Interesting info on Earlham

Parents Forum
1

<p>Check out this welcoming speech to new freshmen by the dean of admissions. A whole list of great info about the freshmen class:</p>

<p>"You number 366 students most of whom are just beginning your college careers, while others—24 of you—have transferred to Earlham from other institutions of higher education. Sixteen of you from Japan and the Czech Republic are “visiting” with us for just this year. Fourteen of you took a “gap” year and share a myriad of experiences since graduating from high school in 2004. </p>

<p>You come from 43 states and 29 foreign countries and represent 274 different high schools. Seven of you are home schooled. At least 56 of you have homes outside of the United States–coming to Earlham from Viet Nam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Swaziland, Sudan, the Maldives, India, Egypt, Canada, Palestine, Thailand, Curacao, Israel, Jamaica, the Philippines, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Japan, Russia, Barbados, Ecuador, Kenya, Senegal, Bolivia, Fiji, Lesotho, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela.</p>

<p>The states represented by the greatest number of new students are California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Indiana, Maryland, New York, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Ten of you are the only representative from your state in the new class. We offer a special welcome to those students from Arkansas, Utah, Louisiana, Hawaii, Delaware, Oklahoma, Nevada, Nebraska, Tennessee, and North Dakota…"
<a href=“http://www.earlham.edu/publicaffairs/content/pressroom/archive/2005/august/050819f-welcome.php[/url]”>http://www.earlham.edu/publicaffairs/content/pressroom/archive/2005/august/050819f-welcome.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

2

<p>jeez …the Quakes are cool but I think the relentless documentary approach of this address would make my eyes (ears?) glaze over. …I’d be thinking,ok but cut to the chase,sorry northstarmom I dont find a way here…</p>

3

<p>If I were an incoming student or had a kid in the incoming class, I’d find the info fascinating. Since my kid may be applying this year to Earlham, I found it interesting to read about the type of people whom he might encounter if he ends up going there. I also like the personal touch: the happy birthdays to those who were celebrating the day the speech was made. To me, the speech indicates that adcoms take the time to read applications and faculty/staff are interested in students as people.</p>

4

<p>That can be the difference between a big U and a small liberal arts college. My son loves the attention he has received from his small school choice…the attention to detail. The beauty is that in the states, you have so many types of places to chose from. Different strokes so to speak. But I think the LACs are the gems of our system.</p>

5

<p>I was in the audience as the parent of an incoming student and thought the welcoming speech was fun. I heard my daughter in there a bunch of times and it was cool. Most in the audience seemed to enjoy it. </p>

<p>The entire orientation was very caring and nurturing. It helped me feel better about leaving my daughter in a place so far away. </p>

<p>I’ve been bemused by the threads about “helicopter” parents. Nothing could be more different from the way we were treated at Earlham. It was emphasized how welcome parents were on campus at any time. As part of the parent orientation we were each given an appointment to meet with our student’s advisor. When I met my daughter’s the first thing she did was give me her e-mail and telephone number and invite me to contact her at any time. . .</p>

<p>All in all Earlham is living up to my daughter’s expectations (and mine!). Its a small, caring community filled with interesting folks.</p>

6

<p>I learned about the speech from a dad whose child is a freshman at Earlham. The dad enjoyed the speech, and his daughter, who took a great leap of faith to go far out of state to Earlham, is having a wonderful time there. </p>

<p>What I enjoyed while reading the speech was how it was clear that the admissions dean and staff truly do pay attention to the applications, and treasure the students inn all of their quirkly, wonderful, compassionate, diverse individuality. </p>

<p>My friend’s daughter had not been happy in high school. Despite being very bright with high grades, she had never been excited about her high school program or classmates, which seemed to reflectdeficiencies in the program, which emphasized getting one’s ticket punched, not obtaining meaningful education.</p>

<p>Just days into her Earlham experience, the young woman has made friends and was so excited about the educational atmosphere that she told her parents that a faculty panel done for freshmen was “fascinating.” If a faculty panel was fascinating, I truly look forward to hearing how the student will describe her classroom experiences.</p>

7

<p>Having received some wonderful advice from parents here last spring, I thought I some initial observations on Earlham, now that son and family are six weeks into first semester.</p>

<p>First of all, I wasn’t there for orientation but my son and his dad’s take on the speech was BORING! But it’s been largely uphill from there. </p>

<p>Like Obesmom, I found son’s advisor open and engaged. Since I was not going to meet him at orientation, I emailed him a week before and we had an amazing phone conv. He’d already read son’s file and had worked up an initial suggested course list. And Earlham has an impressive policy: first years try out their classes for three days before finalizing registration. </p>

<p>A few negative campus culture observations: 1) Don’t be fooled by the ‘dry campus.’ There is as much drinking here as anywhere. Perhaps things are settling down now, but for the first few weeks S found the party/drinking scene pervasive and pretty unpleasant. If you look in the Live Journal entries, I think you will get a sense of this. 2) The school has a fairly rigid policy on living in the dorms for four years and staying on the mealplan. Most rooms are traditional doubles; it’s hard to get a single. The food is almost universally disliked and lots of cooking goes on. The catch is, of course, that if your kid hates the food and gets in the habit of cooking or buying food outside, you are still incurring the expense of the mealplan. All of this is done to encourage the wonderful Earlham sense of community, but the policies can be limiting too. </p>

<p>Academics: So far very positive, if considerably even more PC than expected. (It is not easy to find ANY dead white men in the catalog! :-] ) The first year courses really stress the development of college reading, analysis and writing skills. For example, every paper so far has been assigned twice: once as a draft and then back for a rewrite. Teachers are VERY accessible. S has weekly meetings with his advisor (by choice) and has spent hours outside of class going over assignments with several profs. One teacher, seeing S struggle with a learning disability in memory that impacted his performance on a series of quizzes, tore up all the quizzes and offered him this alternative to demonstrate his command of the material: he gets to write a short paper in his room on his computer the night before each quiz. He called me the other day, in tears of joy, exclaiming that here is a teacher who “gets” how he thinks and that… Earlham really may be the school for him. Wow.</p>

<p>So, there you have it, some negatives and some positives. Overall, seems like a good choice was made last April. Looking forward to Family Weekend next weekend.</p>

8

<p>What an awesome welcome! To recognize the individuality and diversity of the student body so eloquently…I’d venture to say that every young person in that hall felt so important, so appreciated, an so valued. What a great way to start an academic voyage. What a great leader at the helm.</p>

9

<p>That’s a pretty standard kind of welcome speech. The dean gave a speech like that to my law school class. To me the most astounding statistic was that fully half of my classmates, mostly born in 1965 or earlier, indicated that their mothers had NO occupation other than homemaking.</p>

10

<p>Pomona had a similar speech last year and they gave stats on how many students had perfet SATs, how many had 800 in one area, the average SAT, the most popular first name, states represented, named some of the more unusual accomplishments of the entering class , had the students whose birthday it was stand up , with a lot of comedy thrown in. It was pretty entertaining but maybe not so much if you weren’t a student or their parent.</p>

11

<p>DP’s …this was really funny…I made the remark in post #2 that my ears would glaze over with that “list format” type speech even though it might be sincere and inclusive. (and we quakes are nothing if not inclusive)…well…i got to Oberlin a couple of weeks ago and at the parents and first year students in the chapel/president/deans/professors speech (it was overall very inspiring and cool) the dean of admissions gave the same type of speech! after the list she segued into the inspiring stuff…but i got the giggles and couldn’t stop. Do you think deans go to seminars and discuss how to give inspiring speeches? The dean of the conservatory gave an awsome, very theatrical speech and made the point that we are all so lucky to have the con students around, giving concerts almost every night, and we should all be sponges for the arts. that was cool.</p>

12

<p>likes2draw
I am so impressed that your S found such an understanding faculty. This speaks well of the school</p>

13

<p>I really appreciate the information on Earlham. Earlham is on our DS list. He will find the information interesting. He enjoyed his visit to the campus last April with DH. He felt welcomed and really liked the class he attended/visisted.</p>

14

<p>Likes2draw and Oboemom, Thank you both for the update on how your kids are doing at Earlham. I have been meaning to PM both of you. It’s interesting that you brought up the kitchens at Earlham, Likes2draw. One of the things that impressed my daughter the most about Earlham is that several students there mentioned to her how much cooking together and eating together in the dorm kitchens was such a central part of Earlham’s sense of community. Based on my daughter’s experiences at Earlham’s summer program last year, Earlham truly is one of the most unique and special schools in the country. Not for everyone, and as you note Likes2, it has some warts like all schools do, but a terrific school none the less.</p>

15

<p>I, too, was interested in those statistics for my son’s school. They presented them in a power point presentation at one of the orientation meetings. It was just parents in the room, but son told me they saw them too at some other meeting. I thought it was kind of neat. Interestingly, the presentation was in nearly the exact format as this speech. I sort of wish I had a copy of it!</p>

16

<p>If anyone wants to read an unusual commencement speech, try to track down the one given at last year’s Earlham graduation ceremony.
The seniors were given the freedom to choose whoever they wanted as a keynote speaker, and they picked an Earlham psychology professor who wrote one of the most moving commencement speeches I have ever read. Not only that, but the speech really conveys the sense of community and culture that permeates Earlham. But, it did make me cry — and I didn’t even have a graduating senior or student at Earlham! :)</p>

17

<p>Actually, here’s the link for the commencement speech given at Earlham by Vince Punzo, professor of psychology.
<a href=“http://www.earlham.edu/publicaffairs/content/pressroom/archive/2005/may/050511s-commencement.php[/url]”>http://www.earlham.edu/publicaffairs/content/pressroom/archive/2005/may/050511s-commencement.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;