Adam Epstein '05

Not all students with pending applications will receive a decision letter this week. A few situations may cause a decision to still be pending for you:

• If you applied under one of our early action rounds and received notification that your application would be re-evaluated with our regular decision pool, you will not be receiving your decision with the most recent batch that was mailed. We wanted to allow the most time possible for you to have updated information sent to our office, so we have been making the final decisions on your applications this week. Your decision letters will be sent later this week, and you will receive them early next week.
• Your application may have still been incomplete. We have worked hard to get in touch with you and your school to complete as many applications as possible. If yours was still incomplete when we generated the most recent bath of decisions, you will not have a decision this week. Hopefully your application is now complete and a decision will be on its way to you soon.

If you do not receive a decision or official notification on the status of your application by the end of next week, please call our office. If you attend school outside of the United States, your decision letter may take longer to arrive.

I mentioned earlier that this application year was our most competitive ever. In making the difficult admissions decisions, we did offer a number of students a position on our waitlist. If you’re awaiting or have just received a “waitlist” decision from us, this post is for you.

The admissions process does reach a point where the hard numbers of applicants and spaces available in the Class of 2013 do not align. We’re only able to admit a certain number of students, but we did not want to turn everyone away and know that many of you do and will still have an interest in attending WPI. I’ve outlined some information and answers to common questions regarding the waitlist process below.

• If you are still interested in attending WPI and wish to remain on the waitlist, you must return the waitlist postcard contained with your letter. Receipt of that card will indicate to us that you are still interested; if you are no longer interested in attending WPI and do not wish to remain on the waitlist, you do not need to return the postcard.
• We are unable at this point to meet with you personally. If you wish to convey to us your continued interest in WPI (in addition to returning the postcard), you may send us a letter of interest, your updated grades, additional letters of recommendation, or any other materials you wish to be considered if we are able to review your application file for an offer of admission from the waitlist.
• If we are able to offer you admission from the waitlist, you will not know until after May 1 which is the common reply date and enrollment deadline for colleges. You should not necessarily count on receiving an offer of admission from us; you may want to have plans in place for enrollment at another institution. If we are able to offer you admission, you’ll hear between May 1 and June 1. The waitlist is not rank ordered; if we are able to make offers of admission, the admissions committee will consider all students who have indicated a continued interest in WPI by returning to us the waitlist postcard.
• It is impossible for us to know at this point whether we will offer admission to students on the waitlist, how many offers of admission we may make, or what your chances of receiving an offer of admission are. Whether we are able to offer admission to students from the waitlist will be determined by the number of students who choose to enroll at WPI by May 1. Some years we have made offers of admission to students on the waitlist, and other years we have not many any.

As always, if you have questions about the waitlist process you may leave a comment here or get in touch with our staff.

As I mentioned yesterday, most of our decision letters have begun to hit the mail. If you’ve been accepted, congratulations, and this post is for you.

By now you may have been admitted to several schools, or this may be your first offer of admission. You should first take a moment to sit back, relax, and give yourself a pat on the back. You worked hard to get to his point! Over the next few days, weeks, and months you should also thank the people who helped you get here: parents, siblings, teachers, counselors, employers, friends.

You may have thought the hard part was over now. But if you have several offers of admission sitting before you, you now have just over a month to decide where you’ll be spending your next four years. Of course we hope that place is WPI, but we know that won’t be the case for all of you. 

What are the next steps to learn more about WPI to help you make that decision? You’ll want to visit the Class of 2013 Web site for lots of information about campus, classes, and visiting (remember, the password is contained with your offer of admission).

• Visit Campus. I know, I know, you’re busy. And you may have visited already. But coming (back) to campus is your best way to get a feel for WPI. And we’ve tried to make it as easy as possible for you to do so. Between now and May we’ll be open every day except Sundays. We also have two open houses specifically for you to get a comprehensive picture of WPI in one day.
• Meet Your Classmates. Future members of the Class of 2013 have already been very active in getting to know each other in the WPI Class of 2013 Facebook group. Check it out and get connected!
• Financial Aid. We realize that when you’re making the final decision of where to attend, the financial situation is an important factor. If you’ve applied for financial aid, your package will be on its way to you very shortly. If you do not receive it by early-April, please get in touch with the Financial Aid Office to ensure that you have filed all of the appropriate paperwork.
• Explore Academics. The WPI Web site contains an enormous amount of information. Each academic department has its own site where majors, coursework, faculty, and projects are discussed. Start by looking at the list of departments, and click through to what is of interest to you. Take particular note of recent project work; the projects listed were completed by undergraduates as a built-in part of their curriculum. If you want to know more about majors and courses, check out the undergraduate course catalog.

Hopefully you applied to institutions where you felt that you could envision yourself living and learning for the next four years. The learning is obviously a key component when choosing where to study—ask yourself what kind of majors do they have? What are my research opportunities? Will I get hands on experience? What are members of the faculty like?—but the living is not at all to be underestimated. You’ll be spending your next four years living, breathing, playing, eating, sleeping, studying, and having fun somewhere; you need to feel comfortable with that location.

If you decide WPI is the place for you, be sure to submit the paper or online enrollment form and $500 deposit on or before May 1. If you decide to attend somewhere else, please also let us know on the enrollment form (that way we’ll stop bugging you!)

Of course if you have any questions, need more information, want to plan a visit and need help, or just want to discuss your options, please get in touch with our staff.

We’re very excited and proud to welcome you to WPI as the Class of 2013. Congratulations!

Decision time has come. Starting today and continuing into early next week, the majority of our decision notifications for regular decision applicants will hit the mail. If your application was complete and depending where you live, you should be receiving your decision notification by midweek next week. I’ll be posting some information specific to particular decisions over the next few days, but here is some general information about our decisions:

• We send our decisions via mail; there’s no place online to check your status. We still feel that it is best for you to find out via snail mail and have something tangible to open and keep. (Side note: I still have my acceptance letter from WPI.) If you attend high school outside of the United States, we’ll e-mail your decision and you’ll receive the paper copy via airmail or DHL.
• If you do not receive a decision, it probably means that your application is still incomplete. We have been trying to reach you, so if you’re still interested in applying to WPI, please get in touch with us as soon as possible. If you’re not, let us know and we’ll withdraw your application.
• We had a record number of applications this year causing the decision making process to be more difficult than ever. We thoroughly reviewed each and every one of your applications, and we feel that we have used our best judgment and made the decisions possible for each of you. We wish we had space for everyone, but realistically there is a limit to the number of students we are able to accept.
• And, that means not everyone will receive good news; even if you are not offered admission, we did enjoy learning more about you and getting to know you. We appreciate your interest in WPI and wish you success in your future plans.

So, keep an eye on the mailbox over the next few days! Keep an eye here as well for some more specific information about what to do once you receive your letter.

If you’re a sophomore or junior, this information is for you! Our planning for summer 2009 in the Admissions Office is well underway already, and we’re excited to announce some exciting additions to the Frontiers program!

Frontiers is an academic program for high school students entering their junior or senior year, and this year will be its 26th year! At Frontiers you’ll experience the breadth and depth of the WPI curriculum in an academic and social setting for one or two weeks on campus. With your peers, faculty, and current students you will have the chance to further your knowledge in a science, technology, or engineering field, and you’ll enhance your experience with a workshop in humanities or arts. Outside of class you have access to the WPI campus and facilities, and we work hard to plan fun activities for you as well!

For the first time in 2009, Frontiers will be offered in two sessions. Session 1 will be nearly two weeks, and you’ll choose one academic area of study and one communication workshop. Session 2 will focus solely on robotics and integrate a business management component of the field into your curriculum. Of course, you can participate in both sessions if you’d like!

Learn more about the program and apply on the Frontiers Web site. During your summer vacation, we’ll be working hard, playing hard, and excited to welcome you to the WPI community!

Check out some some more information about Frontiers in the program brochure.

Looking at the calendar and my reading status update, you probably realize that the application review cycle is quickly coming to a close. The entire admissions staff is working double time to read, complete, and make decisions on the last of our nearly 6,300 applications we received this year! Although we say that regular decision applicants will have decisions by April 1, there is a lot to do between now and then. Here’s an idea of what will be happening over the next few weeks:

• Committee meetings: For most of this week, the counseling staff will be together in admissions committee. These meetings are where we make final decisions on applicants whose credentials do not immediately warrant a decision. Sometimes the discussion is quick, and we’re able to generate a decision. Other times the counselor who read the file needs to fight for and advocate for the student. It’s not as bad as it sounds: we’re kept happy (that’s good for you!) with plenty of snacks. :)
• Application completion: Believe it or not, there are students who applied to WPI months ago whose applications are still incomplete—hopefully you are not among them! In some cases, we’re just missing one or two pieces; other files are so incomplete that we cannot even begin a review. If you think this may be you (or even if not), please check your e-mail (including junk folders) for a message from us. At this point we’ve likely e-mailed you, called you, and called your school. If we do not receive your materials and hear from you soon, we may cancel your application.
• Re-evaluation: If you applied at one of our early action rounds and received notification that we’ll be re-evaluating your application at the regular decision state, this information is for you. If you have not already done so, you should have your school send us any and all updated information you would like considered with your application file by the end of this week.
• Final decision entry: Once the admissions committee makes the final decisions, our operations team will ensure that the decisions are recorded in our system and accurate. With over 6,000 applications and decisions changing sometimes by the hour, this is no easy task!
• Decision letters: The operations team is also responsible for generating the final decision letters which you’ll receive in the mail. Once the letters are printed, the director will sign them before they are included with admission packets.
• Mail: What you’ve been waiting for! Admissions decisions will be sent via mail, and if all goes as planned, you will hear before April 1!

If you have received phone calls and e-mails from us that your application is incomplete, please get in touch with your school and our office to let us know the status of your missing materials. At this point, materials should be sent to us via fax at 508-831-5875. If something has been sent and is not showing up when you check your application status online, remember that it may take several days for it to appear once we receive it. If you are no longer interested in applying to WPI, don’t ignore us! We’ll be happy to withdraw your application, but you need to let us know.

Good luck! We can’t wait to welcome our newly admitted students to the Class of 2013!