<p>I called the admissions office yesterday. International students will hear their results by the end of this week. Good luck to everyone! </p>
<p>Expeliarmus and Anneavi, where are you guys from?</p>
<p>Haobart15: Did the AO tell you when they mailed domestically?</p>
<p>@hobart15 >> NEPAL! 
Actually, I have been rejected from all other colleges…Hobart is my last hope!</p>
<p>@7Sisters Sorry. ): I never asked about domestic candidates.</p>
<p>@Expeliarmus What will you be studying? Keep your fingers crossed. I’m sure they have something positive for you. (:</p>
<p>7Sisters, just go ahead and call the Admission Office.</p>
<p>****ing rejected… i hate to be a international student applying for aid… curse you americans!!</p>
<p>im an international and i havent received anthing :(</p>
<p>We finally heard today. It’'s late don’t you think? But it was a YES!!!</p>
<p>It turned out that my son’s application was incomplete. We didn’t know until Monday when we called the admissions office. Oh well. All’s well that ends well.</p>
<p>7Sisters, I’m so glad you called–that’s wonderful news! Congratulations to your son!</p>
<p>HWS is one of my daughter’s top choices. I wish I had the same conviction that you all seem to have in making the best decission you can make by attending HWS. I would love to be convinced that my daughter should make the same call. I realize it’s a personal choice; however I would appreciate hearing why you are all so excited. I am sorry to say I am having a difficult time getting my arms around a liberal art education in a world that has become very specialized. Maybe you can shed some light on what doors HWS can open in the business world or do we all just have to prepare our wallets for law school or med school? There has to be more options in order for me to be “all in”. Please help me- my question is a sincere request for your insight.</p>
<p>I understand your worry, MEDADII; you just want your daughter to do well in college and moreover, be successful and happy in the world doing something useful. We all want that for our children. Here are my reasons for a liberal arts education:</p>
<p>Only a very, very small percentage of graduating high school students have a clue about what specific occupations they want to work towards. The high school experience, while very limited, can sometimes give some inkling but the college experience can bring increasing focus as the student is exposed to a much wider variety of interests. It’s not unusual for students, early in their college career, to think they’re going in one direction, only to be completely energized by some fabulous course with a dynamic professor that opens their eyes and sets them off in another direction. One of my daughter’s high school friends thought she was going to be an English major and discovered her fascination with physics and engineering; she’s having a blast. One of my daughter’s college friends was debating anthropology, archeology, Spanish and geology; she’s going with geology and loving her rocks. This is not an unusual phenomenon. If they had been attending anything other than liberal arts colleges, they would not have had that spectrum to choose from. Does your daughter have long-standing interests with very specific goals in mind? Or do her interests cover a variety of fields, some overlapping and some completely opposite?</p>
<p>While taking the diversity of college courses, students learn to critically analyze, articulate and successfully argue their positions. They learn how to communicate. These are all skills we need in everyday life, no matter what we do.</p>
<p>Now to take the liberal education beyond commencement. My daughter’s high school friend wants to be an engineer; before she discovered that in a liberal arts setting, she most likely would have become an English teacher. My daughter’s college friend wants to be a geologist; perhaps she’ll discover something new about earthquakes so people can be safer around fault zones. Another friend, a biology major, wants to be a marine biologist; we already know about an algae that eats oil, but maybe she can discover a way for them to reproduce quickly so they can be more effective with future spills. I know of a young man, a government major, who worked on political campaigns for a time and is currently employed in a nonprofit. A young woman as a government major wants eventually to work in military intelligence; she has landed an excellent first job and she graduates in May. Another young man is studying Arabic and international relations; he wants to work in the diplomatic corps in the Middle East (hopefully it will settle down enough for his junior year abroad).</p>
<p>Here are some links to notable HWS alumni/ae:</p>
<p>[HWS:</a> Honors and Awards](<a href=“http://www.hws.edu/alumni/remarkable/index.asp]HWS:”>404)</p>
<p>[Hobart</a> and William Smith Colleges - Daily Updates](<a href=“http://www.hws.edu/dailyupdate/newslist.aspx?cat=4]Hobart”>http://www.hws.edu/dailyupdate/newslist.aspx?cat=4)</p>
<p>For the last link (54 pages worth!), there is such infinite variety of interesting people accomplishing valuable work: aviation, documentaries, inventions, publishing, epidemiology research at the EPA, films, children’s books, television, financial consulting with Morgan Stanley, novels, climate-change negotiations, you name it. </p>
<p>At a liberal arts college, your daughter has the possibility of going in any number of directions. That is the beauty of liberal arts.</p>
<p>You’re asking a good question. In the job market that our children are going to confront, they will face job insecurity. Some economists believe that anyone graduating from college now is likely going to change jobs every three years and change careers about three times. </p>
<p>Given that, the person who is best prepared to change job functions and industries will be more successful. A person’s career life will not be stagnant. It will be fluid and constantly changing. </p>
<p>The successful person will not be the one who is highly specialized. The person with more fluid skills will be able to move around this new job market. A solid liberal arts education should teach the person how to think critically and solve problems, whether that particular problem was taught to him or not. </p>
<p>When I think of my education (a liberal arts undergraduate degree with an MBA–both Ivies), what I realize is that the most valuable thing I learned was how to solve problems, almost any problem. I go into my inventory of knowledge and I figure it out. That’s been valuable to me in the course of my career where I have had to make several changes (in job function and industry). </p>
<p>I am guessing that when you ask about specialization, you are referring to the undergraduate business degrees. I find them (outside of the absolute top three programs) to be more vocational. I have had young adults (in their 20s, who’ve been working for 4-5 years) from these programs work for me, and they cannot think critically and solve client problems. They cannot communicate with clients because they cannot write a sentence. An employee in a service business is useless if he cannot meet customer needs. Once an educational program becomes vocational, the skills taught have a very, very short lifespan. Even an elite MBA has a short half-life. Keep this in mind when looking at a liberal arts education, which lasts a lifetime.</p>
<p>7Sisters, what a great response! Thank you for your contribution.</p>