Strung along all year

<p>Other posters have already done a great job explaining the philosophy behind the admissions process and the contacts we have with students (except for Plainsman, who, as usual, has speculated a bit too wildly :slight_smile: ), but since you asked, here’s our communications plan for applicants:</p>

<p>As soon as we enter their applications into our database, every applicant receives a letter signed by the admissions counselor responsible for their region thanking them for applying and offering to be a resource if they have any questions. Every applicant should also receive a letter from the chair of any department(s) in which they have expressed an interest in majoring. We send this out after we receive an application because we don’t have the information on what majors a student is interested in until we receive their application, but we still feel like it is useful for students to hear a bit more about the areas of study they may be interested in. If the applicant listed their prospective major as “undecided,” or if we don’t have a letter written for that major, they receive a letter from the dean of the college. In previous years, these have been actual print letters, but we switched this year to sending them all as emails. We also send out emails letting applicants know when we have received their standardized test scores, and email notifications regarding the status of their application as complete or incomplete. </p>

<p>In previous years, we have encouraged counselors to send out personalized messages to particularly strong applicants after they have read their files, but before the admit letters go out. As our applicant pool has become more and more competitive, we’re finding that we are not always able to admit all of those students, so we have discontinued that practice.</p>

<p>We’re always sensitive to the fact that some applicants and/or parents will misconstrue any communication after an application has been submitted as representative of the likelihood of admission. We’re mindful of that any time we send out messages to applicants, and try to minimize any potential for misinterpretation as much as possible. We feel that our current communications plan is both reasonable and appropriate, and that it strikes an good balance between being informative and helpful to most, while still expecting that a small number of people will be upset no matter what we do.</p>