RE: Emails Will Welcome Students to the U. – 02.05.08

Providence, RI — In an effort to personalize a student's welcome to Brown, the Admission Office = will ask current students to send congratulatory e-mails to admitted students.

"There's good evidence that our current students have an enormous effect on wooing kids to come here," said Elisha Anderson '98, associate director of admission, "so this is a way of tapping into that potential."

The Admitted Student Email Initiative was proposed by Michael Dempsey '79, chair of the Brown Alumni Schools Committee in Region 2, which comprises West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Washington, D.C., North Carolina and South Carolina.

Last year, alums in the region contacted admitted students who shared the same academic or career interests.

"The initiative got positive feedback last year and will continue this spring," Anderson said, adding that other Ivy League schools have started similar programs.

The success of the alumni outreach program encouraged Brown to start a student outreach program, Anderson said. He added that such a program isn't unprecedented - Wellesley's admissions office used to have current students hand-write congratulatory letters to admitted students.

Anderson, the liaison between the Bruin Club and Admission Office, will primarily manage the initiative. He began recruiting volunteers for its pilot year by attending two Bruin Club meetings last week. He asked those interested in the program to fill out an application detailing their hometowns, extracurricular activities at Brown and in high school, possible careers and ethnicity.

"It's not clear yet if we will be able to recruit enough students to reach out to the entire admitted student population," Anderson said, "but we're going to try and get as many quality people as we can."

Anderson estimated that it would take around 400 volunteers e-mailing four to five students to reach out to all the accepted students in the regular admission pool. Students accepted via early decision will not receive such e-mails.

"It's a great idea to initiate if you target students that can't visit, but if it's everyone then it's ridiculous," said Marco Martinez '08, a minority recruitment intern for the admission office. "That's just too many letters to write."

But Martinez, who will not participate in the program, said he thinks it's a "nice gesture," and would have "felt honored" to receive a personalized congratulatory e-mail, especially if he had not visited the school prior to enrolling.

Anderson said students will be matched by region or interests in the hope of providing admitted students with evidence of how "people like themselves have come to Brown and have had a good experience."

The e-mails will not follow any sort of pre-approved template, though volunteers will be able to read past e-mails sent to admitted students.

"The content (of the e-mail) would not have been as important as the overall tone," said Adam Kroll '09, vice president of the Bruin Club.

So far, there has been little discussion over whether the Bruin Club will eventually take over the recruitment and running of this initiative, but Kroll said it is a possibility.

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