Washingtonian Interview with Dean of Admissions

Colleges & Universities A-Z University of Virginia
1

<p><a href="http://www.washingtonian.com/article...eers/5442.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.washingtonian.com/article...eers/5442.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>"Getting In to Top Schools</p>

<p>The heads of admissions at Georgetown and UVa talk about SATs, rankings, and the competition to get accepted at top schools</p>

<p>By Alvin P. Sanoff</p>

<p>Each spring for more than a generation, thousands of high-schoolers have waited for word about their future from Charles Deacon and Jack Blackburn. Deacon has been dean of admissions at Georgetown University since 1972; Blackburn, his counterpart at the University of Virginia, has been on the job since 1985.</p>

<p>Together the two have logged 81 years in college admissions—years that have seen the process of getting into college turn into a hypercompetitive frenzy that frustrates parents, kids, and universities alike.</p>

<p>Deacon, a DC native and alumnus of Gonzaga High, was the first in his family to go to college. He graduated in 1964 from Georgetown—then all-male—and started working in the admissions office in 1965 while getting his master’s degree in English. He became head in 1972.</p>

<p>Blackburn, who grew up on the Eastern Shore and graduated from Western Maryland (now McDaniel College), spent 11 years as director of admissions at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia, before joining the admissions staff at UVa in 1979 under John Casteen, now the university’s president.</p>

<p>Deacon and Blackburn have helped lift their schools into the ranks of the nation’s elite—Georgetown and UVa both crack the U.S. News top tier of national universities. This success, combined with the many well-qualified kids applying to college, means the two turn down a lot of very smart students. Georgetown accepts roughly one out of every five of its 16,000 applicants; UVa accepts 34 percent of its 18,000 candidates."</p>

2

<p>The working URL can be found here: </p>

<p>washingtonian.com/articles/businesscareers/5442.html</p>

3

<p>Thanks for the link and the updated link.</p>

<p>My favorite line, about the writer of the article, at the end of the article:
"Contributing editor Al Sanoff died this spring after a distinguished career aimed at changing the world."</p>

<p>May the next generation take up the cause.</p>