Spring term is underway, and we look forward to the rapid and profound changes that are coming: warmth, green grass, forsythia, daffodils... It is a term that starts slowly and accelerates.
In two short months, we will be graduating 102 seniors. Some of us, however, are looking beyond this term. This Friday we are hosting a record 67 recently admitted students and their families for the first of two revisit days; (another crowd spends next Tuesday with us.)
As Proctor's popularity has grown over the decades, we are keenly aware of the Admission Office's ability to craft the community....to attract and enroll students who are bound to truly succeed in the environment offered here.
Experience tells us that 70 to 80 percent of those who revisit will choose to enroll at Proctor. They are coming back to revisit because they're psyched about the ethos, programs and services offered here. The importance of our work on revisit days is staggering!
Once you have worked in admission, as I did from 1983-1998, you always consider how the school presents itself to prospective students and their families. During the upcoming revisits, their experience will be relatively orchestrated. Admitted students will attend classes with student tour guides, while parents attend panel discussions and meet members of the Parent Association. Coaches and program directors will be available in the afternoon.
They'll attend Proctor's classic expression of itself, assembly, at which the Chamber Chorus--just back from a goodwill tour of Croatia and Bosnia Hertzegovina--will perform.
For better or for worse, one thing they will experience is crowding. We opened this school year with the largest student population in history, and have experienced the lowest attrition anyone can remember. Then there's the fact that more students returned from winter terms off campus than went off campus this spring.... There is no room for a hundred-something visitors to sit in the auditorium.
Visitors will join the throng for lunch in the dining room. Even without them, the food stations--salad bar, sandwich service, entree service, dessert table and beverage dispensary--are mobbed.
On Friday, it will be a lesson in Darwinian principles!
There's an adage that you should shop for a car on a lousy day, so that your decision is not influenced by the beauty of sunny, warm weather. Maybe that's why the admission cycle has families revisiting during the height of mud season in New Hampshire! The ground is saturated; Proctor Pond is a slushy bog, and old snow drifts are covered with dirt.
The problem is exacerbated by last fall's cross-campus excavation to run new steam lines to the Learning Center and Field House.
Indeed, if visitors like what they see over the next week, they'll be happy here in the future!
