Lucky Number 7

Today was RIT's second Accepted Student Open House for 2012. As opposed to the big fat zero accepted students we had signed up for the first one two weeks ago, we had 7 today! Yes, SEVEN! I don't know if we've ever had that many signups for any one open house - this was almost more than we could even handle. But, it was great. The format for Accepted Student Open Houses is a little different from the fall events, in that there is no general College of Science session; students proceed directly from the opening session in the field house to their programs, where we then have about an hour with them before lunch. With 7 accepted students in attendance, all of them bringing 1-2 parents, along with the 3 of us who walked with them from the Field House, and 4-5 current students helping out, the Freshman Lab was full up to the brim with people. During the session we talked with the freshmen about what they're working on and what their experiences as students have been, answered questions about the Imaging Science program, and all went around and introduced ourselves. One of my favorite parts of meeting applicants is finding out where they heard about us - this group spanned "a current student visited my school and told me about it" to "I saw the video profile on Monica Cook" to "I met Bethany at a college fair" to "I was an intern" to "I visited during Fall Open House", and of course the ever-present random outlier, "I was looking around online and found it". This was more than enough to fill an hour, so then we headed over to COS for lunch where we all got to nibble on noms and chat for a while. After that, the accepted students and their families headed out on their own for various activities, presentations, and financial aid appointments.

I have got to say, we have a phenomenal set of accepted students this year. The group today covered the whole range of still-not-quite-sure to paid deposits, and everything in between; hopefully today's experience was enough to convince them to take the plunge. Everyone sounded like really great fits for the program, and today was a fantastic opportunity for the accepted students to meet each other and get a head start on possible future friendships. There was not a single applicant present that I would not want to see next fall. I got a really good vibe, so hopefully the feeling's mutual :-)