A successful freshmen send-off

Kerry Roscoe, the Ventura County (CA) ASC, forwarded this e-mail she received from a mom of an incoming first year student. I'm not sure any of us realize the impact we have on these students and families until we read something like this.

Please let me know if you need any ideas or suggestions for your send-off. Also, feel free to send me any feedback you have received from incoming students and parents--I'd love to build a database of comments and ideas!

Enjoy the message, and thanks for all of your hard work, Kerry!

Kerry,

Thank you so much for sending the photos! These will be sent to proud relatives and friends.

I’d also like to thank you for inviting our family to the gathering yesterday. That get-together did more to calm our family than all the literature that we’ve collected so far from the University itself! There is something about watching your first head off to a new life that includes both the anticipation and expectation of success and the baited breath of anxiety due to the unknown environment that she is about to enter. Your gathering helped us abate and belay the latter.

The families that were also anticipating the maiden flight of their first allowed me to see that were not alone in our anxieties and thus your gathering gave us a community with which we can share our concerns, exchange information, and bond through our (happy though it is) child’s departure. The families that were veterans at this – through sharing their wisdom, experience, and love for and pride in their child – be it measured by mental, physical, or spiritual accomplishments - calmed us, as we now have an idea of the type of families to which our child will enter. And the current students – through their insight, and excitement for their education, and their concern for each other – as well as those matriculating - gave me the greatest sense of serenity, as they were the true indication of both community and family of which my child will be part. And I am grateful, for they appear to be the type of family I would choose were I given one.

All that to say, thank you. This is a great thing you do and I appreciate you for it. When things get settled, I would like to know more about how I may help in providing such a service.

Irish win gold in Beijing

In case you were not watching the Olympics Saturday morning, Notre Dame student Mariel Zagunis won the gold medal in women's saber fencing. At the time, it was America's first medal.

This is Mariel's second gold; she won in Athens in 2004, right before she enrolled here at Notre Dame.

What are you doing next year?

Seniors absolutely love to be asked the magical question, "What are you doing next year?" as they complete their college studies and prepare for the real world. But in all seriousness, what are Notre Dame graduates doing after college?

In the past, our office was asked what percentage of our graduates were "placed"--in a job, graduate school, service work, the military, etc.--after graduation. Notre Dame, quite proudly, boasts a nearly-100% placement rate for its graduates within six months of graduation.

More recently, however (perhaps because of our current economic situation), the placement questions are becoming more pointed. Instead of asking the percentage of our graduates who are placed, prospective students and parents are now asking WHAT our graduates are doing after Notre Dame (for example, I often get the question "What do you do with a degree in Political Science?").

The Career Center has an amazing website which not only provides the placement statistics for classes as a whole, with 2007 as the most recent, but also allows you to search their data by college and major. This is a great tool to share with prospective students and parents and probably contains more information than they will ever want.

Here's a link to the site: http://careercenter.nd.edu/about-us/career-and-internship-data/future-plans-data

Intramural sports

Everyone knows about Notre Dame's varsity athletics, but what about the intramural and clubs sports? The Princeton Review ranked (and we know they love their rankings!) Notre Dame #1 for intramural sports.

In our survey of enrolled students, we routinely find that anywhere between 60-80% of first year students played a varsity sport in high school. With this in mind, it is not surprising that so many of our students play intramural sports.

Domers in the Olympics

www.nd.edu has a nice montage of former and current Notre Dame students who are participating in the Beijing Olympics. You can watch the video off of the "wheel" on the main page.

Picture of the Day - August 5

Multicultural video

There's a great video on www.nd.edu right now showcasing some of the multicultural groups, activities and opportunities available for students on campus. The video includes links to a number of relevant websites and serves as a good source of information for your interactions with prospective students.

As an added "bonus", the film was produced by Macarana Ivanissevich, a former student assistant in our office!

UPDATE: Here is a permanent link to the video.