Admission directors look over some of the 2,557 applications that have come into their office. This year, the College received the highest number of applications in its history.
With the January 15 application deadline past, but with applications continuing to come in, the Office of Admission has received the highest number of applications in the College's history--surpassing the record of 2,435 set only last year. The two rounds of early decision (included in the total application count) had excellent results, with 212 applications coming in.
As of February 2, the count
stood at 2,557 applications for first-year admission, representing
about a 5 percent increase over last year's total and nearly 20
percent increase since 1998. "We are pleased with these results,"
says Diane Anci, director of admission, who attributes MHC's success
to individualized treatment that applicants receive throughout the
admission process. "When students come to Mount Holyoke, they receive
an enormous amount of personal attention, and their interests are
respected and encouraged," Anci says. "We try to reflect the MHC
experience in all aspects of our interactions with prospective
students--from interviews, large programs such as Spotlight, the new
master class program, and school visits to college fairs and
information sessions--to give students a taste of what they will
experience if they come here." he office made every effort
to be accessible to students--right down to the applicants' hectic
final days before the January 15 deadline. The admission office
stayed open until 8 pm for several days before the deadline to
discuss last-minute questions and concerns and sent more than 5,000
emails to prospective applicants informing them about this special
opportunity to talk with admission staff. Although Anci cautions that
it is too early to analyze all the reasons for this year's success
story, she theorizes that some factors include the way the admission
effort was managed, what she describes as "a tight, targeted
approach"; having a full staff this year (unlike last year when some
positions were vacant during the critical travel period), enabling
the office to saturate important geographic areas; a number of new
efforts, such as the online application and, the Senior Fellow
Interview Program; the expanded role of faculty and coaches in
admission programming; and targeted mailings, such as those sent to
high schools with crew and international baccalaureate programs. Anci
emphasized that the admission effort is directly linked to what is
happening on campus, as well as to the heightened media attention
that MHC has been receiving. Says Anci, "So many wonderful things are
going on at MHC, and the level of student, faculty, and staff
satisfaction and enthusiasm is so high, that admission staff find it
easy to transfer this excitement to prospective students." During this admission season,
directors made 757 school visits (to meet with prospective students
and guidance counselors) in locales ranging from Addis-Ababa,
Ethiopia, to Nashville, Tennessee; participated in 115 college fairs
(alumnae volunteers covered an additional 106 fairs); held hundreds
of individual off- and on-campus interviews; and conducted summer
information sessions for close to 900 participants. The office also
brought hundreds of prospective students and their families to campus
through such programs as Spotlight and Explore. This year, faculty
members Penny Gill, Holly Hanson, and Carolyn Collette participated
in the Explore program, earning high marks from prospective students
and their families. Travel and mailing efforts
continued to focus heavily on the Mid-Atlantic, Western, and New
England states, with attention given to geographic areas that are
"densely populated and have academically talented students who are
likely to come to MHC," said Anci. The office was able to give more
attention to the Southeast and Midwest this year than it did in 1999,
largely because there is now a full admission staff. On the
international front, Anci is particularly excited about the
unprecedented number of applications (sixty-seven) from United World
College students. "These are exceptionally strong students from all
over the world," says Anci. "We made a special visit to include these
schools on our travel schedules. It paid off." What it all boils down to is
that Mount Holyoke is "hot," as President Creighton commented at
convocation.
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