hello and thank you for joining us for
the inaugural
six colleges webinar my name is matt
mcgann
dean of admission and financial aid at
amherst college and because amherst
begins with an a
i have the honor of hosting the first of
our six sessions
welcome to our audience joining us from
48 states and five continents
good evening to those of you nearby me
on the east coast of the united states
good afternoon to those of you joining
from the west coast good morning to
those of you in places like china and
the philippines
and for those of you in places like
ethiopia and mauritius
thank you so much for joining us i hope
you can get to sleep soon
i hope all of you will find tonight
helpful and insightful. this session
will be recorded you will be able to
find the recording
at sixcolleges.org after this session
the session is also being captioned
you can turn
on closed captioning through zoom we're
glad to be able to provide this for
greater accessibility this evening
i'm joined tonight by my colleagues the
deans of admission at some of the
world's great colleges. let me now allow
them all to introduce themselves and
will continue to do so in alphabetical
order
so up first whitney. hi everybody
thanks for joining us tonight my name is
whitney soule and i'm from Bowdoin
College
in brunswick maine. hi everyone my name
is art rodriguez and i'm from Carleton
College in northfield minnesota
hi everyone i'm seth allen from Pomona
College
located in claremont california right
outside of l.a.
good evening my name is jim bock
and i'm from Swarthmore College
located in swarthmore pennsylvania
located just outside of philadelphia
pennsylvania.
hi everyone thanks for being with us i'm
liz creighton from Williams College in
western massachusetts
that's our cast of characters for
tonight. first up
to prove that we are really here in the
spirit of cooperation
in just a moment i'm going to ask my
colleagues to say something
awesome or unique, not about their own
school
but about the school that comes after
them in the alphabet.
following that we'll discuss some of the
things that all of our colleges have in
common
in the spirit of cooperation we'll be
focusing tonight more on what
small residential colleges like ours
have in common
and what we can offer students. while
we're doing that you can start thinking
about sending your questions for the
deans
through the zoom q & a function which
we'll get to answering a little bit
later
okay so something awesome about other
schools i'm up first
and i get to tell you something cool
about Bowdoin college which is in the
fabulous college town of brunswick maine.
when i give students and families
college advice
i often tell them to look for a college
that matches their
values and to try to understand a
college's values by
watching their actions and their
priorities.
so along those lines i am so in awe of
Bowdoin's actions
around climate change. more than a
decade ago
they were one of the earliest places
among colleges to say
that they would become carbon neutral
and they did so two years ago. they
became one of the very first colleges in
the country to achieve carbon neutrality
dramatically decreasing greenhouse
gas emissions on campus
through a variety of steps. now doing
something like this requires a real
institutional commitment
Bowdoin took a bold position as one of
the real leaders in battling
one of the most important struggles of
our time climate change
so for that i say kudos Bowdoin
you all are awesome.
thank you very much and i get to
talk a little bit about Carleton and
there are many things i love about
Carleton we have traveled together for a
long time
and i've gotten to know the school and
one of the things that i think is really
representative
is how Carleton is able to incorporate
fun
into building community and also in the
approach to learning
even really complex things there's a way
to make it fun but an example of this
is the role that frisbee plays at
Carleton
so they have an amazing frisbee team
incredibly competitive and so there's
that as something for them to hang their
hat on, but they also use frisbee as a
way for the first year students to get
to know one another. right in
orientation they have a really fun
exercise
that involves frisbees for students to
have to introduce themselves to a lot of
people and get to know one another
right away and for me that's a really
great example
of how the college thinks about putting
students in situations that have
challenge
including just having to get to meet
people when you're newly away from home
and trying to settle in and to use a
game
that is representative of the school in
so many competitive ways
to be fun and interactive so that would
be one of the things i love most about
Carleton.
Thank you whitney so i have the
opportunity to talk about
Pomona college and what makes Pomona
college
an interesting place, i would say that
one of the things i've always been
attracted to about
Pomona is the fact that it's the
founding member of the claremont
college's consortium
and the reason i find this feature so
attractive
is because it's a unique system in
american higher education
that consists of seven independent
institutions
five undergraduate and two graduate
schools
and really what makes this a distinctive
system is the fact that the seven
campuses are contiguous
they're all connected sitting on one
square mile
that no matter how you transport
yourself
from campus to campus you're likely
going to be doing that
by on a bike walking and so it's easy to
access
each one of the campuses and really
enjoy the opportunities
that are offered at each one of the
seven institutions
i will say though as an undergraduate
student one of the things that students
often talk about in terms of their
time at Pomona and the claremont system
is the fact that you
have many shared resources you can cross
register
and take courses at the other
institutions
you have 6,000 undergraduate students
total
and so that really expands what your
experience can be like
by being at Pomona. Additionally
the main library, dining halls and other
public events
are also open to students across the
campuses so you really can begin to
build a community not just at
Pomona
but at the other institutions as well
even though there are many shared
resources
across the claremont system i think
what's important to know is that each
school
is independent. they each have their
own set of courses
majors graduation requirements students
faculty and president so even though
there are seven schools near each other
they're all very different from one
another.
Great thanks art.
i'm talking about Swarthmore college
I love Swarthmore college and here's what
i think you'd love about Swarthmore
college - the juxtaposition
of a residential liberal arts college
on the outskirts of philadelphia - one of
the
great east coast cities - but the campus
itself
is an arboretum. so you have all of the
advantages
of being close by an urban area - you're
on the main line to philly, there's a
train right into
downtown 30th street station, but you get
to have an educational setting in a
essentially a garden. there are very few
campuses like that
in the united states so if you like the
idea of close proximity to
an urban center but just a drop-dead
gorgeous campus Swarthmore might be a
place for you.
Thank you seth and i get to introduce
Williams college in Williamstown
massachusetts
which i've had the great honor and
pleasure of visiting a couple times.
And as i was trying to narrow and think
about what i enjoy or appreciate most,
two things came to mind. one was social
and one was academics. i'm gonna squeeze two into one
in my answer, but the first is social.
they have an entries program
where first years are put in cohorts of
about 25 and live with junior advisors
to where they really get to know one
another in a communal setting. and so i
just appreciate the socialization
that takes place through the entry
program and the second would be academic
which is the tutorial program where
students two students work
individually with one faculty member and
really are able to dive deep
into the learning and really are doing
graduate level work at the undergraduate
level
i think that learning takes place in all
our institutions but i love how williams
has shaped it into the tutorial system
based on the oxford system back in the
day and so for me it's both a social and
an academic piece
thanks jim i'm going to take a page out
of your book and end
on two things that i love about Amherst. The first
is that Amherst is a place that i think
offers students remarkable
academic flexibility and that's due both
to its curriculum which is structured as
an open curriculum
and also its involvement in the five
college consortium.
The second is that Amherst has had
a deep and long-standing commitment to
diversity across many dimensions on its
campus and
for those who might know anything about
the williams-amherst rivalry it goes
back
several centuries, and amherst's
commitment to
diversity is one of the things that i
admire greatly about it
both for the sheer commitment but
also because
of the ways that it pushes Williams
as a close rival and all of us to be
better and do better.
So grateful to share the screen with
Amherst and with all of you.
Thank you and liz just used the word
"rivals" and this is pretty unusual in some
ways for our six schools to be
sharing the spotlight. normally we
compete against each other on the
athletic fields and
for top applicants all over the world
but you know we've obviously been
watching and feeling the stress as
coronavirus has forced us to cancel our
visits to your cities,
eliminate tours on our campuses, move to
virtual-only events and in this context
among others joining forces and
cooperating
we think really makes sense
it's true and over the years 
the six of us or some mix of the six of
us are often in the same spaces
at conferences where we're sharing best
practices and
innovative ideas. we might be traveling
together to introduce our schools to
students and families and counselors
all around the world and as we began to
adapt to the pandemic challenges
we've talked together about really
important issues
and we've come to two conclusions among
others
first the world really needs people like
our graduates who are out there tackling
these really big problems like
coronavirus - which is
a public health problem that's affecting
all of us.
But it's also not just about a vaccine
it's about a culture and it's about
beliefs and the public's trust in
science
and there are issues like climate change
which matt mentioned earlier
a topic where there's so much that goes
into that global conversation that isn't
just about carbon or being carbon
neutral
and if you've been thinking about
anti-racism or the role of policing and
voting rights
those are really big conversations and
they have to include
history and economics urban studies and
government
and so we know that right now in high
school
you might be frustrated because you go
to math and then you go to your history
class and then you go to
chemistry and they feel really separate
but that's not how the world works and
so
we all have graduates who are in health
care and in medical school
and doing graduate research in biology
and we have graduates who are working in
technology
and public policy and journalism,
economics, data analysis, education and
human behavior and so our schools are
focused
on providing a world-class education in
small classes
with a lot of attention from faculty who
are experts in their fields. And it means
that our students are better prepared
to work on the types of teams that are
needed for these really big problems. and
sometimes those are really small teams
which is kind of like who we are tonight:
a small team
working together.
our second conclusion was that our
schools have a lot in common
we have wonderful smart students amazing
faculty
countless academic opportunities and
extracurricular offerings
and all of our students all of our
institutions work tirelessly
to provide for and support every one of
our students
of course there are plenty of
differences too including our locations
climate campus cultures and traditions
and my colleagues will share more but
right now
we know that you and your family are
scrambling to get as much information as
you can about colleges
often without being able to visit which
adds to making your college search
slightly more difficult
we understand this challenge and as
whitney and matt have already shared
that is exactly why we have chosen to
work together
at our institutions we encourage
students some might even say that we
require them to collaborate on
assignments
projects and other activities so we are
taking a bit of our own sage advice
and giving you a look at six of the top
liberal arts colleges
in the country by saving you time in
front of one screen
all right so i'll follow up from what
art just said and what are these things
that we have in common
i'll start and then i'll let my
colleagues jump in
first as you've been hearing from us
we're all
residential liberal arts colleges
residential means that a majority of our
students well
in a in a normal non-pandemic year live
on campus
in personal communities all of our
schools enroll
between 1500 and 2000 students
but being residential it's more than
just walls and beds
we're intentional in building
communities of students who are
different from one another
in their background and in their
interests where they're from
and what they're studying when we talk
about working in teams
that means listening to different voices
and opinions
someone whose culture is different from
yours who brings a new perspective
that happens in the classroom but the
foundations come from
living and working and eating and
studying together
there's no syllabus that governs what
students take away from their
interactions with their peers
yet blending together students with
different outlooks different interests
and different backgrounds provides that
grit
that marks valuable self-discovery
the benefits of this kind of pure
learning or horizontal learning
accrue well after graduation from
college too
consider the employee who's able to work
with a diverse
group of colleagues learning from them
and adopting from them
what she sees is valuable and helpful in
solving challenges
and in innovating solutions this person
will be better equipped to take on new
opportunities
and better equipped to deal with
uncertainty such employees
those who work well in teams as you've
been hearing and who provide synergy in
their work environment and you can
harness the power of
individual differences well they're the
most prized
in today's modern organizations
thank you seth so i'll tackle the
liberal arts
which can sometimes be a bit of a
challenge because the liberal arts are
not technically liberal
and it's more than just traditional arts
courses
the origin of a liberal arts education
was to prepare people to be engaged
citizens of the world
to understand the basics of history
language
philosophy science as well as the arts
to understand and explore ethics and
judgment and ask
how a society should govern itself and
what makes life meaningful
that's still true today where students
in addition to taking courses to fill a
major
to fulfill a major may also take courses
that help them broaden their
perspectives
and add context to the major or explore
a range of disciplines
for the intellectual exercise of pushing
oneself beyond just one discipline
for example if you're a pre-med student
you'll be taking a lot of biology and
chemistry
but medicine also involves data analysis
analysis which was mentioned before
it may require an understanding of
environmental effects or cultural
differences
most classes by design and overall will
be small
and include significant exposure to an
interaction with faculty
both in the classroom and in the lab
and the good news is you may also pursue
any major you wish
for example my college roommate is a
doctor and people are often surprised to
learn that he majored in history while
in college
he realized that he wouldn't be taking
any history in medical school and really
wanted to take a range of courses as an
undergraduate
he pursued history obviously political
science
classics as well as english while also
fulfilling his pre-med requirements
typically 30 to 40 percent of the
pre-med students at our institutions
are not biology majors. you can major in
anything and we still prepare you for
all fields
post bachelor's degree the liberal arts
offers courses in the humanities as well
as the social sciences
and the natural sciences early on in
your career
you'll focus on exploration versus
specialization
but then that often comes later with
your major
i also think of an example of one of our
science faculty who feels that a lot of
the high school curriculum is based on
memorization
and regurgitation something you may be
familiar with
she believes the best residential
liberal arts colleges teach students to
"sight read"
basically we give students the skills
and tools they need to solve problems
they haven't seen
and also to become lifelong learners. our
institutions will teach you how to think
critically
how to write analytically and how to
communicate effectively across the
disciplines
many of our graduates will go on for
specialized degrees immediately
while others go straight into the
workforce our students often find
consulting and management positions in
every field
before pursuing graduate work given the
strength of the problem solving
analytical critical thinking
communication
and team building skills in a today's
complicated world
we believe a liberal arts education has
never been more important
thanks jim we're getting close to the
time
i'm going to turn it over to you you all
for questions but before we do i just
want to take a minute to talk about
one more thing that we all have in
common which is our commitment to making
college affordable
while there are sticker prices can be
scary at first glance the majority of
students on each of our campuses receive
financial aid and we are all committed
to meeting 100 percent of the demonstrated need
of all students who are admitted
it's important to know that our
financial aid programs don't just help
students get by but also to thrive.
they cover things that might seem
obvious like housing and meal plans and
textbooks but they go beyond that too
to support things like study abroad and
internship and fellowship
opportunities. as my colleagues have
shared you'll learn and grow on our
campuses outside of the classroom just
as much as you will
inside it so we make sure that our
financial aid programs support your
whole experience
not just the academic one. many of our
students don't take out any loans at all
to attend our institutions and those who
do who tend to graduate with debt levels
that are less than half the national
average
i think all six of us would agree that
the investment our colleges make in
financial aid
is our most important one of all it's
really an investment in remarkable
students like all of you
and the transformative things that we
know you'll go on to do after spending
four years on any of our campuses.
please be in touch with any of us in the
coming months we understand how much
financial uncertainty the pandemic has
introduced and we're eager to work with
you and your family to talk about just
how affordable our schools can really
make this
thanks liz. so as mentioned in
just a moment we'll begin
fielding your questions but first i
want to note that we have
sessions coming up over the next couple
of months
that will go into all of these topics in
more detail
including why liberal arts college
students
have such high satisfaction with the
academic and research offerings that'll
be our next session
and why liberal arts graduates tend to
have such strong career and graduate
school outcomes that'll be a little bit
later on
i encourage you to sign up for reminders
for those sessions if you haven't
already
or watch the recordings if you can't
make it in person
you can do all that and more at our
website sixcolleges.org
i see that many questions are coming in
and given that we have more than a
thousand participants tonight which
is very exciting
i already know that we will not get all
of your questions
so we're going to prioritize questions
that can be answered by
any of these six deans of admission here
tonight if you have questions like
how can a swarthmore student cross
register at bryn mawr or
tell me about the environmental analysis
major at pomona
those questions you should register for
a school specific information session
through each school's website
uh we're all offering regular
information sessions online
okay so let's harness the great
knowledge and insight of these
six deans of admission. We'll
do the first question here
which i will direct to whitney and
this is a question
that has been asked, this is by far
the most popular question in our q & a box
tonight
i'll read you the way that one of our
participants
georgiana phrased it: georgiana writes
how will colleges assess students
who do and don't submit standardized
test scores on an
equal playing field this year?
that is a great question and matt is
right we're getting asked that question
every which way and
we are all able to talk about what test
optional is going to look like this year
since matt pitched it to me i'm going to
cover it for everybody
and there's a long range of experience
on this
panel around what test optional
practices look like
i can tell you that Bowdoin has been test
optional for about 50 years and so
i can speak to the fact that it is truly
possible
to build an evaluation system that
allows test scores to simply be an
option in what students submit
for us to review in the same way that if
a school
has optional interviews or some other
optional piece of an application like
maybe an optional extra recommendation
or an optional art supplement or
something like that anything that's
optional really does
mean optional it means that our schools
have figured out
that we can make really good decisions
for our schools we feel like we have the
information we need based on the
material that we actually require
so if you submit the material that is
required of any one of these schools you
have fully completed your application
and we're prepared
to do a really thorough and thoughtful
review
of what you submitted to us anything
that you choose to submit to our schools
that's optional
including test scores becomes an
additional layer of how we might get to
understand you as an applicant
and it it gets put together with the
things you've already shown us
so my advice would be if you have scores
available to send
and you're deciding whether or not to
include them in your in your
application in test optional space
you would want to include your scores if
you feel like there's something that add
a positive
layer to the other materials you know
you've submitted as requirements and
that's entirely personal
and subjective if you want to see what
kinds of scores do get submitted to our
schools
all of us publish that that material
on our websites and in our publications
but those are just guides those are not
rules by which students have to compare
those test scores to decide whether or
not to submit them you want to think
about your test scores relative
to your environment and your high school
and what those scores mean to you
and what you want to show our schools
and i would say that that's true for
other optional materials
as well if you feel like they represent
you in a way that is authentic and feels
positive then we want to see those
optional materials
thanks for that great question by the
way
and because this is still by far the
most popular question i i'd love to hear
if other people want to hop in but i
just want to say
one quick sentence about this which is
test optional
means test optional. it's not test
optional "wink
test optional" you know.
here's the secret: test optional means
test optional.
colleagues anything else
yeah i think i'll add just one more
thing matt maybe to put it a
sort of an even finer point on your
statement just now
you know we hear from a lot of your
counselors it's it's our way
of having an understanding of what
you're all
trying to deal with right now and we
know that for many of you
you are trying to figure out whether or
not you'll be able to take a
standardized test this fall and i just
want to reiterate what matt said
nothing matters more than your safety
and well-being
your family's safety and well-being and
for those of us who have introduced us
optional policies more recently than
Bowdoin did 50 years ago
it's because we wanted to make sure that
you could prioritize your safety and
wellness
this fall so as matt said there's no
wink involved here
we're test optional because we want you
to have the flexibility you need to make
the decision that's best for you in the
coming months.
Awesome. Another big theme of
questions that i'm seeing in the q & a
recognizes that it's a little bit harder
this year to
learn uh about colleges and the pandemic
a lot of us don't have
tours offered some campuses are
bubbled like the nhl or the nba. i'm
going to read to you
and i'm going to ask art to field this
question first
this is how how one parent phrased it
 this parent writes: our daughter
started last year at middlebury-  another
fine
residential liberal arts college -
started middlebury as a freshman, a big
move from the bay area in california to
a small school
in a state 3 000 miles away we had never
been anywhere near
there is no way she would have chosen
middlebury had she not been able to
visit
how can you share the culture of our
colleges the kind of students who go
there
without being able to physically visit
what are you going to do
to put prospective students in touch
with current students
how can my son truly get a feel for your
college?
art what do you think?
thank you matt and that's a great
question particularly at this moment
when we know that students and families
are trying to really drill down
and understand different institutions
and the culture on each one of these
campuses.
i think when it comes to getting a
sense of that
that culture sort of the flavor of each
one of our institutions
we are also i would say as deans and
staff
thinking about opportunities for
students
um prospective students to connect with
our students our
faculty other individuals at the college
who
who really represent what it means to be
connected to each one of our
institutions
and you should definitely take the
opportunity to visit our websites
see what opportunities are there for
that to take place
because that's how we're really
conveying to to students and and
families
 information about our our on campuses
i would also recommend that even though
you can't physically visit
or take a formal tour and information uh
tour of each of our campuses
is that you should look for our virtual
tours um on our websites
um really it will really give you at
least some sense of
um the environment a sense of facilities
a sense of our character through
many of our students who are often
leading on these
online virtual tours of our campus as
well and so that would be another great
way to begin to sort of steep yourself
in understanding our campuses
further i would say that we all have in
some ways
robust alumni admissions programs
or alums who support our efforts to
really share
information about our campuses and so
you should take advantage of reaching
out to our admissions offices
and asking for those opportunities to
speak to
individuals who were part of our
communities
have now have some distance from our
communities
but still can share vividly many of the
experiences they've had
on our campuses and what that might mean
for you as
as a prospective student as an admitted
student
on our campuses i think that
we would all agree on this panel that
that we're looking forward to today that
we can reopen
our spaces to allow you to to visit
i think that we probably all have our
fingers crossed
that come this spring we are in a
position to allow
and have students and families visit
when we think things are safer and
certainly will be the first
to let you know that those opportunities
are readily available
and accessible for students and families
so be sure
if you haven't already requested
information
or signed up through the six colleges
website
um to get on our um to get on our
distribution list
so that we can let you know um when
things um change and and potentially
are able to share with you directly um
that that we are open um for business in
the more traditional sense
so that you can get a feel for our
campuses but reach out to us
i think that's the most important thing
i can share reach out to us
we are all eager to connect with you um
and connect with you and and and tell
you about our institutions and
it's not just the admissions office
staff who will be doing that we're
looking for a myriad of ways
in which all of our community can
represent the institution
to really provide you with a good sense
of what our campuses have to offer
you academically socially and in terms
of its environment
yeah and i will just pick you back
quickly and just say i echo everything
art mentioned
but also if there could be and again it
depends on where you're coming from and
how many students have gone to liberal
arts colleges
but look ahead or look back and say is
there a junior or someone ahead of me
who may be a first year or a sophomore
at one of these institutions
from my high school that did attend that
i could talk to who may be at home right
now
with you that you can connect with so
find those students
coming from texas and going east to
college i didn't visit half the schools
i couldn't afford to so we have to
remember too some visit but many do not
most of our international students their
first time on our campuses
is when they arrive so they've done that
research through online
we're seeing a lot more blogging by now
by our current students to share that
sense of culture because to be honest
they don't really want to hear from us
they want to hear from the current
students right they would love to be on
campus sitting in a class
or going to lunch in the cafeteria but
because they can't do that they still
can't connect virtually with real life
students
and or recent high school grads from
your area so
you now have an experience of middlebury
that you might share with current
students
or one of these six institutions or
others not here tonight
so again also look in your local
community for folks who may have gone
not just the ones who've been out 10 15
20 years
but maybe recent high school grads
all right i want to bring seth's voice
into the conversation
and it's going to be for the question
the next question that is the most
frequently asked i have at least
a dozen versions of this question here
in the q a and i'm going to read you the
way that molly
wrote it so thanks for writing in molly
molly writes
i'm not sure if you have had lots of
students defer
this semester because of the pandemic
and it is true that
we all have more students than usual
who have requested and been granted gap
years
so if you have, molly writes, can you talk
about what
impact that might have on admitting the
class of 2025?
great thanks for that question molly.
i think it's a question we're going to
be wrestling with all year quite frankly
because
as matt said we all have larger numbers
than usual
i think there's a couple of ways
campuses might
think about this and we're all going to
do it in a way that makes sense for our
own institution
one because there has been
somewhere between slightly to more than
slightly decreased enrollment on
campuses it may be possible that there
will be larger
first-year classes on some or all of our
campuses next year
second because we're all interested
because we're small interested in
getting as precisely
correct the right number of students in
entering classes possible we all make
use of our wait list
it may be that this year we factor in
less cushion for the wait list
in order to maximize the number of
offers that we can make
to new applicants to the class of 2025
those are two of the things that i can
think of that schools will very likely
consider
in thinking about how to mitigate the
impact of a larger number of students
who have elected to defer their
enrollment this year
yeah i think i'd just add thank you seth
i want everybody on this call to know i
think we'll all agree that
we are all going to have robust
opportunities for students to be
admitted to our schools and that's true
at schools across the country who've
experienced a greater number of
students deferring this year so as seth
said we're going to be grappling with
this in part because
 the issue is impacted not only by
students who are applying to the class
of 2025 but also by our current students
who are
still trying to figure out will they
have the opportunity to study away next
year will that be safe for many right
now it's not.
for some of our current students who
have
changed their enrollment plans right now
in response to the
pandemic there are a bunch of different
factors
that will sort of come together to
impact the decisions that we make but
i think we all feel confident saying
that while this
upcoming admission cycle is going to
look different than past ones
there will be ample opportunities for
students like you who've joined us
tonight to be admitted to all of our
institutions
that's great thank you and
the next question i want to read to you
i see a few different ways
and the one i'm going to read and i'm
going to ask jim to take the first shot
at this comes from aditi
and aditi writes, with schools getting
shut down in may a lot of juniors
weren't able to do their
extracurriculars or attend
you know states or nationals or you
know the big competitions for their
extracurriculars.
how do we still show our passion and
interest for extracurriculars
even though we were not able to continue
with them junior and senior year?
yeah thank you Aditi for that question i
think it's really important and it's an
anxiety and a concern that all students
have
and we too have it as staff members
they're actually going to be components
of the common application and an area
for you to fill in
and explain how covid impacted you
either academically or extra
curricularly
are there things that couldn't be
continued and we still want to see
what you were involved in even up until
the time you had to go remote
some students were able to continue
things remotely others were not and
that's okay
so we will take you where you are
there's no plus or minus for having
continued every activity or
or started two or three more in the time
of covid
we just need to understand the context
of what was shut down
what was available both academically and
extracurricularly
and we also know moving into the fall
for senior year it may continue
we also don't know just like you're
questioning what made
colleges look like we're wondering what
will high schools look like
will you be starting remotely will it be
hybrid will you be in person
will you be able to continue at the same
level so we're going to see that in your
short answer essays
i believe common application coalition
give a section where you can explain
some things
so it's a way to just inform us about
activities that may have been continued
some that may have been discontinued i
would have liked to continue this but
could not
so we're not assuming you dropped
everything just because you got
bored or sick
but we recognize everyone sort of there
was a big stop at some point
some things picked up again some things
didn't
we also may see that if you have a
counselor in a council recommendation
or even teacher recommendations teachers
we really want to know how you're doing
in the classroom but often they know you
as students outside as well
and so sometimes that can be insightful
so we're sort of piecing things together
and building context from your essays
your recommendations
and your activity list we are looking
sort of for commitment
versus quantity right it's not about
start joining 20 clubs and starting
number 21 but what has been your
commitment to any two or three things
and covid may have interrupted that and
actually giving you an opportunity to
try something new
or to pick something up again but we
understand there's going to be a big
asterisk
both probably on the transcript and on
your extracurricular page
and we'll work with you on that
always wanting to pause in case anybody
else wants to hop in
early on i saw a question that i thought
was interesting about
um what are how do classes work
at liberal arts colleges are there
big lectures is there lots of discussion
how does that go it was do you want to
take that and talk a little bit about
what you might find at colleges like
ours yeah i'd be happy to thanks matt
that's a great question and i think
in some ways understanding what the
classroom experience is like
is a really important part of
understanding why
liberal arts colleges are the special
places that they are
so on each of our campuses you'll find a
range of
sort of classroom experiences they'll
run the gamut from small classes
anything from independent studies that
you might be working on one-on-one with
faculty
um to tutorial classes that jim
mentioned
earlier to what is probably most common
on our campuses which
is a small sort of seminar style
discussion
and at most of our places
the average class size is about 12 or 14
and so i know some people on this call
have had this experience in their
secondary school
if you've had if you've not a typical
kind of classroom
experience on our campuses is a sort of
big wooden table
with as i said maybe 10 12 14 students
sitting around it with professor
sometimes the classes actually even
happen outside it's not just in college
view books where you see that it
actually happens
at some of our places as well there are
definitely some larger classes too and
so most often i think you'll find
those in sort of 100 levels so
entry-level classes in departments that
are
quite popular so i could imagine
psychology 101 or economics 101 biology
101
classes that are often sorted entry
classes to move forward in a major
but even on campus or even in those
larger
classes on campus like ours you'll often
have maybe 75 or 100 students at a max
compared to
5 or 600 at a larger university and the
other thing is that at all of our
schools
faculty do a lot of work to take even
those larger classes
and break them down into something
smaller
so we probably each have different names
for them at williams if you're in a
large lecture class of about a hundred
that will also get broken down as an
example into a smaller conference where
you'll meet with nine or ten other
students jim shaking his head whitney
perhaps that's a
term you guys used to where you'll meet
with nine or ten other students
for that small seminar type discussion
um i think the one thing we can probably
all agree
on is that it's hard to hide in classes
at liberal arts colleges
and that's the really wonderful thing
about the intellectual experience it
doesn't mean you always have to be
talking and always raising your hand
but it's an incredible learning
experience where
you're you're sharing kind of the uh the
learning opportunity
not only with your peers but also with
faculty who really become like
intellectual peers and friends along the
way
um and that can happen in a range of
different classroom settings
i just want to i just want to add to
what liz
said the reason for a small class
the reason you might want a small class
is that
it is not meant as a medium
for force-feeding you information
lectures excel at that if all you want
to do is sit back and spectate and
listen to information coming your way
go sit in a 500 person lecture hall you
can listen to a fantastic
professor who will educate 500 people at
a time
on the other hand if what you're seeking
is
maybe more understanding or wisdom about a subject
where there's not necessarily an easy or
a right answer
and where understanding and awareness
comes through
debate and dialogue disagreement
failure then you want a small class
because that can only
happen in a small class where you're
called upon to give your opinion
you have a peer who gives another
opinion so there's some sort of
synthesis
that comes along other people jump in
and you gain this wildly rich diverse
perspective on a subject that maybe at
first blush
seemed fairly simplistic and yet as
people
talk and they they offer their own
unique perspective on that you begin to
see that there's a there's a dimension
to this information that you hadn't
considered
and it's in being able to consider new
possibilities about information
that you begin to truly understand to
become
competent and mastery master
that subject
so small classes at these six colleges
i think something else that these
colleges are pretty well known for
are their support systems and i see a
variety of questions about
what kind of supports do we offer to
students
sophia asked about it just broadly how
do we support students
daniela asked about it in the context of
minority students
kushi asked about it in the context of
first generation to college students and
low-income students
so maybe i'll come back to to whitney
for this
can you talk a little bit about how
colleges like ours
provide robust student supports to all
students
i would be happy to and those are really
great questions i'm glad that they
are in the question list so that matt
could bundle them together and we could
get at that
we probably have different names for the
different support networks that we have
on our campuses but
another value of small colleges like
ours is that we have
built a community that truly starts in
our offices
of the admissions staff who sort of in a
in a in our own way get to meet you
when you're applicants and get to know
you and are very deliberately putting
together communities of people
that we know will challenge each other
and
will really embrace the opportunities of
what our schools provide
and so as we put a community together
we're also thinking about how that
community can work especially when we
know that it's embedded with challenge
in many ways on purpose
and so we know that students are coming
to us from all over the world
as we talked about in the beginning of
this live stream
that you know visiting there are a lot
of students who come to our campuses
who have never visited that will
certainly be the case as we go through
this year
and how do we make those students feel
at home and how do we
help students who are coming from
families where they're the first ones to
go away to college and
they don't have anybody in the home to
talk about what it was like when they
did it or help them prepare for what to
expect
so we set that up on our campuses and
there's a lot of different ways of doing
that we have everything from
in our in our housing for our students
we all have some sort of residential
life component
that uses enrolled students your peers
who are upperclassmen
to be with you in your dorms and to be
looking out for you and serve as peer
mentors in some way
and get to know you and what's going on
for you you all have faculty advisors at
our schools and again one of the values
of being in a small school is that
the faculty members who are serving as
advisors don't have very many advisees
so
the idea is that they're going to get to
meet with you regularly and get to know
you not just about what you're doing
academically but how you feel about how
you're acclimating academically
they can also be the ones along with
your direct faculty
or a dean at your school who would be
somebody who sort of advantages the
student affairs on campus
or the reslife staff or your friends
that can be directing you toward
academic support systems that we have
that would have to do with tutoring or
study skills or buddying up on certain
things to help students
prepare for things that are unfamiliar
to them as they're getting ready for
exam
study groups and that sort of thing we
also have
support for student aid and in all of
our student aid offices
we have staff that are there and
available for students to be asking
questions for parents to be asking
questions to be able to do this in other
languages to help families
so that as families and students are
navigating their time at our colleges
that the aid is familiar and students
are able to
understand how they're supported there
whether that means they need a plane
ticket home during an emergency that's
not part of a financial aid package
or um they may need a pair of glasses
replaced that broke and it's not in
their budget all of our schools have
opportunities to support students
through things like that we also all
have programming directly related to
our minority students on campus and and
offices set up for diversity equity
inclusion which not only supports the
student experience but also the faculty
experience and classroom experience we
think about it really broadly on our
campuses
some of our schools have summer
programming where students
could arrive at the college in advance
of orientation for the first year
and get to know each other get to know
some of the faculty in the campus before
launching into orientation with the rest
of the first year class
i could go on with a lot of examples
among our schools but i hope what you're
getting from my answer
is that we think about these things
really carefully in the idea of
community
that is built around being small and as
i said it starts with us getting to know
you before you even get here
and and then making sure we have systems
in place
including mental health and wellness to
help you all be really successful here
knowing that individuals will have their
own individual worries and concerns
and challenges while they're here the
one other thing i wanted to say
as i was listening to some of the
questions that were being posed and
answered by my colleagues
is around how are schools like us
going to manage what applicants are
putting in front of us this year we
talked about it as it related to test
optional
um and there are questions that that i
know are you know we talked about
activities and what if we can't continue
activities and i just want to remind
students that
we as admissions staff like not just the
deans but
the everybody in our team and in our
student aid offices and on our campuses
are also living in this environment
where things that
we're used to doing are not available to
us now or it might be available but
we're making a choice to not participate
in it because
of safety and that the disruption that
you're
experiencing and very rightfully
concerned that we might not
we might not understand what's coming
forward in your application i just want
you to know we couldn't be better
prepped
for seeing what your experience has been
because
we are experiencing it in our own ways
as well and
um are really sensitive to how different
everything is for everybody
including what things might look like on
your application
all right this next one so our art is up
next although i hope
that others will also
help talk about the stories at our
colleges collectively who i see as
real leaders on this topic
and that has to do with
racial justice
we're here tonight but even as we're
here
okay you know there's not going to be
any games in the nba or the wnba tonight
because of what happened in kenosha
wisconsin
to jacob blake which is awful
brianna taylor's killers are still at
large
this has been a time when
many institutions including colleges
have been
reckoning with the history of
racism in this country
so i'll i'll give you one of the
questions that has spoken to this which
comes from
geneva. geneve who writes, our political
culture
is rapidly changing with the emphasis on
race relations in america
and the exposed needs of the health care
and education systems
many organizations let these subjects
take a back seat in the wake of adapting
to the pandemic
are your institutions also focused on
adapting academics campus culture
and policies to reflect the shifting
national conversation?  this has been
a lot of our summers talking about
this. art
how would you frame it? yeah 
matt thank you for the question and
and 
you know i think it's
as we've seen over the course of the the
summer
and even spring the challenges
that our
country has been facing i think that
we're all thinking about
ways in which our communities have
been
complicit in some of these
things but also thinking about how we
change our communities
 for the better and
i think that this is a conversation that
is happening
not sort of in isolated 
settings you know we're really thinking
broadly about how our campuses can respond, how are we
working with our students
how are we working with our faculty
our staff our alums and others who are
really committed to our institutions to
make them
places that are much more equitable
places that are inclusive
places that really not just talk about
value and diversity but demonstrate that
from the from the very start of the
process as whitney talked about you know
from
opening and being accessible through
admissions
providing support to make our campuses
affordable
it's all because we're interested in
creating a community
that really is representative of a wide
range of different experiences
different backgrounds and different
perspectives
seth talked about in his introduction
about our institutions
really being intentional communities and
that's exactly why
we want to create these intentional
communities on our campus
because we know that having such varied
opinions
varied insights varied perspectives only
make us better
and make your education much stronger
because of the fact that
that you can really debate and and
question your views on on different
ideas
and perspectives maybe long held
views
on that you've had and so our
institutions i would say
are are set up exactly
to really think about and run with
making change
and providing that opportunity
to those who are connected with us
but
it takes effort and and we understand
that these are challenging moments
 and that we may get things wrong
at times but we're doing so
really with the the hope that our
institutions
can be those institutions that welcome
everybody and support everybody
and i would say that that's a clear
message
that we have from our you know
all of our constituencies who are part
of our communities
that are saying you know we we could do
better
and i think all of us have have
have had a long-held commitment to
diversity and inclusion
but now it's really pushing ourselves
even further to say
what more can we do as institutions
to be places
where all students are welcome and
are connecting and can call our campuses
home.
Art that was beautiful and art talked
about diversity equity and inclusion
on our campuses this has become a
central pillar for how
these schools operate in this day and
age
i do want to go back to the classroom
experience because i think part of this
question was so
how does how does what has been
happening nationally
how does that inform how education might
happen on our campuses
you know i think the the privilege of
having a small environment
with faculty in small classes whose
primary
purpose is to teach they do a lot of
research but their primary purpose is to
teach
is they're not phoning this in these are
not lessons that were scripted
five years ten years ago that are just
on repeat
this is living breathing education i
know i've heard our faculty and i'm sure
my colleagues would say the same
with their faculty talk about how are
they going to incorporate what's been
happening nationally that what's been
happening politically what's been
happening with
racial justice what's been happening
with social justice what's been
happening with income
inequality what's been happening in
general that's been happening to us
into all facets how does that impact
biology for example how does that impact
the study of
economics how does that impact the lens
through which we see
literature who are we even selecting to
study in literature and is it
representative
of the kinds of experiences that we
want our students to have so that they
have this diverse perspective of the
world
so what you're going to see and i think
this has always been true but
it has accelerated i think in in light
of what's been happening
in this in the country  over the last
year i think you're going to see a
much greater infusion
and a much greater reliance on
taking what's happening to inform
how pedagogy is formed and how you're
actually
learning the things that are that are
important
in current affairs,  in public
affairs and
and just what we see in the news all the
time
i'm sure we all actually have a lot to
say i i know i do
we have come to 8:02
So we're we're gonna call it here i
know that
some of you had questions we couldn't
get to but many of them are closely
related to our upcoming topics which
i'll preview in a moment so we'll set
those aside and answer them in more
detail during those sessions
In the meantime you can check out our
six college websites all of them have
ways to reach out for more info and our
contact information
We know that you're facing a lot of
zoom time these days we really want to
thank you for joining us
a huge thank you to janie at Bowdoin
aka "q & a support" you've seen
who is totally instrumental in
developing this program and to holly at
Carleton who made tonight's program a
reality
Our next session is one week from
today september 2nd and we'll be talking
about
faculty academics undergraduate research
let me
show you what's going on here
this is this is what it looks like and
we had lots of questions about applying
during covid we'll cover that on october
13th i hope you'll join us back then
more detail about affordability
coming up
about building a an inclusive and
equitable community and about outcomes
there are lots of questions tonight
about
jobs and graduate school and medical
school and things we didn't get to those
we'll get to those
on that date this was
really a great conversation i was so
glad
that uh you were able to join us next the next session will you'll get
to meet some new folks
we're the deans of admission you'll get
to meet the directors of admission from
our six schools and then we'll be
back
for the session after that
thank you so much for joining us tonight.
Have a great night, be well, be
safe, keep fighting the good fight.
Thanks again!
