MIT staff blogger Matt McGann '00

Summertime by Matt McGann '00

I am often asked what we admissions officers do during the summer. Frequently, people assume that we get a several month long summer vacation like students do. But that's not the case; admissions is a year-round job, and while we're not doing any admitting over the summer, there is still a lot of work to be done.

I am often asked what we admissions officers do during the summer. Frequently, people assume that we get a several month long summer vacation like students do. But that’s not the case; admissions is a year-round job, and while we’re not doing any admitting over the summer, there is still a lot of work to be done.

So, you may ask, what are we up to right now?

  • Preparing for the influx of summer visitors. Beginning in a few weeks, crowds for our twice-daily information sessions and tours should start getting quite large (I, for one, really like the larger crowds!). As a result, we’ll move the information sessions out of the admissions reception area and into a larger space in the MIT Student Center. Also, during the summer we can highlight a dorm room on the campus tour, so we’re working on that. I’ll do a series of entries quite soon about how to visit MIT this summer.
  • Preparing for our nationwide meetings this fall. The admissions staff will be visiting 70 US cities this September and October, from Cambridge to Honolulu. Now, we’re arranging our itineraries, finding rooms in which to hold our meetings, networking with the Educational Counselors (ECs) in these cities, and more. Getting to travel the country, to come to you, is one of my favorite parts of the year.
  • Developing new publications and websites. During the Admissions season, it is difficult to focus on large-scale initiatives such as publications, so development is largely done during the “off season.” As Ben has noted, we are currently working on a redesign of our viewbook, as well as Admissions Blogs v2.0 and some snazzy new stuff on MyMIT.
  • Wrapping up the Class of 2009 and preparing for the Class of 2010. Now is the time when we can take a step back from the intensity of admitting the freshman class to get the big picture view, to evaluate and understand the past year. Then, we begin laying the groundwork for the Class of 2010, so that when the applications begin coming in, we’re more than ready. This big picture thinking also includes attending conferences to hear ideas from our admissions and college counseling colleagues. You’ve already read that Ben, Marilee and I attended a regional conference for New England, and we’ll be attending some other conferences in the months to come. For example, next month I’ll be attending a conference about international student admissions.
  • And, yes… taking a little vacation. Because the summer has less in the way of hard deadlines, we can afford to take some time off. As for me, I’ll be spending about three weeks in Southeast Asia at the end of July/beginning of August.

What are you up to this summer? Anything interesting?

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