<p>I have observed the application process for the first time as a parent this year and am not at all surprised that Middlebury's early application numbers are down 10% (according to the NY Times data on their blog "The Choice"). My daughter visited Middlebury twice this fall. Her initial impression was very favorable, beautiful campus, athletic and academic feel to the place, and small class sizes. On the second visit she tried to engage the school. She attended two different English Literature classes, went to admissions to get more information, and visited with an athletic coach. They seem to do everything possible to prevent interaction and limit access. No teacher interacted with her, the coach gave her "5 minutes" despite significant qualifications, and no interviews are granted (informational with alumni, not evaluative). The initial information session is given by a student not an admissions officer. They have no essay supplement to allow a student to talk specifically about the school. The message was clearly, "take our tour, visit our website, but don't bother us". She ended up applying early (and getting in) to an equivalent school that spent an hour interviewing her, introduced her to students on the team she is interested in, had professors who spoke with her after attended classes to ask about her interests and find out where she was from, and followed up with her after her time there. I think Middlebury is a fantastic school that hurts itself by being as inaccessible as any school we visited (12 in all).</p>
<p>northeasterndad, I’m sorry you had such a bad experience with Middlebury. That shouldn’t happen. I do think, however, that you have a few of your facts wrong. According to the NY Times Choice Blog linked below:</p>
<p>[Early</a> Line on Early Admissions - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/2012-early-admission/]Early”>Early Line on Early Admissions - The New York Times)</p>
<p>Early decision applications were not down 10%, but in fact, UP nearly 6%. Additionally, the interviews, performed by alumni, are in fact evaluative. I perform them and I’m asked to give an evaluation of the applicant afterward. </p>
<p>I’m sorry you had a bad experience with Middlebury, but I just wanted to get the correct facts out there. I hope your daughter has a great experience at whichever school she has chosen.</p>
<p>yes, as I recall, the initial article had the stats wrong for Middlebury, reflecting a drop in applications. A day or so later they corrected it.</p>
<p>Middlebury had just shy of 9,000 applications this year–a record. </p>
<p>I’m sorry that your daughter felt the college was impersonal, but I really don’t think that’s the norm. Most people who visit Midd walk away feeling like professors really care about students. What time of year did she visit? Sometimes something as simple as visiting during exams can have a big impact on how accessible professors may be. </p>
<p>When the endowment took a hit a few years ago, the college was faced with some difficult decisions. In order to minimize the impact of cuts on current students and academics, the college trimmed some fat from several offices, including the admissions office. Interviewing 9,000 kids and reading through 9,000 essays takes a lot of resources. Midd tapped into its existing network of thousands of alumni to take up some of that slack. Alumni volunteers are free, have a lot to offer in terms of relaying their experiences at Midd (and life after Midd), and generally provide the student and the college with the same information that an on-campus interview would. </p>
<p>Again, sorry your daughter had a bad experience, but it sounds like more of an aberration than an endemic institutional deficiency.</p>
<p>Some insight into alumni interviews (albeit this video is directed towards the actual interviewers, but still shows that interviews are evaluative and in fact important in the admissions process): [AAP</a> Mock Interview | Middlebury](<a href=“http://www.middlebury.edu/admissions/aap/aapmockinterview]AAP”>For Alumni Volunteers | Middlebury College)</p>
<p>Hmm, not our family’s experience at all.I wonder if this is the whole story?</p>
<p>Of course some professors may not want to engage with “prospies” as it is not in their defined responsibilities, and really, isn’t a great use of their time.My H the college professor does meet with anyone when asked, calls parents/kids if admissions asks, but some in his department refuse to-maybe some of that was going on?</p>
<p>I don’t believe a coach would ignore a good prospect unless the contact was at a bad time, or unreasonable in some way. That assertion REALLY makes no sense.</p>
<p>My boys preferred admissions talks by students-much better-MIT, Bates and Williams were done that way as well. The Amherst and Bowdoin talks by alumni directors got thumbs down from both of them…</p>
<p>Unfortunately our experience at Middlebury was worse. The school seems wonderful but the student led admissions sessions were definitely the weakest and least helpful of 10 schools visited. The two students were fixated on describing what they knew- primarily arts and the value of international study- and could provide no useful information about the social sciences or hard sciences that interest my daughter. When several audience members tried to ask redirecting questions, the students just could not fathom that we were interested in anything but their direct experiences. It was so bad that the audience members of the info sessions were shaking their heads in disbelief at such an inept performance. Fortunately a great tour guide plus the natural beauty of the campus saved the visit, and the school is now among her top choices.</p>
<p>The info sessions at Yale was student run and similarly disappointing. The best info sessions were at swat, Kenyon and William and Mary. These sessions featured both students and a savvy admission pro.</p>
<p>I agree with the original poster about the info sessions. I’ve attended two student run sessions at Midd over the past three years, and they were not the quality we experienced at Williams, Wesleyan, Brown, Colgate, Cornell, etc… I live with an alumni interviewer, and know other interviewers well, and I question how that role is interpreted by different individuals. It seems to me that the most important things to a college should be the quality (not quantity) of the applicants it attracts and the students academic and social experience once enrolled. At a time when there do not seem to be enough seats in the classroom for current VT students, I was not reassured to read that the Trustees decided to meet in California rather than Vermont last month. Middlebury does have a beautiful campus but it is not convenient to get to, and for those who make the effort, the admissions visit could be a lot more hospitable.</p>
<p>abcd12: Are you suggesting the quality of Midd’s applicant pool has gone down with increasing and record numbers? And what does the Trustee meeting in Cal have anything to do with this post? The trustees met in California for the first time in four years (according to chair of the board in the recent Campus article) in order to take stock of the quality of programs at Middlebury’s graduate school of international studies on the west coast. How does that relate to your comment about the number of seats in the classroom for current Vt students??</p>
<p>Middlebury dropped its supplementary essay a couple of years ago, and does not require both SAT I and IIs, and thus is considered “easy” to apply to via the Common Application. This is good for its rankings. This type of “popularity” can cause an institution to feel it does not need to worry about the experience of its current students because there is a line at the door to get in; happens all the time. Personally, I would rather see the senior management focused on current issues facing undergraduates (including enough seats/class sections) which I would think is the College’s primary mission. In terms of the original post, with these info sessions of varying quality, the College misses a chance to impress whoever shows up, whether the student ends up applying or the parent is in a position to hire Midd grads; it is a missed opportunity to impress those who have made an effort to visit the campus.</p>
<p>The whole interview issue is a red herring or at least a wash in terms of the new system versus the old. With more than 1000 international applications, and more and more applications coming from the western U.S., the percentage of applicants able to visit campus and have an interview has been declining and was fewer than 50% of applicants were interviewed. Today, greater than 60% of applicants get alumni interviews, and the process is more “fair” in that more applicants have the opportunity. I suppose if you are an easterner, have the means to visit Middlebury and therefore get an interview, the new system is unfair. But that is why the whole issue is a wash: which group should get the advantage of being able to impress the school and vice verse? Should any group have such an advantage?</p>
<p>abcd12,</p>
<p>I’d be interested in hearing more about seats and sections- are students having more difficulty getting the classes they want/need? Have class sizes bumped up appreciably over the past few years?</p>
<p>I don’t want to digress from the original poster’s point. It seems the class situation is not a problem for regular kids and for most majors, except for the January term where there should be more offerings. Also, I was not referring to returning on campus interviews, but rather the Admissions sponsored information sessions which are student run and of varying quality.</p>
<p>This is certainly feedback that the college should receive. I hope those who felt that the student-run information sessions were of poor quality provided direct feedback to the college.</p>
<p>I actually really liked our student-led info session at Middlebury and found it to be among the more interesting and lively of the many we attended. Probably depends heavily on the skills of the undergrads doing the presenting, but the duo we saw were very good.</p>
<p>All this got me thinking about my information session (some 20 + years ago), but as it turns out, I don’t remember a second of it. I remember having a great meeting with the Dean of Admissions. I remember when I was very sick, the Dean of Students called my parents daily, to let them know how I was. I remember that when I was doing poorly in a class the professor approached ME (rather than me approaching HIM), to offer help. I remember when I was doing well in a class, a professor approached me to discuss future career options. I remember when I was working on my thesis and my professor who had been working with me on a regular basis told me, on the due date, “I know you’ve been working hard on this. I’d like you to fix up this section and turn it in tomorrow”. I remember when the College President several years after graduation met with me to discuss doing a reading at my wedding. Those are the memories I have interacting with the administration and staff at Middlebury. I’m not sure whether my info session was good or bad though. </p>
<p>Look, I’m not trying to dismiss a bad info session. It’s upsetting to me to hear about something like that. But I do think you’ll hear good and bad stories from all sorts of people applying to Middlebury and its peer schools. A school doesn’t reach the level Middlebury has reached by making a LOT of mistakes. Mistakes are made. I don’t deny this. I hope people will take the time to dig deeper. If only for their own benefit. I think nowadays people apply to so many schools that it’s easy to dismiss one when everything doesn’t go perfectly.</p>
<p>The OP has some kind of ax to grind and we are keeping it going(myself included). It’s all very silly and pointless.
If you don’t get the info you need from your student tour guide/admissions leader, ask for more info.
If the coach doesn’t want to talk to you, that’s a sign of another sort.
There are plenty of classes, sections, seats, J term classes etc.</p>
<p>After having been to about 20 info sessions, Midd was in the top 3 for our family-Carleton and Bates also stood out. Amherst and Bowdoin were awful, and MIT was weird. The Dartmouth student talked incessantly about beer. These things happen.</p>
<p>Always get all the info you can before applying to a school. Visits are probably worth the effort if you can afford it. Midd, like all colleges, isn’t nirvana for everyone. But a Princeton Review “School runs like butter” and the extremely low transfer rate, and high student satisfaction rate, should be considered as meaningful.</p>
<p>Our family “n” of 2 is very happy with Midd…</p>
<p>‘These things happen’…agreed, so by mentioning schools one wonders if there’s an ax to grind or if one is saying that there are equally good schools out there and for what ever reason one felt the ways in which they presented themselves did not connect to your expectations? it’s always interesting to hear feedback.</p>
<p>I’m not the OP but I had pretty negative comments about the info sessions. Despite that, its one of my daughters top choices, so no axe to grind here. We are still waiting to see if she gets in!</p>
<p>My point is that our experience, visiting about 15 different colleges over the past 18 months, was that having both students and an administrator share information with prospective students was best. In the those sessions the students shared their enthusiasm and direct experiences and the administrators made sure that the information was balanced and responsive to the needs of all.</p>
<p>I can’t remember whether there was an opportunity to give feedback at Middlebury- I think we filled out a comment card. My hope is that administrators check these posts from time to time!</p>
<p>Thank you doonerak, for the voice of reason! I am certain that someone from admin checks these-not sure who it is… And I am certain the issue will come up for review if enough express unhappiness.</p>