In my family, I am known for cooking one thing well; my homemade chicken noodle soup. I take great pride in making this, and it becomes a half day process of cooking the chicken just right, making sure I have fresh celery, onions and carrots, and the right type of noodles. The carrots and celery need to be cut to just the right size, and the chicken needs to be shredded, not chopped (yes, I know, I am a little type-A at times), and the noodles have to be just the right type. After all of the lengthy preparations, it then takes a while to cook, with an occasional stir, adding the cream sauce, tasting to see if it needs salt (it always does!), etc. Finally, after what seems like a lifetime, or three to four hours in reality, it is time to eat.
This is kind of how admissions works. There is a lot of preparation time, and I mean a lot of it. We received almost 18,000 applications again this year, scanned over 150,000 pages of materials, imported over 12,000 online school evaluations and teacher recommendations, etc. We then have to match all these things up with the files, review the academic materials, move forward with the holistic reading process, all the while still talking, emailing and running information sessions with applicants and prospective students. And I have left off about half of the other things we do such as admission travel, scholarships and special programs.
Right now, we are at the cooking stage. We have matched up the last of the documents, are almost done with the academic reviews, and jumped in feet first into the holistic read process this week. If you are missing something in your file, contact the teacher/counselor/testing agency first to make sure it was sent, then contact us. The only exceptions are a few last paper applications and about eight GA411 applicants who left off their SSN that we are still working on. But overall, we have done all the prep work, and we are now moving forward with the next part of the recipe.
Remember that right now we are going to go into reading season, and we will be somewhat less accessible to the public so we can have decisions out by late March. We apologize for not being as available, but it takes a lot of people reading a lot of applications to get decisions out. If you want the soup to taste just right, you don’t want to rush the cook!
Next week, I will start talking a little more about our holistic read process, and what we look at within an application. For now, just wait while finish the cooking, and have yourself a nice bowl of chicken noodle soup.
Go Dawgs!