Wesleyan and its “Peers”

On Wednesday evening eight Admissions Deans from some great schools will be visiting Wesleyan to discuss how they approach the admissions process. The event in the Daniel Family Commons (Usdan) is sponsored by UNIGO and the Wall Street Journal. UNIGO was founded by Jordan Goldman ’04, and he will be here to moderate the discussion. The University of Pennsylvania, Williams, Princeton and Grinnell are among the schools that are sending deans. The discussion will be broadcast live. Check out unigo.com for details.

I will miss this event because I’ll be in New York for a meeting with the presidents from the Consortium for Financing Higher Education (COFHE). The purpose of the organization is to “examine how selective, private colleges and universities could discuss their commitment to providing exceptional educational opportunities for highly talented students as well as best practices in fiscal management.” There are 31 COFHE members, including some of our traditional peer institutions like Amherst and Williams. Among the liberal arts colleges, Carleton, Mount Holyoke, Oberlin, Pomona, Smith, Swarthmore, Trinity, and Wellesley are represented. The Ivy League universities, Northwestern and the University of Chicago are some of the larger schools included. We share best practices to promote student access and promote affordability, and we also can check in with one another about cultural and economic trends that have an impact on higher education in this country.

This is the season when high school seniors are busy preparing applications (or awaiting Early Decision results). Over Thanksgiving I spent some time with some Wesleyan international students who were reminiscing about how happy they were to get the “thick envelope” in the mail. I also saw parents whose kids have made the Early Decision commitment and now are anxiously awaiting the results. Given our great surge in applications last fall (which seems to be holding this year) the competition is very stiff, indeed.

There are still a few intense weeks left in the semester, so those of us carried away by our work on campus can forget how excited we were when first given the opportunity to join the Wesleyan community. Over the next few weeks there will be plenty of events to remind us of our good fortune: Eiko & Koma’s exhibition in Zilkha, the Ebony Singers in Crowell, theater in 92, hockey and basketball in Freeman…

It’s good to meet with our peer institutions, but there’s no place like home.

[tags]admissions process, UNIGO, Jordan Goldman, Consortium for Financing Higher Education, financial aid[/tags]

1 thought on “Wesleyan and its “Peers””

  1. Congratulations Jordan Goldman of Unigo and Wesleyan on the live broadcast of the Admissions Deans hosted by Wesleyan University. What a fantastic use of technology. This is the first time that I know of that a large audience was able to hear the perspectives from eight different Admissions Deans from eight different higher education institutions on what they expect from prospective students. After one of the Deans would speak, another Dean would corroborate or elaborate on what was already said so that the audience could get a sense of what really goes on behind the scenes. I can definitely see this method of communication as being something we can expect more of in the future.
    Lynn Laurie, P’12

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