Refactored by Matt McGann '00
Yes, several days without blogging. I’m sure you’ve been waiting with bated breath. Where have I been?
Well, for the past ten minutes, I was down in the Admissions Records Office, checking in on things there. Today was a huge mail day. The records staff is currently working through 14 buckets of mail, plus all of the online application pieces. It’s pretty crazy. So, if you’ve been watching your application tracking on the MyMIT portal, be patient. We still have a lot of application pieces to enter and file.
Before that, I’ve been catching up on email and phone calls. This
morning we had our weekly staff meeting, a good chance for all
admissions staff to get together and catch up.
And before that, I was sleeping off last night’s IM hockey game:
November 1, 11pm MIT Intramural C League Ice Hockey
Phi Sigma Kappa 3
MIT Alumni Club of Boston 1
Alumni goal: Leon Hsu
Sadly, a loss in our first game of the season. Our next game isn’t
until after early action selection (thankfully!), against a team from
astrophysics.
And before that, I was coming back from a weekend-long
conference in Chicago (what a city!) sponsored by the College Board.
The conference brought together admissions officers, college guidance
counselors, AP teachers, school administrators, and financial aid
officers. The conference was quite interesting.
Some of you might be thinking that a conference like this would
Have a lot of smoke-filling rooms with admissions people and
counselors making secret handshake deals, but really this was a
conference about ideas and solutions to the problems that we all face
in American education. I attended sessions on urban education (K-12)
policy, on writing in a democracy (with Bob Herbert from the New
York Times), on international education and admissions, and on
socioeconomic diversity in college admissions, among moany of my
weekend’s activities. I also learned that there were a number of
people out there who knew me from this blog — perhaps this is making
a difference (feel free to leave a comment letting me know what has
been helpful, and what might be helpful for you in the future).
Quick news update: I have changed the name of this blog from The
McGann Factor to McGann’s Factors, which I think is a bit
more clever and less Fox News-y. For the history of the original
name, you can check out this historical
entry, where I amke it clear that the original name was all Ben’s fault.
While we’re on the general topic of blogs, I really hope you’ll
continue to check out The
Barkowitz Blog, which is both clever and informative on the topic
of financial aid.
Tomorrow, I’ll do a rundown of your questions and also a little bit
on the election.
Not the same few colleges: Macalester College in St. Paul,
MN. Before UN Secretary-General Kofi
Annan got his graduate degree at MIT, he got his undergraduate
degree from this diverse campus.