The record-breaking year in applications for admissions was not the only record set this year in Grant Hall.
Alumni interviews reached
a record-breaking 729, far surpassing the previous record of 530.
“It's an easy and fun way to serve the College,” says Kris Gernert-Dott '86, associate dean of admissions. “And it is very successful in stimulating students' interest in Union. We regularly see that more than eighty percent of the students interviewed by alumni wind up applying.”
Getting involved in the program is as easy as sending an e-mail to Lilia Tiemann, the coordinator of alumni admissions and event planning
(tiemannl@union.edu). Once the preliminaries are out of the way, a volunteer will get a packet of information containing everything from a primer on how to conduct an interview to brochures and background about academic and extracurricular programs. Alumni are kept up to date by a variety of means-a guide for alumni volunteers, an alumni admissions newsletter, fact sheets, the Web. Many return regularly for such events as ReUnion or Homecoming, and Tiemann responds to a steady stream of e-mail to answer such questions as, “I talked with a student who wants to take a year off to do volunteer work in South America; what's the College's policy on deferred admissions?”
The increase in the number of off-campus interviews has not come at the expense of on-campus interviews; in fact, campus programming has also increased substantially in recent years, to the point where the Admissions Office now employs a dozen interviewers from the senior class to help meet the demand from potential applicants and their parents.
Nearly all of the requests for alumni interviews are initiated by the students, with about two-thirds of those requests coming from students who have been on campus, perhaps for a tour or an open house program. “We know that finding the time to get back on campus can be a challenge for them, since so many are carrying AP classes or are heavily involved in activities,” Gernert-Dott says. “So the alumni effort is a great service
-and the students know that we place the same value on an alumni interview as we do on an on-campus interview.”
Alumni are asked to do two or three interviews a year, although some do far more. Bill Vallee '74, an alumni admissions volunteer for many years, did fourteen interviews last year and helped out in the Hartford, Conn., area at school visits and college fairs. (Vallee was one of three alumni recently honored as a “volunteer of the year”-the others are Gary Starr '72, co-chair of the Hartford Alumni Admissions Committee, and Trey Wehrum '92, who volunteers from his home on Long Island.)
To be effective, the admissions volunteers need to be current. Each student who is interviewed fills out a questionnaire, and the most common complaint is that their interviewer presented Union the way it was, not the way it is. It may be for this reason that students generally prefer to talk with alumni who have graduated in the last ten to twenty years. As Gernert-Dott says, “The students tend to relate more to someone who is closer to the college experience.”
Complaints are relatively rare, however. More common is the student who said his alumnus interviewer was “thorough, complete, honest, and knew a lot about where Union is headed.” One student said that her interviewer, Jennifer Papazian '94, “changed my mind about the school,” and another student commented that he “couldn't say enough about my interviewer (Marc Weintraub '93 of Charlestown, West Va.).”
Admissions
posts record numbers
It was a year of records for the College's admissions effort:
- A record number of applications
- 4,200, or more than seven for each spot in the class.
- A record number of alumni interview requests-more than 700 (see related article).
- Record turnouts for such events as the fall multicultural weekend.
- An increase of eight percent
in Early Decision, indicating Union is becoming the first choice of more students. - And, with twelve members
of the senior class assisting
the admissions staff, a record number of on-campus interviews as well as record
crowds at the year-round Open House programs.