JCU Blog Central

Journey to the top of the tower

  If you know John Carroll, you know Grasselli Tower.  Grasselli Tower is the clock tower in the middle of campus that you can see the minute you walk onto campus.  Very few people get to go all the way to the top - I am one of the lucky ones.

I have a lot of cool jobs as part of my duties as Assistant Director of Admission.  Have you ever received an E-Streak email newsletter?  That was me.  Gotten a JCU admission brochure?  I probably edited it.  Been to campus and seen our presentation?  I may have given it.   But some of the jobs I like best are my online responsibilities, like this blog.  My newest duty is to manage our new online videos.  I don't take any of the video, that's Ashley's job, but I do help out as much as I can.  That leads us to the tower...

Ashley had come to me one day asking if we could get up to a high point on campus to get some good footage of the campus grounds.  After some phone calls, emails, and planning we were approved to go up to Grasselli Tower for 30 minutes.  Why so short?  Well, WJCU's radio antenna is up on top of the tower and it needs to be turned down in order for humans to go near it and not get sick (fun, right?), so we only had a small window of time that the radio station would allow for a lower frequency.  Anyway, it was quite a trek to get up to the tower which involved getting into the elevator and going to a floor that is only accessible with a key, several flights of old, metal, spiral staircases, and two ladders.  But once we got there, it was all worth it. 

The view as spectacular on a beautiful Autumn day.  We could see straight to Cleveland with no problems and even see the Lake!  It was definitely as unique a JCU experience that could have ever had and one that I am not going to forget for a long time. 

A five hour meeting?!

There are lots of meetings at a university:  Meetings for curriculum.  Meetings for planning events.  Meetings for bird flu emergency response (no, I'm not kidding).  There are so many meetings here because we have to plan for any scenario because, well, we have a bunch of people's children on our campus that we want to be happy, safe, and well-educated.  That all makes sense because these are our current students.

But you'd be surprised by how many meetings we have about people who don't even attend John Carroll.  Yesterday the whole admission staff had a meeting, a five hour meeting, to talk about one topic: reading applications.  I know what you are thinking: "why does it take 5 hours to go over how to read an application?"  The answer, I think, lies at the heart of what makes JCU so special.  We had a five hour meeting about reading applications because we want the experience to be as personal as possible.  The admission process is a human process at John Carroll.  We are not going to just take your grades and test scores and run them through a computer system to see if you are admitted or not (I'd be out of a job if we did that!)  We feel that our applicants have taken a significant portion of their time to choose us to apply to and we have the obligation to read everything that is submitted for that application.  Do we read the recommendations?  Yep.  The extracurricular resume? You bet.  The essay?  Sometimes more than once.  It is with that type of dedication, time, and commitment that we craft our freshman class.

So when you are applying the John Carroll this fall, don't think of yourself as a number, because we surely don't. 

Good luck and give the Office of Admission a call if we can be of any assistance.

The end (and beginning) is near

You know it's close to the end of travel season when the first snow flakes dance across the sky.  As I stare out my window I see the first few snow flakes of the year swirling around in the hard Cleveland wind.  There are many people who say that it really doesn't count until it starts accumulating on the ground, and I tend to believe them, but the first snow flakes do trigger some sort of change.  It means that winter is closing in on us and that its time to bundle up a little more (I actually wore gloves to work today!)  It also means that our first admission deadline is quickly approaching and the high stress of our early notification mailing time is on its way.  We get the largest chunk of our applications in for the December 1 deadline and we only have a few weeks to read all of them and get decisions in the mail the week of December 17. 

There is a strange dichotomy in the office during this time.  First, obviously, we are under a lot of pressure to get all of the applications read and decisions in the mail in a short period of time so it can be a very stressful few weeks.  But second, it can also be very energizing to read good applications from students who truly want to attend JCU.  I really get a kick out of reading good, original essays from students who obviously have taken the time to write something that will make them stand apart from the crowd. 

So here we are on November 6 gearing up for the big push and I, for one, am excited to get started.  Next week we start reading applications and crafting the class of 2012.  If this years' freshman class is any indication, the future is very bright indeed.