<p>Thought a separate thread would be good to post about 2013 Candidate Weekends.</p>
<p>UPS Overnight envelope arrived today. D is invited to Feb 22 weekend.</p>
<p>Do they have much for the Parents? I visited Olin with D in the Fall.</p>
<p>Hello OperaDad,</p>
<p>My S received his CW invitation by UPS today for Mar weekend. The packet details the activities for parents. We r from CA, and never visited Olin. So I would be there with my S.</p>
<p>CW is where my son and husband got hooked on Olin. (That was helpful, since Olin cost more than other options and needed parental buy-in.) If parents have already toured, it would not be as important to attend CW. Of course it is always fun to be part of Olin excitement ;)</p>
<p>I didn’t go to CW. I had visited with my D during the summer before junior year.</p>
<p>My daughter wanted to go alone, so she could get a roommate for the weekend. She felt like that would help her meet more people.</p>
<p>Congrats to everyone who got invited. My son is a junior at Olin. I did go to the CW with him and I would strongly advise all of you to visit if you can. They will keep the parents busy while the candidates are put through a bunch of group tasks for evaluation purposes. You will get to meet with the faculty, staff, alumni and current student parents and learn a lot about the school. My son is really happy at Olin. Its a great school. I am from San Ramon, CA area. PM me if you need any additional info on the college.</p>
<p>My DD got invite to Candidate’s Weekend in late Feb of 2013. We’re excited to learn more. Curious if any of you know how easy it is for Olin students to find employment upon graduation. What is the placement rate? Which industries are graduates hired into? What is average starting pay?</p>
<p>Anyone know how easy it is for Olin students to take classes at Wellesley? How much of inconvenience is it? Are schedules synchronized between the two schools?</p>
<p>My D is invited to CW in mid-Feb. We’re very excited for her. We attended OH both junior and senior year. Although I have a BECC reservation, like OperaDad, not sure if there will be anything new for parents or if she should go alone. When my older S went to college, accepted student open houses were both useful and different than the general OH. Is that true for CW?</p>
<p>A hearty congrats to the CW invitees! A few comments:</p>
<p>-As a parent, unless you’re already completely sold on Olin and don’t feel a need to learn anymore, I’d highly recommend attending CW. They keep you very busy, and supply you with an absolute wealth of info, including more formal sessions with interesting panels (administrators, profs, alumni, current students, etc) as well as numerous opportunities to interact with current Olin parents, students and alumni. They really do a terrific job presenting all the unique qualities that Olin has to offer (a.k.a. indoctrinating you). I had a terrific time last year.</p>
<p>-The job/grad school placement for Olin students is near 100%. They’ll give you the exact info at CW. I seem to recall there were something like 4% of recent Olin grads who were neither employed nor in grad school, and a bunch of them were doing things like travelling. Average starting salary was something like $70K, I seem to recall (for perspective, that number puts them in the top 10% of all single income tax filers, fyi).</p>
<p>-My daughter is only a freshman and she’s taking a class at Wellesley this semester. She did have to work around the three Olin classes she was taking, so there were a limited number of classes that worked for her, but it’s definitely doable. She has a car, so I can’t speak to the logistical challenges associated with getting there without one, but I know there are shuttles, and students definitely make it work with no car. It’s not far at all–less than 10 minutes, I think.</p>
<p>If you have questions about graduate placement and where they go, contact the Post Graduate Planning group at Olin and ask. They have their own blog with interesting information. ([Post</a> Graduate Planning](<a href=“http://blogs.olin.edu/pgp/]Post”>http://blogs.olin.edu/pgp/)) I agree that the job/grad school placement figure that rayrick gives is what I’ve heard.</p>
<p>My daughter told me last night that updated resumes were due by 8 AM today for the spring career fair. She’s a first year and there was time devoted in the Olin Introductory Experience class last fall to working on their resume. Olin kids are preparing for the real world where getting a job or getting into grad school is important.</p>
<p>Remember that you can’t take classes at Wellesley (or anywhere but Olin) the first semester. The first semester classes are already chosen for you except for your Arts/Humanities foundation course. After that, it’s fairly easy to register for one class a semester at each of the other colleges, but taking 2 classes at one of the cross-reg schools in the same semester evidently is hard administratively. </p>
<p>For a graphical look at the Olin class schedule, go to star.olin.edu and look at the info on the Records & Registration tab. “Spring 2013 Registration Booklet and Schedule” is the current semester. “Fall 2012 Registration Booklet” was last semester. The co-curricular listings are also there.</p>
<p>My sophomore Oliner took a math class at Wellesley. He was able to ride the shuttle bus.</p>
<p>Anyone with a D going Feb 15/16? Mine is going alone and we’re looking for a roommate. PM me.</p>
<p>Re: employment: Close to 100% of the class of 2012 was either employed at the time of graduation or planning to enter grad school directly. The ones who didn’t report their plans a) were planning to travel/take time off b) were waiting for something highly specific c) just didn’t report it! The PGP area of the website has more details, but the grad schools are the best in the country and the employers were very diverse and very well-respected. I actually think last year’s starting salary was skewed quite high (over 80K) because 20% of the class went to Microsoft and another 5% to Google–both which boast higher starting salaries than general.
Employment is not a problem, clearly. Does every company out there recruit at Olin? No. Do the companies who hire one Olin graduate come back for more hires? YES–again and again. Some areas of the country have yet to attract a large number of Olin grads, because there just aren’t that many of them! So if your student is looking to go to a company that doesn’t know much about Olin, they may have to work a little harder to get their foot in the door, but they will have the full support of the school and will have all the tools they need to hone their “pitch”!</p>
<p>I enjoyed going to CW with my student(s), it was wonderful to learn more about the school and meet some possible future classmates. I had a son and daughter go through Olin. I think they were glad that I was there, although Olin has it figured out if a parent does not attend with their student.</p>
<p>I’ll be arriving with my daughter on the morning of the 22nd. Would love to share airport - BECC transportation.</p>
<p>I am a huge Olin fan. My son is currently a sophomore and could not be happier. It is a perfect fit school for him, but not for everyone. I think it is very important for one or both parents to attend CW if they have not visited Olin previously. It is easier to understand the allure of Olin if you are there. We were already 1000% sold on Olin when we visited during our son’s HS junior year. By the end of that visit, he knew and we knew, he found his place and fortunately he was accepted.</p>
<p>Olin is not just a college your students attend. Many of the parents become very involved as volunteers. At each CW there will be parent volunteers. The parents also make welcome calls to all new families, have parties for new students in the summer, volunteer at Parent’s Weekend in October, assist the administration in projects such as the Parent Handbook and Boston Area Guide. Olin parents are also hugely generous with almost 70% of parents making annual contributions.</p>
<p>Olin parents are friends with each other. I know several of the CC posters above. I met them the application process (their child or mine), then met them at Olin. It is great to go to Parent’s Weekend and meet someone you have been ‘talking’ to online for months.</p>
<p>For those who want more info about Post Graduation - <a href=“https://www.olin.edu/pgp/default.aspx[/url]”>https://www.olin.edu/pgp/default.aspx</a> or Class Profiles by graduation year - <a href=“https://www.olin.edu/pgp/alumniprofiles.aspx[/url]”>https://www.olin.edu/pgp/alumniprofiles.aspx</a>. I also suggest reading the various blogs - <a href=“https://www.olin.edu/[/url]”>https://www.olin.edu/</a> at the bottom right (Admissions blog, Student blog, PGP blog).</p>
<p>I hope this helps. Feel free to PM me. Try to enjoy these remaining eight months with your ‘child’. You may see some moodiness as your child tries to process the thoughts and scariness of going away from home. Just love them, hug them and go with the flow. When you see your child on Parent’s Weekend or at Thanksgiving you will wonder who stole your child and replaced him/her with this more self-assured, mature, responsible, nice, appreciative person. Going away to college is like magic.</p>
<p>Olin parents can you comment on what it would be like for a student to attend Olin who wants to major in Computer Science- since this major is not an option at Olin? I remember learning during our visit about the ability of students to design their own “concentration”. Does this give them enough CS courses to compete for jobs in CS with students from other schools that do have CS majors (read: RPI, CMU ect…) ?</p>
<p>By senior year of hs my Oliner was only interested in Engineering. We still had concerns about Olin’s limited size/scope. I recall families (I met on CC) who were keen on CS ruled out Olin, with regret since it was a good fit in other ways.</p>
<p>PA-C – The equivalent “CS”-like degree is Engineering with a concentration in Computing (E:C). That’s a very flexible major with lots of electives.</p>
<p>There were 3 E:C courses offered last fall and there are 3 offered this spring. Two of this spring’s courses are topics classes. Olin has a good number of visiting professors for its size, so topics classes will likely have different topics the next time they’re taught. Check star.olin.edu on the Records & Registration tab for the course schedules for this semester and prior semesters.</p>
<p>The Sailbot team needs coders, so that’s a good way to participate on campus and get some non-classroom experience.</p>
<p>The student club SLAC ran 3 classes last semester for developers of various levels on different topics. SLAC has a 4 credit web development class that’s offered this semester for either ENGR elective credit or OSS. It’s not on the class schedule.</p>
<p>Remember you can cross-register at Wellesley and Wellesley does have a CS major.</p>
<p>If you’re thinking CS because you’re not a hardware person, then Olin’s probably the wrong place. Everyone has to take some specific engineering classes that wouldn’t be required for CS people at other schools.</p>
<p>People do make it work and some big companies do hire kids out of Olin to write code. Check with PGP on the places that hire kids who want to do software development.</p>
<p>Check out [Play</a>, passion, purpose: Tony Wagner at TEDxNYED - YouTube](<a href=“Play, passion, purpose: Tony Wagner at TEDxNYED - YouTube”>Play, passion, purpose: Tony Wagner at TEDxNYED - YouTube) which talks about innovation and what is needed in education. Tony Wagner only mentions one school in this TED talk. It is at the 11 minute mark. I am sure you can all figure out who it is without listening, but I think this talk is worth the time to watch.</p>