roles in the Admissions Representative group, which is a great opportunity for students here on campus.  Our Admissions Representatives are completely volunteer and they do it because they love Hopkins and they want a say in the process—and this is their chance.  It’s a wonderful opportunity so if you are admitted to Hopkins and want to conduct interviews, you can apply at the end of your sophomore year! 

At the time of your interview, the AR will come down and introduce him/herself to the student and family.  They will then take you upstairs to one of our available interview rooms.  On the way up the stairs, be sure to take a look at the pictures along the wall as they give a great sense of history of Hopkins—I adore these pictures.  The interviews take anywhere from 20-40 minutes.  Afterwards, if you choose to apply, the AR’s written interview evaluation will be added to your application file and will be read by the admissions committee.

An interview info sheet

Here are some sample questions we could ask in your interview:

- Tell me about your high school.
- What’s your favorite class?
- How do you spend your free time?
- What are you looking for in your college experience?
-Do you have any book recommendations?

I think interviews are helpful for students to really get to know Hopkins and find out if this place is the place for them.  It’s often very challenging to find an opportunity to sit down and talk with a current student and this opportunity provides students with that.

Students, families, and guidance counselors often ask me if I have any tips.  If I could offer any tips to students who are anticipating a college interview, it would be the following:

1.  Do a little research about the school and find out what makes it unique.
2. Bring a list of questions with you to ask the student interviewer.  Get what you came for—make sure you know what you are looking for and ask questions to get the information you need to make the search process effective. 
3. No need for a shirt and tie; our interviews are casual—just don’t wear another college T-shirt!
4. Shake hands and say thank you at the end. 

Johns Hopkins University has so much to offer and can provide endless opportunities and the students here are the best resource we have, so come prepared to get your questions answered.  If you ask the right questions you’ll be able to find out what is here at Hopkins that is just for you—and may make the school the perfect fit for you.  I hope this has been helpful and that it provides a little bit of insight into our on-campus interview operation.  We look forward to seeing you on campus soon!

Mailboxes for the Admissions Representatives

NACAC Conference Week: Quick Update

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So two days complete of NACAC Week and all is running smoothly so far … knock on wood repeatedly. On Monday we welcomed 12 counselors to campus and today we doubled that number to 24. Everybody seems to be enjoying their visits, loving Mason Hall, and leaving with a new-found appreciate of all that Hopkins has to offer.

These past two days have been easy compared to what is on the horizon for Wednesday. Rough estimate is that we welcome over 250 counselors to campus tomorrow, while also running a college fair in the evening for highly talented local area students. It is going to be a busy day and therefore I do need to get my beauty sleep. Oh wait, it is already 1:00 a.m. and I have still have a couple of emails to send. As I said in my last post, this is going to be the busiest week of my professional career so sleep is very far down the “To Do” lists (and yes there are multiple lists). Thankfully I have downloaded a ton of “Glee” soundtrack songs from iTunes … yes I am totally addicted and a complete GLEEK already.

As I sign off, I thought I would share a few of the random photos I took so far this week. Many more photos will be coming, especially once the conference begins on Thursday. Enjoy!

We’ve made the lobby of Mason Hall even more inviting than normal with some nice floral arrangements that incorporate our blue jay mascots.

To be gracious hosts, you must have a hospitality room.

And you must stock that hospitality room for beverages and treats.

Sneak preview … this afternoon was a test-run of the educational session I and a few of the Hopkins Interactive students are presenting at the Conference on Saturday. Further details to come in a new blog post later this week.

NACAC Conference Week Begins

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Here I sit in my office on an early Monday morning on the precipice of the busiest professional week of my life to date. I know many times on this blog it may seem like I am exaggerating when I talk about the hectic nature of my job, or being really busy, or lacking sleep because of work … and yes, probably in some cases I am using a bit of hyperbole. Not this time. The next seven days are absolutely going to be described by that collection of busy / hectic / overwhelming adjectives. Despite all that though, this is going to be one of the most engaging, educational, engrossing, and enjoyable weeks of my career.

Why you ask? Well, as the title of this entry states, NACAC Conference Week is here!!! And by here, I mean in BALTIMORE.

Before I continue, I think for the uninitiated it may be best to explain what NACAC is, what the NACAC Conference is, and why it being in Baltimore is a huge deal. NACAC stands for the National Association for College Admission Counseling. Founded in 1937, the organization today has a professional membership of over 11,000 from around the world. The membership includes professionals dedicated to assisting students in the transition from secondary to postsecondary education. That means NACAC members are admissions counselors, financial aid officers, guidance counselors, independent college counselors, members of the education media, higher education leaders, and more recently vendors that supply products to colleges or high school related to the college admissions process. One of the chief roles of NACAC is to maintain “high standards that foster ethical and social responsibility among those involved” in the college admissions process. Many of you may be familiar with NACAC in the National College Fairs that they hold throughout the country each year.

Every year in late September or early October the full membership of NACAC is invited to a National Conference. The conference is a chance for professionals from all sides of the college admissions process to come together to discuss the issues of the day and also share a variety of professional development opportunities. The national conference is made up of a series of educational sessions, a couple of guest speakers, a general member assembly, a counselors’ college fair, a unique vendor hall, and a series of social events. It is what one would expect of a conference on higher education issues, except for the fact that typically upwards of 4000 people attend. Take a look at all involved with the NACAC Conference 2009 here.

Well if you have yet to connect the dots, the big deal about the 2009 NACAC National Conference being in Baltimore is that means I don’t have to travel to attend. No seriously, it has everything to do with the fact that 4000+ professionals related to the world of college admissions and descending on the city where Johns Hopkins University is the preeminent institution of higher education. More than half of these visitors are guidance counselors (or independent counselors) who play a vital role in relaying information about a school back to the world of prospective college students. This is a once-in-a-generation chance for Hopkins to invite and host hundreds of counselors to the Homewood campus and help frame the way counselors will talk about Hopkins to future applicants. Many, if not most, of these visiting counselors have never stepped foot on the Homewood campus, and have never had a first-hand look at what makes Johns Hopkins University distinct. This is our chance to re-define how counselors across the nation and the world view Johns Hopkins University, and provide these counselors with accurate and anecdotal information to relay back to the high school students they work with. As I said, THIS IS A BIG DEAL.

Since March, a handful of my colleagues and I have been planning for this week. We have organized special campus visit events for these counselors, including a massive Insider’s Tour program for this Wednesday afternoon. We have also organized a very active presence of the entire Johns Hopkins Admissions staff at the actual conference which begins in full on Thursday at the Convention Center downtown. We have, I believe, dotted all the “i”s and crossed all the “t”s, but as I sit here this morning I am a bit concerned that we may have missed something. And to be honest, I will have that concern until late Saturday evening as the Conference ends with an enjoyable social at M&T Bank (Ravens) Stadium.

I think this will be my seventh National Conference and for obvious reasons this is the one I am most excited for. Since I entered the profession I have been attending the NACAC Conference as professional development. My first conference was when it came to Washington, D.C. in 1998 or 1999; it is so long ago I can’t remember. I was working at American University at the time, and I really didn’t understand how important the Conference was to someone in the college admissions profession. My opinion changed when the next year I attended the National Conference in Salt Lake City and had the time of my life. The educational sessions were enriching, the networking was tremendous, and the social events … well let’s just say SLC can be quite a fun city. Through the years I attended conferences in Long Beach, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and just last year the amazing city of Seattle. I have had the chance to represent two schools at these conferences (AU and JHU), present a few times on topics I am familiar with (online chats and blogging), and all-in-all connect with the amazing professionals in my field. But none of these previous experiences have truly prepared me as to what is on the verge of commencing today.

As I told you at the start of this entry, this is going to be one crazzzzzzy week for me; I best sign-off and start my day. I do hope to return frequently to the blog over the week with tales and pictures of NACAC Conference Week 2009. Johns Hopkins and Baltimore are ready to host these college admission visitors, let’s just hope I am too.