The Admissions Blog

New Gig!

2012-01-23T15:40:00.000-05:00

As much as you all have been (loosely) following my travels throughout Connecticut the past seven or so years, it's time for me to move on and create new opportunities for myself. This spring will likely be my last in Connecticut, as I've taken on some shifted responsibilities in the office. I'll be working much more with our communications and social media outreach, and you'll see a lot more of me on campus at information sessions and the like.

You can visit our bloggers here, and I've included the link on the left as well.

Let's go Seawolves!

2012 Seawolves Baseball!

2012-01-06T11:38:00.000-05:00

Sure, it's winter, but I am so very ready for baseball this spring. Caught a post from MLB Draft Insider ranking the top twelve college position players this year, and #7 is a Seawolf, outfielder Travis Jankowski:

Jankowski is a future center-fielder and lead-off hitter at his peak, and a fourth outfielder with above-average speed at his basement. There’s not much power in the swing, but he uses all fields and gets to everything in the outfield.

Something tells me that I'm going to have to make space next to my Tom Koehler baseball card collection...

College Jeopardy Test February 7!

2012-01-05T09:58:00.000-05:00

We need some more Stony Brook Red on this show. Go for it! Someone redeem my defeat!

Top 15 Albums of 2011!

2012-01-04T21:38:00.002-05:00

Honored to be a contributor to the Higher Ed Music Critics group; our Top 50 (50-26 and 25-1) got posted just before the holidays, and I wanted to make sure that guitars got some recognition, since they kinda fell out of the overall mix...

http://higheredmusiccritics.blogspot.com/2012/01/chriss-top-15-albums-of-2011.html

Lots of good stuff coming this year; looking forward to an exciting musical 2012!

Dr. Bill Edgar, 1933-2011

2011-11-17T16:09:00.000-05:00

We all likely know that our idols will likely pass on before us. Whether it's a parent, teacher, coach, or whoever, odds are pretty good that the person you see as a mentor and a guide in your life is probably older than you. But I'll say this... knowing that fact, academically, doesn't make it any easier to take when it happens.

I got an e-mail this morning telling me that Dr. William Edgar, philosophy professor and long-time director of the Honors Program at SUNY Geneseo that now bears his name, died last week at 78. Bill and his wife Stacey, also a philosophy professor at Geneseo, changed so many lives in so many ways; my little eulogy here can't possibly do him justice, but I feel obligated to try.

The first course I took as a member of the honors program in Fall 1993 was HONR 101, "The Nature of Inquiry," a philosophy primer created and taught by Dr. Edgar. He took twenty of us -- ten new freshmen and ten new sophomores entered the program each fall -- under his wing, inviting us to parties at his house and making us a family. We'd sit in our classroom, a somewhat hidden room on the second floor of the theater building, twice a week in a big circle and discuss life's great philosophical questions. We learned about Plato and Aristotle, about Zeno and how you couldn't really go anywhere, about Descartes, and Hume... about how to think critically and read deeply.

I met the most incredible people through Bill Edgar. My first roommate, Eric, who went on to law school and now lives in Connecticut with his family... George, the most brilliant mathematical mind I know and a guy who gave me the honor of being the best man at his wedding... Jen, who overcame several unfortunate Honors party-inspired nicknames and became a librarian... Sarah, who helped me through fraternity pledging more than she probably knew... Michelle, Andy, Emil... so many people that impacted my life in so many ways.

He introduced us to Ron Herzman, a brilliantly eccentric English professor who taught the "Critical Reading" honors course the following spring. To Eileen Daly, a former philosophy major who came back to teach a Symbolic Logic class that I took even though it was a night class, just because she was connected with Bill. (Full disclosure: it didn't hurt that she was young and attractive.) To Stephen Padalino, who took our honors science course on a whirlwind tour of nuclear physics. To James Willey, a musicologist who taught us what to do if anyone approached us on the street with a loaded flounder. To Bill Cook, who's everything you want your history professor to be and more. Bill Edgar made sure we knew that it was okay to think, okay to analyze, okay to question.

A few weeks into college, I bought train tickets to come home and visit my family; I couldn't find anyone who was willing to drive me to the train station, and Bill graciously volunteered to take the time out of a fall Friday afternoon to help a lonely freshman get home.

One of our graduation requirements was a two-semester Humanities sequence. Most folks tried to take the easy way out, looking for a professor who would give the easiest tests or the least work. Not us; I took both Hum I & II with Stacey Edgar, because I knew she would challenge us and that we'd walk out of there actually learning something.

It was because of Bill's influence that after September 11, 2001, when I was going through some spiritual and emotional confusion, I turned to the Koran and to the Bhagavad Gita and to Buddhist texts; because I knew that I could read and absorb and learn what made me, and the world, tick.

It's because of Bill that I have a special place in my admissions counselor's heart for philosophy majors. I love when students aren't afraid to write and read and learn; I wish I'd done more with philosophy as an undergrad, and have toyed with the idea of graduate work.

My mission to you, students, is to find your personal Bill Edgar. Find someone who will challenge you, who will make you work and think, and at the same time, will respect your words and thoughts and decisions. It's tempting to take courses just to get an "easy A," or just to fill in a graduation requirement. But really, honestly think about the courses you're taking and the decisions you're making in college; you're here to learn and grow. Make sure you're doing that.

We should all be so lucky to have someone in our lives like Bill Edgar; his spirit lives on in me every day of my life. I can only hope that I have half as much impact on my students here at Stony Brook that he had on me and on all of us. I've reread the e-mail from the president of the college a few times today, and I've teared up every time: "He was our philosopher-in-chier, our Socrates."

Thanks, Bill.

#7: SBU Motorsports

2011-06-08T13:40:00.000-04:00

If you've been driving around the greater Stony Brook University area lately, you might have seen their bus wraps, even though you might not have figured who they are and what they do... but our Stony Brook Motorsports program has been top-notch!

A few weeks ago, they placed 10th overall (out of 115 teams) at the 2011 Baja Competition; they've done pretty well in previous years as well. So congratulations to our students for a job well done!

#6: Game Programming Competition

2011-06-07T15:32:00.000-04:00

2011 marked the eighth year of the Stony Brook Game Programming Competition, sponsored by the Computer Science program.

Congratulations to the two winning teams!

Twine Associates:

Virtual Void:

#5: The 2011 Baseball Team (and this week's MLB Draft)

2011-06-06T13:11:00.000-04:00

Since Keith Law isn't returning my phone calls, let's take a look at a couple of the guys whose names I hope to see called at some point in the next three days during the MLB Draft:

RHP Nick Tropeano
Tropeano is coming off another amazing year which saw him set school records in wins (12) and strikeouts (119). Draft guru John Sickels listed him among his players he's watching and among his sleepers for 2011. Some analysis according to one blog:

Has a fastball that sits in the upper 80s and plenty of secondary pitches. His changeup is plus and he has a hard slider. Projectable at 6’4” 205, he’s posted good college numbers and if he can find some more velocity, he’s a nice find.

IF/C Steve Marino
Marino shined in the America East playoffs, joining Tropeano as the only Seawolves named to the All-Tournament team despite their disheartening loss. He started all 54 games and hit at a .333/.373/.514 clip with solid defense (only one error all season). As a senior, it'd be nice to see his name called, even if it's late on Wednesday.

RHP Tyler Johnson
Kinda sounds like a major league pitcher, no? 9-3, 2.30 in 13 starts. Took a tough loss in the AE Playoffs, but had a strong enough season that we'll hopefully see his name on Wednesday too. (And if not, he's going to be a heckuva ace for us next spring.)

You ready, MLB? (And you, Mets?) Let's go!

#4: Tom Koehler, New Orleans Zephyr

2011-06-03T11:47:00.009-04:00

With the release of Topps' 2011 Bowman baseball card set came the debut of another Seawolves product working his way up the ranks: Marlins pitcher Tom Koehler. I've talked about (and with) Tom in this space before, but after winning the 2010 Southern League Pitcher of the Year Award by going 16-2, 2.61 with the Jacksonville Suns, he moved up to AAA New Orleans this spring, and promptly started his season 5-0, giving us all hope that someone in the Marlins' rotation would get injured (I'm not picky, but as a Met fan, I'd prefer Josh Johnson) and that Tom would get the call.

Hasn't happened yet, and Tom lost his last two decisions and is now 5-2 with a 4.69 ERA in twelve starts. Something tells me we'll see Tom join our other former Seawolf Joe Nathan in the majors some time in 2011, though. Go, Tom, go!

#3: CEWIT

2011-06-02T09:50:00.022-04:00

In March 2009, Stony Brook opened a new facility to house our Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology (CEWIT). Founded in 2002, CEWIT's research is diverse, covering:

distributed robotics, expressive and hybrid networks, mobile computing, wireless networks, cyber security, computer vision and image processing, RF systems, microwave sensors, wireless sensor networks, computational genetics and protein docking, computational neurobiology, virtual reality, effective bandwidth utilization, wireless protocols, wireless ad hoc networks and wireless gateways. Our research topics range from materials to components to systems and address devices and communications, networking, software systems, and solutions/applications for vertical markets.

I'll be the first to admit that for me -- a student activities guy turned radio guy turned counselor -- most of the scientific stuff we do goes way over my head... but that certainly doesn't mean I can't be impressed by it! I missed the Open House they had last summer; hopefully they'll have another one soon (hint hint).

#2: Starbucks

2011-06-01T12:31:00.000-04:00

Our campus dining has done some major overhauls in the past few years; perhaps the most significant, from a cultural perspective, was the introduction of Starbucks on campus. "But Chris, everyone has a Starbucks," you say. I know, but it seemed like a significant step, as there suddenly became a real "go-to" destination on campus. The lines can be unreal there, despite the crazy location tucked up in a corner of the second floor of the Stony Brook Union, but we'll wait for our Starbucks. It's fascinating, really.

#1: Stony Brook Concerts

2011-05-31T21:38:00.000-04:00

I come from an incredibly strong student concerts background. During my undergraduate days, I had the honor of chairing a concerts committee that put on a mainstage show at least once a semester; we hosted Barenaked Ladies and Blues Traveler in the same semester in Spring 1995.

I was excited to come to Stony Brook, knowing our vibrant concert history. The university was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2006:

Between 1967 and 1971, the Student Activities Board presented such rock legends as Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Janis Joplin, The Moody Blues (with guest Timothy Leary), Pink Floyd, and The Who. The Allman Brothers took up residence at Stony Brook in April of 1970, where they rehearsed and performed on campus in preparation for their now legendary stint at the Fillmore East. Other shows that year included Santana, B.B. King, Small Faces and the Grateful Dead, who performed four shows over the Halloween weekend. But the high point of the 1970 season was the May 1st outdoor concert on the Athletic Field featuring the Jefferson Airplane, which drew a crowd of close to 50,000 fans who came to celebrate the first Earth Day.

At one time, Stony Brook was known as "The Fillmore East East". Fillmore owner Bill Graham was one of several New York area promotors with contractual clauses that prevented headliners from performing within a 50-mile radius of their venues. Long Islanders had the geographic good fortune to have Stony Brook sit 52 miles away from the Fillmore, which assured the campus its place in music history.

Things in concertland at Stony Brook, however, had been relatively slow up until the last year or so. Last spring, Best Coast headlined our spring concert, and "Parks & Recreation"'s Aziz Ansari visited campus early this spring. The big news, though, was the biggest show we've seen in years, as Bruno Mars and Janelle Monae packed the arena a few weeks ago.

So I think we're making the turn; I'm excited to see what Stony Brook Concerts brings us in 2011-2012!

Tough Year for Seawolves Sports

2011-05-27T14:30:00.000-04:00

Before I start this post, let me say that I'm incredibly proud of how all of our teams did this year, because we had some incredible performances, both team and individual. But boy, how things could have been...

Football went into their finale at Liberty undefeated in the Big South, needing to hold Liberty down offensively in order to make the FCS playoffs. Unfortunately, they got beaten by a very strong Liberty team, 54-28.
Men's basketball struggled with injuries all season, but went on an incredible run to the conference championship game, holding a lead for all but two and a half seconds of the championship game at Boston University. Unfortunately, they were the only two and a half seconds that mattered, as John Holland hit two free throws at the end of the game to break the tie and send BU to the NCAA Tournament.
Men's lacrosse had a great run, playing an incredibly difficult schedule. They faced Hartford in the America East final, losing a heartbreaker as Hartford scored the tie-breaking, game-winning goal with one second left on the clock.
And yesterday and today, our baseball team, ranked #1 in the America East after a 41-10 regular season, lost heartbreakers in the conference tournament as we couldn't get anything going against Maine yesterday, and then lost in the elimination game to Albany this afternoon. (I'm holding out hope for an at-large bid to the College World Series. 40 wins has to count for something, right?)

So close, yet so far... but we'll be back in 2011-2012!

Meanwhile, let's celebrate the awesome accomplishments our athletes had this season:

The Seawolves men's cross country, indoor track & field and outdoor track & field and women's outdoor track & field teams all received the Public Recognition Awards that are given each year to teams scoring in the top 10 percent in each sport with their Academic Progress Rates (APRs). The four honored teams are the most Stony Brook has had in one academic year. In addition, the women's outdoor track & field team has now been honored with the Public Recognition Award for six consecutive years.
Five Stony Brook student-athletes have been announced as winners of the 2010-11 SUNY Chancellor Scholar-Athlete Award, State University of New York Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher announced on Monday. Among the Seawolves honorees are Michael Coulter (Yorba Linda, Calif.) of the football team, Kevin Crowley (New Westminster, British Columbia) of the men's lacrosse team, Tyler Johnson (Chatsworth, Calif.) of the baseball team, Holly Van Dalen (Wanganui, New Zealand) of the women's cross country team and Lucy Van Dalen (Wanganui, New Zealand) of the women's track & field team.
Seniors Lucy and Holly van Dalen took sixth and seventh, respectively, as the women's team finished an impressive seventh at the 2010 NCAA women's cross country national championships. By finishing among the top-40 individually, the twins are first-time All-Americans in cross country.
In baseball, sophomore William Carmona was named America East Player of the Year, junior Nick Tropeano earned Pitcher of the Year honors, freshman Brandon McNitt was tabbed Rookie of the Year and Matt Senk took home his first Coach of the Year award. The Seawolves had 11 players named all-conference, including eight on the first team. Carmona became the first player in program history to be named Player of the Year and Tropeano became the first player in America East history to win two Pitcher of the Year awards. (Plus, I'm pretty sure we'll see a couple of those guys' names get called June 6-8 at the MLB Draft.)
Speaking of drafts, senior Kevin Crowley (New Westminster, British Columbia) was the first overall pick of the 2011 Major League Lacrosse collegiate draft this winter, going to the Hamilton Nationals. Seniors Jordan McBride (New Westminster, British Columbia), Tom Compitello (Hauppauge, N.Y.) and Adam Rand (Niantic, Conn.) also were drafted, going to Rochester, Boston and Hamilton, respectively.

So chins up, Seawolves! You had a hell of a year, and we're proud of you! We'll be back next year!

The Summer of 50 Starts Monday

2011-05-27T08:00:00.007-04:00

We're looking toward the new year with anticipation of lots of great things happening here on campus in 2011-2012. I started working on a "50 things I love about Stony Brook" series a few years ago, and I'd like to restart that; but rather than rehash the old things, let's let those 34 things go and come up with fifty new things, eh? I've got posts queued up and ready to go, so check back on Tuesday for the start of a great new series!
I'd like your input, too. What do you love about Stony Brook? I have my list, but I'd like your ideas. Is there someone here I should include? A place on campus you love to be? An experience you've had that changed your life? Let me know.

Congratulations Graduates!

2011-05-25T15:40:00.000-04:00

One of the wonderful things about working in the admissions office for more than four years at a place like Stony Brook is that you get to see students you met when they were in high school accomplish great things, then reach the end of their careers here and move on to the next phase of their lives. Congratulations to all of our graduates!

Men's Lacrosse!

2011-03-18T09:00:00.019-04:00

I'm a baseball fan. As such, there's not a whole lot of space in my life for other sports. Sure, I watch the Celtics, and I follow the Jets and Flyers (in name, anyway), but the rest of the sporting world is largely a mystery to me.

But there's something about being part of a winning tradition that will make you do crazy things -- like get into lacrosse. I can't claim that I know much about the sport, but I do know that it's an exciting time to be a part of our men's lacrosse program right now. To wit:

Despite a tough, one-goal, season-opening loss to #1-ranked Virginia, the Seawolves have won three straight and is now ranked fifth in the country, heading down to face Towson this weekend.
From an interview on ESPN.com this week:

Where is the toughest place to play?
Former MLL All-Star Brett Hughes: I watch Stony Brook and it seems like that's a pretty wild environment. I've heard that can be rough.

Four of the 48 players chosen in this winter's Major League Lacrosse Draft are Stony Brook Seawolves, including #1 overall pick Kevin Crowley, along with Jordan McBride, Tom Compitello, Adam Rand.
Those four players were also named to the Tewaaraton Award watch list; the award is given annually to the top collegiate lacrosse player. (Crowley was also a finalist last spring.)

All in all, a good time to be a Seawolf! Here's the rest of the schedule for the spring:

03/19/11    at Towson     1:00 p.m.
03/22/11     vs. Cornell     7:00 p.m.
03/26/11     vs. Bryant     1:00 p.m.
04/01/11     vs. UMBC     7:00 p.m.
04/09/11     at Hartford    7:00 p.m.
04/16/11     vs. Binghamton    7:00 p.m.
04/23/11     vs. Albany     7:00 p.m.
04/30/11     at Vermont     3:00 p.m.

That's a lot of home games, which means a lot of chances to get your red on! I'll see you at the stadium!

I Wanted That Win

2011-03-14T11:49:00.001-04:00

I spent two hours on Saturday afternoon jumping out of my skin, living vicariously through our Seawolves men's basketball team as they battled Boston University for the America East title. The Terriers struggled early, but we weren't much better, only taking a seven-point lead into the half. We came out strong in the second half, but AE Player of the Year John Holland earned his title by single-handedly bringing BU back. A ticky-tack foul with two seconds left send Holland to the line, and he gave BU their only lead of the game. (Unfortunately, it was the only one they'd need.)

Credit to Holland and to BU for hanging tough; they could have easily gotten blown out the way they couldn't get any of their shots to fall early, but they earned a great win.

Honestly, I was crushed; as crushed by a sports loss as I've ever been. (And I'm counting the 2006 NLCS.) Stony Brook is in an interesting spot athletically; we've only been members of NCAA D-I for eleven years, so we're still relatively new at this. Some of the schools we cross applications with, however, are schools like UConn and Rutgers, who have had very impressive runs. Even our SUNY sister schools, Albany and Binghamton, have celebrated recent trips to the NCAA tournament.

I wanted that desperately -- yes, selfishly, for me as an employee and a fan -- but mostly for our students. At Stony Brook, we've been fighting for years against the stereotype that our students are unhappy, that our students don't care, that our students spend all their time studying and don't know how to have any fun. But this year, this team, these students... they were proving that wrong.

Excitement was high leading up to the game; a couple of dedicated students started a #seawolfblood hashtag campaign on Twitter, mocking the recent Charlie Sheen story, and students came out in droves to sign up to travel to the game. We sent eleven busloads of students up to Boston Saturday morning, including our incredible "Spirit of Stony Brook" marching band and the best mascot in college sports, Wolfie. And they were LOUD. It felt like a home game the way the "SBU" chants filled Agganis Arena, and I wanted so badly for those efforts by our dedicated students to be rewarded. That's the Stony Brook story; bright, dedicated, wonderful students who love this campus and love their experience here.

And yes, selfishly, I look at the schools who got the "NCAA Bump" in apps, and I wanted that. I wanted to be able to go to the Hartford NACAC fair this week and playfully challenge my fellow reps who have schools in the tournament. I wanted to be able to pencil "Stony Brook" all the way to the end in my ESPN Bracket Challenge entry. I wanted to see us send more buses to wherever the first-round game would have been, and I wanted to be able to say we were a part of that.

But alas, it wasn't meant to be this year, so I'll wish the best to my Twitter colleague Kenn Elmore as BU duels Kansas on Friday. Instead, we'll turn to lacrosse and Kevin Crowley and his teammates; whereas our "reward" for a win on Saturday probably would have been a play-in game at best and then probably a one-and-done showing in the tournament, our lacrosse program has realistic designs on a national title. We'll be there, part of the sea of red, screaming our lungs out every chance we get.

First-Year Transfer Applicants?

2011-02-21T11:33:00.000-05:00

We've gotten a lot of questions from students who are applying to transfer in the middle of their first year, so I figured I'd summarize where we are for students in that situation. First, our transfer admissions requirements are straightforward: at least 24 completed credits with a 3.0 GPA is the minimum standard for consideration.

Some of you, however, are in your first year; you've only completed whatever credits you took in the fall (say, 15-16) and won't have met that 24 credit threshold until the end of May when your spring grades have posted. For students in that situation, we'll look back at your final high school transcript and your SAT/ACT scores to round out the application. What that means, though, is that if you were denied admission for Fall 2010 coming out of high school, it's highly likely that that piece of your academic history will not help you in the application review process... and as such, you're going to need to wait until you have completed 24 credits to receive full consideration.

The monkey wrench comes in once we start reviewing transfer applicants after our March 1 deadline; it's likely that we will fill our transfer class quickly, which will potentially lock out anyone for whom we need to receive spring grades before we can render a decision.

My advice to those of you who are completing your freshman year is to have a backup plan for fall. Best case? We don't fill the class early, and there's time to get your spring grades to us so we can make a decision on your application. Worst case? We fill the class early, and you'd need to reapply for Spring 2012.

Questions? Ask away.

Decisions, Decisions...

2011-02-14T10:18:00.000-05:00

...are starting to trickle out. For those of you who have been admitted to the freshman class this fall, congratulations! However, I do need to keep everyone updated on a few things:

1) NOT ALL decisions have been made. We're getting through applications as quickly as we can. We'll be sending out more letters over the next few months; please hang in there.

2) When you applied has NO bearing on when your decision will be received. (Admissions decisions are made academically, not chronologically.) Again, hang in there if you haven't heard anything. It doesn't tell you anything about your decision, I promise.

3) Financial aid decisions, as well as scholarship and honors program decisions, will probably be out in March. The Honors College, WISE, University Scholars programs are all working on those files now; they can't review them until after we do, so it takes some extra time. Scholars for Medicine decisions are dependent on completion of the Honors/WISE process, so those will come later as well. Thanks for your patience!

4) We haven't started looking at transfers yet. The deadline is March 1 for transfer applicants; minimum consideration is at least 24 completed college credits and a 3.0 GPA.

While you're waiting... if you haven't done so yet, you might want to schedule a tour of campus. Our new tour reservation system is up and running here. We offer two tours every day from Monday to Saturday. See you on campus!

"How Centre College Reviews Your Application"

2011-01-07T10:21:00.000-05:00

Brilliantly done, Centre College.

For all you out there who wonder exactly what it is we do. David DeWitt is basically me (with the same hair and everything), except you can substitute a Jeopardy! appearance for a Star Trek cameo. I even react the same way to applications sometimes, except I do it when they include Yankees references.

Your SATs and Your Future...?

2010-12-29T12:14:00.000-05:00

Interesting piece by Dan Shanoff at The Awl about college admissions and sports fanhood.

I went to a small, public, liberal arts college in western New York. Sure, we had sports -- I was the PA announcer for our hockey team for a couple of seasons, and I recall our basketball teams being pretty good -- but nobody was going to confuse our little D-III school with Duke or Miami. Over the long Columbus Day weekend in 1995, I went to visit my friend Tim at Penn State; it happened to be the weekend of the big Ohio State game. Looking back, it was quite a battle; the two teams were both top-ranked at the time, and compared to what I was used to, it seemed like there were a million people at the game. (The only thing I remember, other than the scope, was the impressive performance of a young Curtis Enis; looking back at a box score, he had 25 touches for 146 yards. What ever happened to that guy?)

But when I got back to campus, as incredible as the experience was, I wondered how much I really needed or wanted that as part of my college experience. At the time, I loved where I was; I was a resident assistant, part of our college radio station's executive board, had just joined a fraternity, and was the head of our college's concerts committee. Sure, I got into some "big name" schools out of high school; Boston College was my top choice as I entered my senior year of high school, but they fell off my list when they didn't offer any scholarship money, and Cornell was my second choice for a while. But I wasn't really a college sports fan; I loved my Mets and my Celtics and Steve Young's 49ers, but had no real attachment to any college teams. My dad went to a non-sports college (and isn't much of a sports fan anyway), so I never had that drive to connect with a college team the way, for example, that Tim (and his whole family, all of whom are Nittany Lions fans) did.

I wonder sometimes if I'd have formed a more lasting collegiate attachment if I'd gone to a D-I sports school, but at the same time, I wouldn't have changed a thing about my college choice. It's an interesting discussion, however.

This is a combination of serendipity, your GPA as a 16-year-old and the cogency of your answer to an application essay question or two — perhaps where your parents or older siblings went to college, thrown in for good measure. No condition in sports fandom is as awkwardly constructed. (As if the college admissions process could get any more pressure-packed, without decades of sports allegiance also on the line.)

So... how will your SAT scores -- as a result, and where you're admitted or not -- impact your future sports fanhood?

You want tunes? We got tunes.

2010-12-20T10:11:00.000-05:00

A couple of my colleagues across the country spend our copious quantities of down time (HA!) listening to music, and then alternately complaining about it and praising it.

Come check us out as we're about to post our top 50 albums of 2010.

What the Cliff Lee Signing Means for College Admissions

2010-12-14T12:55:00.000-05:00

(I mean besides insufferable nonsense from Yankee fans, of course.)

They say that it "wasn't about the money" that brought Cliff Lee back to Philadelphia for the next six seasons. But as admissions decisions and scholarship offers start to roll out to the "free agent" freshman class of Fall 2011, it's instructive to look at what Lee's deal, as well as all the other contracts, big and small, that get signed over the next couple of months, might tell us about what's happening with our high school seniors between now and May 1st.

There's a lot that goes into the decision-making process; we preach a lot about "fit" when we talk with students. You want to put yourself in the best position you can to succeed.

Sure, that nine-figure contract to pitch at Yankee Stadium 3.0 looks appealing, but is it the best situation for the long-term? And sure, that $15,000 scholarship may look appealing, but what about the rest of the tuition, especially once you throw room and board on top?
Sure, your best friend and former teammate pitches for the Yankees. But maybe you're better off being an alpha dog somewhere else, rather than pitching in his (rather large) shadow? I know it's tempting to go where your friends are going, but it's also important to think outside the box. Lots of professionals I know have stories about friends who made the wrong college choice, seemingly because they were following their friends. College is your chance to be you, to create the next step in your life.
You say your wife was mistreated by the fans when you visited last season? Maybe that's not the kind of place you want to spend the next several years. Have you done a campus tour? Or, better, have you reached out and sat down with students? With faculty in your major, or with a potential research mentor? With the advisor to a club or organization, or even a residence life staff member? Have you eaten the food? Checked out the music practice rooms? Dig deeply into your college choices and you'll find incredible opportunities.

Obviously, I'm stretching a bit here. But admissions decisions are something like contract offers; you want to make sure you're making the right decision for you.

"Hamlet's Blackberry" and the First-Year College Experience

2010-12-13T16:00:00.001-05:00

Just finished Hamlet's Blackberry, an interesting -- and historical -- take on the connectivity of society, and whether that's really a good or a bad thing; and "staying human in a digital world." One interesting passage really grabbed me, about author William Powers falling out of a boat and soaking his phone:

I was alone in the boat, in the classic sense of alone -- there was nobody physically with me. But because I had a connective device [his phone] in my pocket, in another sense I wasn't alone at all. Everyone in my life was just a few button taps away. Now I'm alone in a whole new way. It's a state I used to know very well. I remember walking around my college campus in the early 1980s, on my own in the world for the first time. This was pre-cell phone era, so when I was out in the public like that, I had no easy way of communicating with most of the human race. It was a bit lonely being away from my parents and all the other people I'd always been dependent on for support and companionship. But it was also exhilarating. Here I was, a full-fledged person finally at the controls of my own life. I had some doubts that I was ready, but that was part of the thrill.

I loved that, and it brought me back to my own first-year experiences in the fall of 1993, when I completely reinvented myself as a student and as a person by moving eight hours away and changing my life. I went from a timid, nerdy honors student to... well, to a nerdy honors student who was on stage introducing our homecoming comedian, Chris Rock, in front of 1,500 of my fellow students in just a month.

I thought this was exceptionally relevant in today's student affairs setting, where students are so much more connected with their high school friends and family -- and yes, I'm talking about Facebook, but even basic things like smart phones and texting have made it so much easier for students to retain those connections.

That first time your students get homesick at college, are they going to go out to meeting of a club or organization or residence hall council that night? Or are they going to log on and reconnect with friends from home?

What say you, my student affairs colleagues? And how does this impact what we do?

Now on Facebook!

2010-08-24T14:57:00.000-04:00

In the spirit of Patrick Powers' article about admissions folks and their presence on Facebook, I've created a second home for myself. Come visit me over there!

Advice for Parents

2010-06-30T14:56:00.001-04:00

Neat post -- and analysis -- from Caren Osten Gerszberg in the New York Times' "The Choice" column today. There's a lot of overlap on this list that Middlebury College provides, but the sentiment is good. A few thoughts of my own:

10. Remember that this process is not about you. No matter how similar your children may be to you, they need to make their own decisions and observations.
Whether you went to college or not, and whether you "know what's best" for your child, ultimately, it's about them. Yes, you'll be a major factor in that decision; but they need to take the lead.

9. Support and encouragement are more appropriate than pressure and unsolicited advice.
Yes! Your children want your help! They've never filled out forms like this before. They don't know all the intimate details of their family's financial situation and how that might impact their education. They don't know what they want to do with the rest of their lives. But you need to help support them when they need it. Encourage them to ask questions, both of you and of the important people that they need to know: admissions and financial aid officers, advisors, guidance counselors, other students.

8. Do not use the words “we” or “our” when referring to your children’s application process.
We get this a lot, especially on the phone; I'm pretty sure -- well, I guess I'm hopeful -- that you're not going to be going to class with your son or daughter, or living in the residence halls too. Thinking about how you use the language makes an impact on the process.

7. Help them prepare but let them perform.
I get phone calls and e-mails from friends asking me to help their kids -- or cousins, or friends, or whoever -- in the admissions process. I'm more than happy to help, as long as it isn't a conflict of interest for me. There's a lot that goes into this process these days, from interviews to college fairs to applications, even to what they're putting out there about themselves on the Web. Be a resource for them, but ultimately, let them make the call. Speaking of which...

6. Encourage your children to make their own college appointments, phone calls and e-mails. When a family arrives at an admissions office, it’s important that the student approach the front desk, not the parents. We notice!
Yes, we do. We focus on the student when you visit, not on you. I'll bring appointments into my office alone first, then ask them if they want me to bring their parents in once we're done. And it's always much better when the students make those calls themselves, because again, they're the ones who will be coming here. It's painful for everyone -- me, you, and the student -- to have an appointment where it's clear that the student just doesn't want to be there.

5. Allow your children to ask the questions.
We know you have questions too, and that's okay. When I'm done meeting with a student individually, I'll ask him or her if mom or dad (or whoever's waiting outside) has questions too. Sometimes they say yes, and I'll bring those folks in; sometimes we'll say no, in which case I'll walk the student out and talk with the parents more informally in our waiting area.

4. Prepare your children for disappointment.
This could be crucial, depending on your student's plans and goals. It'd be impossible for schools to admit everyone who applies; as such, some people are going to be disappointed. Even though there are schools that you might think are "match" -- or even "safety" -- schools, there are a lot of factors that determine admissions decisions, and they don't always turn out the way you think (or want) them to. Be informed, and again, encourage them to ask questions and have alternate plans.

3. Never complete any portion of the college application.
Are you going to write up their organic chemistry labs too?

2. Do not let stereotypes or outdated information steer your children away from schools in which they would otherwise have an interest.
As strong as tradition is on college and university campuses, so many things change every year. What you may have thought you heard even just a year or two ago is likely outdated. Also understand that the prism through which you and your children are viewing their education is very, very different from everyone else's. Yes, your cousin's son went there three years ago and hated it. But that was a different time, with a different major and advisor and classes and residence hall and friends and so on. The experience your son or daughter will have -- and the needs that go along with that -- will shape their decisions; don't let the negative stuff overwhelm that.

1. Never, ever, during a college visit buy a sweatshirt or T-shirt from the bookstore in your size — it’s a dead giveaway!
Dead giveaway of what? This is the one piece of advice that confuses me. You want to buy a Stony Brook sweatshirt while you're here? Go for it. Maybe not one of the "STONY BROOK MOM" ones just yet, but if you're a Wolfie fan, I say you need a shirt.

Memorial Day

2010-06-04T08:25:00.000-04:00

(My apologies in advance for the serious tone of this post... but this, readers, is life.)

Twenty years ago this fall, my mom entered a rehabilitation program for alcohol abuse. We told almost nobody but immediate family at the time; the stigma of alcoholism is not a pleasant one. We -- my father, younger sister, and I -- traveled weekly to Wernersville, PA, home of the Caron Foundation. It was there, in the middle of nowhere in eastern Pennsylvania, that my life changed.

As family members, we had to go through a little rehab of our own; that's where we learned what this insidious disease does to a person's body and mind, and how we could help my mom and our family heal. We sat through AA and Al-Anon meetings and watched people scream and cry and really open up to themselves and to each other. I met Paul; like my mom, a middle-aged parent who hid his abuse from his family. I met Duncan, a gregarious Native American man who taught me how to play hackey-sack. I decided there that alcohol and drugs, for all their temptations, would not break me, and would not impact my family some day the way it impacted mine in 1990. (It's also why, to this day, that I cannot drink Crystal Light; it was the only vaguely sweet thing they had available to drink in the cafeteria there, and when you're fourteen years old and just want a bottle of soda or a real iced tea and that's all you're offered, it's... just... ugh.)

Sure, I missed out on parties in high school, and I missed out on the first night at college when everyone went out drinking and I stayed in my room, too afraid to be social for the fear of dropping head-first into rampant alcohol abuse. But I learned how to manage myself; how to survive on a college campus and in life without drinking. Yes, I had detractors, but most of my friends respected my decision; and they were usually happy to have a designated driver around anyway. I even bit the bullet and joined a fraternity; I opened up to the brothers immediately and told them that I didn't drink, and why I didn't drink... and they respected that and welcomed me openly.

I met the girl who is now my wife, and although I don't know that she understood at first, she got it eventually, and has been my biggest supporter.

My mom, like many alcoholics, went back to the bottle. My parents got divorced while I was in college, and my mom never quite landed on her feet. A few years ago, after a severe illness that landed my mom in the hospital, my sister and I asked her to go back to Caron, and she obliged; she wanted so desperately to get better, but struggled to find the strength to do so. My sister and I went back too: for the training, the workshops, the therapy, the support. The three of us worked so hard on finding that place where we could all be a family again. Mom left Caron, and on the strong advice of her counselor Terri, spent six months at High Watch Farms in Kent, CT working on putting the pieces of her life back together.

Again, the support there was outstanding. We visited all the time, met a bunch of her new friends, and even though we wanted her to stay there and create a new home for herself, she insisted on moving back to Long Island and finding an apartment so she could be "independent." She refused our help, didn't let us visit, blew off family outings, and yes, unfortunately, started drinking again.

I guess you know by now where this is going... just after lunch on Thursday, while I was away enjoying the NEACAC Annual Conference in Newport, Rhode Island, we got the call that police keyed into my mother's apartment after her neighbor hadn't heard from her in a day... and found that she had passed away.

I could write for days about how alcohol addiction ruins lives, but that book has been written time and time again; and besides, that's not my reality. As tragic as my mother's story is, I am immensely proud of what my sister and I have accomplished in our lives. My father, who was affected as any of us twenty years ago, remarried and has remained a constant presence in our lives. And as much I regret my mother choosing wine over us, I know that she loved us dearly and I know that we did all we could to help her... but she needed to take a step that she never took.

Alcohol, unfortunately, turned my mother into a compulsive liar who said and did whatever she needed to do in order to get the people who loved her off her back. She forbade us from visiting her at her apartment, scoffed whenever we tried to press her for medical information -- even when she was in the hospital -- and as far as we know, never told any of her doctors that she was an addict. After all the work, the time, the counseling and therapy -- she denied her problem to the end.

She told a neighbor two years ago that she had been diagnosed with cancer; we found that out Friday, and spent most of the day... I don't know... relieved that we knew what happened? Angry that she couldn't/wouldn't/didn't get treatment? Frustrated that she never told us? But when we spoke with the medical examiner Friday evening, the diagnosis wasn't cancer at all. In fact, they found no cancer in her body anywhere. She died because of liver issues, and stomach issues, and a bunch of other things; her heart finally gave out. Even in death, our mother found it more appropriate to lie to her family than to tell the truth and get help.

I have few regrets about my mom's life. Sure, it would have been nice for her to have known my children better, and (eventually, hopefully) my sister's children, but that's not how things worked out. We'll remember the good times; the trip to Washington that the three of us took in 1998, the way she doted on her Cocker Spaniel, her sense of humor and the zany e-mails and letters she used to send, the nice visit we had with her on Mother's Day just a few weeks ago.

As a university administrator, I see the lure of alcohol and drugs, and know it's a major factor in college (and, sadly, high school) life. I try not to be preachy; students will be students, and I don't think I have all the answers. But I do let them know that I'm here if they need me, the way my counselors and advisers were and are there for me.

What hurts most right now are the phone calls and notifications we have now had to make to all the people who loved my mom and the people who tried so hard to help her. (And, sadly, the people we know who ignored the problem and refused to help.) I owe almost everything I hold dear to the wonderful people at the Caron Foundation; as I said, they changed my life twenty years ago, and even though my mother never got the help she needed, they need to know that the support I got there helped me. Same goes for the people at High Watch; their support meant more to me than they'll probably ever know.

So I send this post out into the ether; maybe not entirely fitting with the theme of the blog, but this is my space, and as such, my soapbox. If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

Goodbye, Mom. We will always love you.

NEACAC 2010: "What They're Saying About You"

2010-05-26T15:30:00.000-04:00

Here are the links I promised you:

Roth Regatta: http://www.matscieng.sunysb.edu/rothrace
SBUTube Contest: http://www.youtube.com/group/sbcontest2
Google Alerts: http://www.google.com/alerts
Bloglines: http://www.bloglines.com
College Confidential: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com
Tweetdeck: http://www.tweetdeck.com
Stony Brook Bloggers: http://www.stonybrook.edu/ugadmissions/blogs/index.shtml
Stony Brook Study Abroad Bloggers: http://www.stonybrook.edu/ugadmissions/blogs/studyabroad
YourCampus360: http://www.yourcampus360.com
Unigo: http://www.unigo.com
30 Seconds of Awesome: http://la.streetsblog.org/2010/05/24/at-westwood-and-le-conte-its-30-seconds-of-awesome
Presidents Day at Macalester: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpEcCjpbm5w
Kevin Smith vs. Southwest: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/14/director-kevin-smith-too_n_461803.html (Note: This is just one of the early articles about the story as it was first breaking.)
United Breaks Guitars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Breaks_Guitars

Now it's on you! Share your experiences, and get connected online!

Waitlist Questions

2010-03-31T15:31:00.003-04:00

It's that time of year again -- the time when the dreaded wait list letters are starting to hit the mail. Our office has started a blog to keep our students updated about what's happening with the waitlist this year. You can check here for all the details, and we'll keep updating this with information as things change.

Best wishes to those of you who have applied, and congrats again to those of you who have run the gauntlet of a very difficult admissions process for Fall 2010. I wish we had room for all of you.

Congratulations Seawolves fans!

2010-02-25T09:53:00.002-05:00

Had a great time last night on campus as our men's basketball team celebrated the university's first America East Conference regular season championship:

The title gives us a guaranteed bid into one of the big postseason tournaments. If we win the America East tournament, then it'll be the NCAA tournament; if not, the NIT. Either way, it's a huge victory for a school and a program that's come a long way in the last four years... congratulations guys!

eRecruitment Web Forum on February 17

2010-02-06T21:51:00.003-05:00

Our friends from College Week Live are hosting an eRecruitment Web Forum on Wednesday, February 17, from 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm. It's quite a star-studded lineup that I've been asked to join, including Fritz McDonald from Stamats, Rachel Reuben from SUNY New Paltz, and Brad Ward of BlueFuego.

Please take some time to join us that day. It's free, and you can register online here. Hope to "see" you there!

IMHO 7 Reasons Why Higher Ed Admissions Is The Best Gig

2010-01-28T09:40:00.004-05:00

Maybe you've read Mark Greenfield's (@markgr) question about why higher ed is the toughest gig on the Web, or Nikki Kauffman's (@NikkiMK) answer. Well, I was inspired this morning by Michael Fienen's (@fienen) response on @eduguru about why it's the BEST gig on the Web, and figured I'd put an admissions spin on it. So with that, IMHO, seven reasons why higher ed admissions is the best gig out there.

1) Job Security - So they say the economy isn't so strong. Well, you know what smart people do when they get laid off? They come back to school to get retrained. And you know what smart people do when the economy gets better? They come back to school to earn degrees -- or advanced degrees -- so they can make even more money and get an even better job. I'm not saying that the American college system is without faults, and I know that "a bachelor's degree doesn't do what it used to do" in the job world, but still, you have to start somewhere, and whether it's a four-year liberal arts degree or a two-year associate in applied science, having those skills and that knowledge will always be priceless. And they'll always need people out there pounding the pavement, responding to phone calls, and reading those recommendation letters. That's us!

2) Flexibility - During our crazy season, which runs roughly from early August with training and workshops through late July with new student orientation programs, we work ungodly numbers of nights and weekends. College nights at high schools, telecounseling and/or open office hours in the evenings, Open Houses and Admitted Student Days on Saturdays and Sundays... they're all part of the job. Thankfully, our supervisors understand that, and know that it's okay to request a day off the week after an Open House, or to come in a little late on a day when you're going to be making phone calls until 9:00 pm. Very little about college admissions -- or really any student affairs position, and I think of us as student affairs even though some folks don't -- is 9-to-5, and there's something wonderful about that.

3) Leadership Opportunities & Professional Development - There are so many things you can do to get involved, both on and off your campus. Want to get involved in committee work? Faculty Senate? Orientation? Volunteer at basketball games? Serve on search committees? You can do all of that, sometimes all in the same day. You want to go to conferences and meet people from across the state, across the country, across the world who are doing what you're doing? Join NACAC, or if you can't afford that, your local version (NYSACAC, NEACAC, PACAC, et al). Or your local counseling association; we have three here on Long Island alone (East End Counselors, Western Suffolk, and Nassau County). There are so many ways to add lines to your resume, and more importantly, grow both as a person and as a professional through networking.

4) Industry Resources - Every industry has resources. Journals, trade magazines, listservs, or whatever. But how many industries have a built-in army of people ready and willing to help as ambassadors, photo and video and interview subjects, tour guides, interns, assistants, or whatever? They're our students, and they're the best resource we have in the admissions office.

5) The Campus Community - How great is this? It's like I never left college! There's a huge arts center right outside the door to my office, where they have film festivals and operas and plays. We have football, lacrosse, basketball, tailgating, guys getting drafted by professional teams... maybe we're not Duke, but it's a pretty vibrant athletic community nonetheless, and we have the best mascot in all of college sports. You want food? We have 23 different dining facilities, from Starbucks to Wendy's to (now) CPK, all within walking distance. And I can pre-pay on a faculty meal card and I don't even have to pay sales tax!

6) Challenges - As much as what an admissions person does is cyclical -- college fair season, reading season, yield season, orientation season, rinse, repeat -- the fact is that the players, and even the rules, change every year. The mechanics of the application process change, schools go on and off your target lists, counselors change schools (both high school counselors and college admissions folks), technology changes (and that goes beyond just Facebook and Twitter, but they count too)... what worked one year is supposed to work the next, but it's not always that neat, and so much of strategic enrollment management is playing that game of "where do we go next, and how do we get there?" that new college admissions folks don't always understand, but once you've been doing this for nine years like I have, you see it's fascinating.

7) The students - I know they drive us batty on a regular basis, and so do their parents. But ultimately, as my wife reminds me sometimes, people "leave your office and celebrate by going out to dinner." We're changing people's lives, whether we remember that or not. I love working with our students; I know it's cliche, but it's wonderful to see them learn and grow, and thrilling to share in their successes, whether it be getting a great job, or getting into a grad program, or even just getting through a freshman chemistry exam, which was a big deal one week this fall in the freshman seminar I taught. To watch our students charge the field when our football team beat Liberty in November for the Big South Conference title was unreal; like I said, I know we're not Duke or Florida State, but that still brought a tear to my eye, because they were passionate about being part of this community that we've all worked so hard to build.

Some ask me if I want to do this forever. Honestly, I don't know. I certainly didn't want to grow up to be an admissions counselor when I was a kid. But there is so much reward, so much value, in living and working in the university setting that I can't see myself leaving.

Congratulations!

2010-01-25T12:08:00.004-05:00

To our first round of admissions decisions, congratulations! We started sending out decisions on Friday to a handful of students, but with that, I have a few caveats:

1) If you haven't received anything in the mail -- or via SOLAR -- from us yet, that's okay. How we mail out decisions has nothing to do with how high your SATs are, or when you sent your application in, or where you are in the alphabet. Our process is very detailed; we'll get almost 30,000 applications this year for Fall 2010. As such, there is a lot of mail to open, a lot of paper to scan and check and file, and a lot to read. We'll get through things as quickly as we can, but if you didn't get anything and "all your friends did," we ask that you please be patient.

2) If you have been admitted, please get those deposits in! No sense waiting until the last minute, as we'll make sure you get invited to all of the special events we have, both on- and off-campus, this spring for admitted students. Log into SOLAR and fill out the New Student Preferences form -- that's where you'll indicate all of your housing/roommate preferences, including your choice of Undergraduate College -- pay those deposits, and enjoy the rest of your senior year of high school.

3) Join us on Facebook! There are a handful of unofficial FB groups out there that may provide some good information, but there's also the official SBU Class of 2014 group, here. Become a fan and we'll keep you updated on what's happening between now and the start of classes this fall, from receptions to athletic events to deadlines to orientation and everything else in between. You can follow us on Twitter also.

(A quick note on the Facebook side of things -- there's a group called URoomSurf that's advertising on some of our groups. Please be aware that they are a commercial company that has no affiliation with Stony Brook University or our housing process.)

Deadlines and Admissions Requirements

2010-01-19T11:45:00.002-05:00

Well, we're deep into the throes of admissions application reading season, which means lots of long hours staring at my screen, trying to piece together transcripts and test scores and recommendation letters and all that jazz as we try to craft our incoming class for Fall 2010.

There's a lot of things that go into a successful application to Stony Brook; as we're reading, here are some of the things we're seeing. (And I know this won't help the seniors much, but it might help the Class of 2011.)

* Please keep taking math in 12th grade. Especially if you're going to be involved in an academic program that requires it (math, science, engineering, or business, for example), but even if you're not. Political Science requires statistics, as do a lot of the social sciences. Even English majors are still required to take one math and two science classes during their time here at Stony Brook, and math is not easy to pick back up if you've spent time away from it.

* If there's a deadline -- even a recommended one, like we have -- then please do your best to get things in well in advance of it. We've gotten a lot of phone calls in the last two weeks about applications/transcripts/recommendations that were sent at the end of December for the December 31 deadline for our honors programs. "Not for nothing," as I tend to say, but if you're applying for an honors program, wouldn't you want to show us how much you're on your game by getting everything in early? (Maybe that's just me.)

A quick note on transfers: We are CLOSED for spring, and we have been for several weeks now. (And no, there's really nothing you can do at this point.) However... if you are planning to apply for Fall 2010 as a transfer student to Stony Brook, be aware that the deadline is March 1 for applications.

That means that by March 1 -- at the time of application -- we'll be looking for 24 completed college credits (that's typically at least two completed semesters, not one complete and one in progress) with at least a 3.0 GPA. There is some wiggle room for students who are earning an associate's degree from a local community college, but transfer space is very tight these days, so please be sure to get your documentation in to us as early as possible. We'll admit transfers for fall on a space-available basis... and once that space is full, it's full, unfortunately.

That said -- best wishes to the high school seniors! (Don't get senioritis!) I'll hopefully have some more information soon about where I'll be this spring so you all can come see me on the road.

I Lost On Jeopardy, Baby

2009-12-05T20:17:00.004-05:00

Well, this is it – my Jeopardy Journal. Before I get started with the details of my whirlwind day in Los Angeles, I need to answer a few of the most common questions I’ve gotten since I got back:

How did you get on the show?
The audition process starts with the 50-question online exam, which usually happens in the spring. If you do well enough on that, they invite you to an actual audition; mine was at a hotel in New York in June. At the audition, you take another 50-question test, then play a shortened version of the game to see how well you’d show on TV. (It’s still casting for a TV show, even though you need to really prove how much you know also.) Once you get through that, you’re “on the list” for eighteen months; they called me relatively quickly, for example, but one of the other guys who was there on the same day as me had been on the list for sixteen months before he was called.

When did you tape?
Jeopardy tapes every two weeks, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. They tape five shows – a full week – each day. If you win the last show on Wednesday, you have to maintain your silence and go back in two weeks to continue your run. (If you read Ken Jennings’ Brainiac, he says that was one of the hardest parts of his run – having to explain to people why he vanished for a few days every other week without telling them why.) Contestants are asked to bring a few changes of clothes with them to the studio; if you win your game, you have about fifteen minutes or so to breathe, change, fix your makeup, and get back out there for another game, which looks like it’s the next “day” when it airs. I taped my show in mid-October.

How did you get out of a week of recruitment travel?
Our Associate Dean of Admissions, Rob Pertusati, is wonderful. I told him I was going, and he told me that as long as I could find someone to cover my programs, I could go. Of course, it had to happen during some of the biggest events of the year: the CSCA Conference and the Wilton/Ridgefield and Greenwich High School college fairs... so I owe huge thanks to Sharon Brennan and Lisa Piquette from our office for covering for me while I was out in California.

What’s Alex like?
Honestly, I have no idea. The first time we saw him was the first time you see him – when he walks out on stage through his magic doors. You know how he hangs out and chats with the contestants after the show while the credits roll? As soon as the cameras cut, he’s gone.

Alex does, however, hang out during commercial breaks (the show is taped in “real time”), and he takes questions from the audience. That’s actually pretty neat. No earth-shattering revelations, but it was nice to see a slightly less formal side of Alex. Also – he seems so flawless on the final production, but he actually does flub a clue now and then. Sometimes during a commercial break they’ll have him re-record some audio on a clue.

Did they fly you out there and put you up in a nice hotel?
Ha! No. However, they’re guaranteeing you $1,000 – the third place prize – if you appear on the show. (Second place is $2,000, and the winner keeps his or her cash.) So in a worst case scenario, that $1,000 covers my cross-country flight and two nights in the Culver City Marriott, which is not a top hotel, but gets the job done. The show does provide a shuttle from the hotel to the studio on the morning of taping, which is nice.

How do they decide what to talk about during the chat segment?
The contestant wranglers ask you to submit at least five interesting stories. They pick what they think are the three most interesting, and put them on an index card for Alex. They highlight one, but Alex can go any direction during taping.

Do you know what categories are going to be on there? Do they tell you what to study?
Not at all. You have no idea. They have a compliance company hired by Sony who comes in every morning, takes the six games’ worth of questions they have prepared, shuffles them, and chooses five to be played, in order. That’s how it goes. It’s entirely the luck of the draw.

As far as what to study, you basically have to know everything about everything, ever, because anything can come up. You really have to get lucky on the clues, which you’ll see later. I spent six weeks compiling a spiral notebook of everything I could find; pages on presidents, world leaders, art, music, opera, sports, explorers… everything. I studied what I called my Big Book of Knowledge for the first half of my recruiting season, nights and weekends, and the whole plane ride out to LA; you just never know what’s going to come up.

So how does everything work?
Well, here you go! I woke up the morning of taping early (I was still on East Coast time) and ready to go. My dad and stepmother flew out for the taping, as did my sister Lauren. (My wife Emily was stuck home with the kids, unfortunately.) I had planned on going with the red shirt – gotta show that Stony Brook pride – but Lauren convinced me to go with the blue shirt first because it looked better. I put my good luck charms in my pocket – a Mets pin with a logo my late Uncle Tony designed and my Ken Jennings autographed baseball card – and headed down to catch the shuttle.

Down in the lobby, I was a little early, and saw a woman sitting at the next table also holding a garment bag and looking nervous, so I introduced myself; she turned out to be Sheryl Silverstein, who had driven up from San Diego for the taping. A few others shuffled in over the next fifteen minutes, until there were eight of us waiting for the bus:

• Kimberly, the returning champ who was already $22,200 richer
• Dave, an Air Force colonel and the base commander from Nellis AFB in Las Vegas
• Emily, who lives in Astoria and works for a charity in NYC
• Ryan, a rental manager from Myrtle Beach
• Sheryl, an attorney from San Diego
• Sidarth, a quiet, intense law student from DC
• Denise, from New Jersey, whose name I keep forgetting
• and me, Chris, your friendly Stony Brook University admissions guy

The best part so far: Kimberly couldn’t have been nicer. Everything I read about how incredibly friendly everyone is around the show is completely true. It’s imposing to meet a Jeopardy champion, especially one you might have to play against for money later that day. But Kimberly was great, giving us some tips on what to expect over the course of the day and really building a nice social atmosphere.

Once we got to the studio, we met the rest of that day’s contestants:
• Kathleen, a lawyer from Long Beach
• Todd, who had been the alternate on the previous day’s taping
• Alonzo, a film critic from LA, who served as the alternate
• Shawna, a political science PhD student

Once we got through security, we took another shuttle back to the studio, which is in the center of the Sony lot, right next to the Wheel of Fortune studio. When we walked in the side door into the green room, I got just the tiniest glint of the giant bright blue curtain that drapes the back of the set; it was so enticing.

They sat everyone down in the green room to go over all the details. We re-signed our contracts, went over our personal information and chat topics, and got through the first round of makeup. Then Robert and Maggie, the contestant wranglers, went through the day, step by step. They covered every tiny detail of the game and the production, sharing funny stories from past shows. Once everyone was ready, Glenn, one of the other wranglers, brought the group out on to the stage for the first time. Everybody got a chance to practice on the buzzer, and to practice using the light pen (to write your name at the beginning and Final Jeopardy at the end). Once everyone got a chance to play around a bit, they started with a group of three and ran through a live game. They swapped contestants out as everyone gets comfortable, but everyone got a chance to really practice in a live game setting.

A few observations about the stage:
• It’s both way bigger AND way smaller than you think. The aforementioned shiny blue drape is enormous; it must be more than thirty feet tall. And the new TV screen that they added this season between Alex’s podium and the contestant podiums – where the Final Jeopardy category shows up first – is huge too; I didn’t even realize they made TVs that big.
• The game board is larger than life. The individual screens need to be big enough to read clearly across the stage, so they’re pretty big; stack thirty of them in a big grid, and it’s big. Very, very big. I’m guessing it’s twelve or fifteen feet tall.
• Across from the contestant podiums, to the left of the board and very high in the air, are the score panels so we can see what you can see at home. You’ll see contestants glance up there from time to time, especially during breaks and at wagering times, like during Daily Doubles. They tell us to ignore them, but it’s tough to do. (As I watched my show, especially as it got late, I glanced up there a lot as I realized time was running out.)
• There is one other large-screen television to the left of the game board that you can’t see on TV. That’s where all of the video clues come up. Again, you can catch contestants look that direction, mostly when Video Daily Doubles are being read.
• The stage floor is shiny black tile. You want it to be marble or something, but it’s not.
• The judges/producers table faces the stage, right in front of the audience. (You can sometimes see it on the wide stage shots.) That’s where all the behind the scenes action happens, including the guy who presses the button at the end of each clue that activates the buzzers. (I’m not going to go into detail about the buzzers, because Michael Dupee covers it pretty well here: http://www.pisspoor.com/buzzer.html)
• The white lines on the floor aren’t just design elements; they actually mark steps or ledges. They’re lit very brightly on stage so you don’t fall.

As taping time got closer, they announced the first two players – Shawna and Ryan drew the first match against defending champ Kimberly. It was also announced that this would be the Tuesday show, December 1. (Usually they tape Monday through Friday, but adding their monthly celebrity games this season have messed up their regular schedule.) They brought the whole group back to the green room while the three players got ready. Once the live audience was seated – we were instructed very clearly NOT to attempt communication with our family members in the audience – we were ushered back into the audience, Kimberly, Ryan, and Shawna went on stage, and the first taping began. (I took them pretty seriously with the warning. My family was right behind me and across an aisle during most of the taping, and I had no idea they were there until I got on stage and finally looked out to find them.)

The first order of business before each show is the taping of the “Hometown Howdies,” which appear on the Jeopardy Web site and get farmed out to the local affiliates of each contestant so they can advertise their local presence during the week. (Apparently, I was on at least twice on the morning of my show.)

Once those are done, it’s GAME ON. The lights go up, the music starts, and Johnny Gilbert starts his familiar “This! Is! Jeopardy!” tag line.

The first round was simple enough, with chess-related category titles. But when the first category in Double Jeopardy was revealed to be T.S. ELIOT, I was glad that they didn’t pick me to play first. Early in the DJ round, Ryan “promised his friends” that he’d try a true daily double and missed an obvious Jeopardy staple… if it’s a female painter, odds are good that it’s Georgia O’Keefe. He worked his way back into the game, though.

It looked like a runaway for Kimberly midway through Double Jeopardy, but Shawna and Ryan kept chipping away, and a tough Daily Double miss by Kimberly followed by an easy follow-up by Shawna brought them within a few thousand dollars heading into the final. When the category – POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY – came up, you could almost sense Shawna, the Political Science PhD student, jump out of her skin. The answer was about “Principles of Political Right,” a French treatise from 1762. I couldn’t get Tocqueville’s Democracy in America out of my head, even though I knew that was wrong. That was Ryan’s guess, though, which dropped him down to a shell-shocked $1.

The correct answer was Rousseau’s Social Contract, which Shawna got – doubling her score – and Kimberly didn’t, which gave Shawna the first game of the day and $19,600.

(Interesting FJ Fact: You know how it looks like Alex is standing right next to the board when the Final Jeopardy clue is revealed? He’s not; he’s standing right in the middle of the stage, but the camera angle makes it look like he’s right up next to the board. I thought that was weird. Also odd – while the contestants are writing and the “think music” is playing, Alex just kinda wanders around the stage seemingly aimlessly. It’s funny, the things you don’t see on TV.)

Dave and Kathleen got the call in game two. I don’t know if I was quite ready yet, so I was happy to watch this one too. When the categories came up for single Jeopardy – including ACTRESSES’ ROLES and “W”ORLD HISTORY, I was definitely glad to be sitting this one out.

Kathleen came out strong, ringing in early and often – along with Colonel Dave – and had the lead at the first break. After the break, they traded questions and were separated by just $600 at the halfway mark, with the defending champ a distant third. DJ featured categories on sports and Tootsie Rolls, among other things. (The first clue, which asked for the principal ingredient on the label of a Tootsie Roll, got the response “What is paper?” from Dave, which got a chuckle from Alonzo and me, sitting in the audience. The correct answer, which somehow nobody got, is sugar.)

A couple of military questions (a 1918 Tootsie roll ad, a clue about ICBMs), an easy Daily Double about New Coke, and a run through the sports category got Dave off quickly, though, and rolled through the DJ round with a lead he wouldn’t relinquish. Kathleen got a big Daily Double midway through the round, bringing her within $200 of Dave, but he held tough, taking $20,000 and a $3,400 lead into Final Jeopardy.

The category, PHRASE ORIGINS, was pretty wide open. The clue, “Used in 1947’s ‘U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey,’ this 2-word term became widely used again in NYC on 9/11/01,” seemed pretty easy, especially to any of us who lived in the New York area. Shawna, from Rockville Centre, wrote “What is air defense?” ending her reign. Kathleen and Dave, the military man, both successfully answered “What is Ground Zero?”… and thanks to a waaaaay-too-risky bet-it-all wager, walked out with $39,999.

By this point, I was ready and itching to get in there. I thought Dave was a loose cannon who got lucky with a couple of military questions and risky wagers, and figured he wasn’t going to get lucky twice; I also thought I was due to get some favorable categories.

But it was not meant to be. “Todd and Emily! You’re up next!” At this point, I knew I was going to make it through lunch, which meant I was going to get another round of practice on the buzzer and the board. So I was actually encouraged; this was still a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I was happy to stretch it out as long as I could. (Besides, I also secretly wanted to win the last game of the day so I had to come back in two weeks for the next round of taping.)

So we sat down for Round 3, and I watched as some easy categories came up: “DOUBLE-LETTER WORDS,” “ALSO A U.S. STATE,” “COMMON LAST NAMES,” and “WOODSTOCK.” Double Jeopardy? “MATH” and “LETTER, PLEASE,” among others. Dammit! This was my game! No matter – all three contestants played tough games, with Todd taking a small lead into Final Jeopardy, “SHAKESPEARE’S WOMEN.”

The running joke at our house is that my answer to any Shakespeare question is “King Lear,” so before the question even came up, I had Goneril, Cordelia, and Regan in my head. (Ophelia hung in there too, just in case.) The final answer, “The name of this royal daughter from a tragedy is from a word meaning ‘little king.’” I knew it was Regan immediately, which made me 2 for 3 on FJs on the day. Dave got it right and, incredibly, bet just enough to win… IF Todd bet nothing and if Emily got it wrong… which Todd and Emily both did, respectively.

So going into lunch, Dave had more than $60,000 to his name, and there were four of us left to play: me, Sidarth, and the two women I really wanted to face, Sheryl and Denise. I figured as long as I didn’t get Sidarth, I was set, because I figured Dave’s luck was about to run out, and as long as I got one of the women, both of whom seemed to struggle with the buzzer during practice, I’d be okay as long as the categories were favorable.

On the way back from lunch, Dave and Robert (one of the wranglers) and I had a nice discussion about Dave’s THREE graduate degrees, which made me think that maybe it wasn’t juuuuust luck that played a factor in Dave’s two big wins. When we got back, they called me and Sheryl in to play. Finally, it was Go Time!

They brought us out, filmed our Hometown Howdies, and then that music started, and I could feel my heartbeat jump into my throat. Finally, this was very, very real. We applauded Dave, and applauded Alex as he came out and joked with Dave. (Not encouraging that Dave was already that comfortable on stage.)

So here were the first-round categories, as they came up, with my immediate thoughts on each one:

ART & ARTISTS – Dammit.
MOVIE NAME DROPPERS – What?
SHOE BRANDS – WHAT?
AMERICANA – Oh, Dammit.
MY SPACE – Don’t know what they’re going for here.
“FACE” BOOK – At least I get one “quotes” category. Good.

Sheryl jumped in with the first correct question in “FACE,” then went over to ART. Dave got that, then he and Sheryl took the entire rest of the “FACE” category without me getting in on the buzzer once… including Dave getting yet another military question (“What is about face?”) I looked up at the scoreboards to see Dave with $3,000, Sheryl with $400, and me yet to even get a buzz in – and started to panic, considering I didn’t like any of the categories left.

I woke up a bit, getting the next one (“What is a comet?” revealed that the MY SPACE category was about outer space, which I figured was good for me). We went back to ART again, revealing an answer about Frida Kahlo’s husband. I tried valiantly to picture the “art” page in my Big Book of Knowledge, where I wrote Frida and her husband right next to each other with a big bracket between them, hoping that I would remember them if it would come up… but the name Diego Rivera escaped me. (It didn’t escape Sheryl, who I realized at this point that I had severely underestimated.)

As we got to the first break, I was back alive, getting one more question (“What is a reebok?” for $400) and leaving me in a distant second place. I chatted with Alex about my Mets autographed baseball card collection, name-dropped my kids (which was awesome), and we moved on to the rest of the round.

Picked up “Puma” for $600 in SHOE BRANDS, and “Ultraviolet” for $800 in SPACE, and I was solidly in second place ($2600-$2000-$1000) with AMERICANA and the confusing MOVIE NAME DROPPERS left. Dave was quicker on the buzzer in Americana, though, getting yet another military question (“What is Memorial Day?”) and shutting me out heading into the movies category, which featured answers like “A FISH CALLED ____” (“What is Wanda?”) The $800 answer was “_____ GETTING MARRIED.” I thought “Rachel’s,” which is what I answered, and Alex marked it correct and moved on. I ended the round in second place:

DAVE $4400
CHRIS $2600
SHERYL $2400

However, it was not meant to be. My little “apostrophe-S” cost me that $800 AND another $800 for getting it wrong, which the producers told me during the commercial break. When we came back, Alex took the money away, leaving me in last place with $1200 and allowing me to choose first.

The Double Jeopardy categories, again with my thoughts:

21ST CENTURY SENATORS – Maybe.
POLKA YOUR EYES OUT – WHAT?
FORESTS – WHAT?!?
PRIME NUMBER, PLEASE – Okay, we’re good here.
NONFICTION – Noooooooooooo.
“LING” O – Good, another “quotes” category.

It was too tempting – and I said so – so I went right into POLKA for the first clue, which nearly caused my dad to have a seizure in the audience. (“What is he doing? He doesn’t know anything about polka!!”) The clue asked for the first four words to the Beer Barrel Polka. Dave buzzed in incorrectly with “What is barrel?” and Sheryl followed up with “What is ‘roll out the barrels’?” which Alex marked correct, so Sheryl chose POLKA for $800. Just as the clue came up – and this is the part you don’t see on TV – the director jumped onto stage and cut, because Sheryl had a little case of Chris Disease and added an S.

Because the next clue was temporarily revealed, they had to reset the board, so they asked the three of us to turn around while they fixed everything. Unfortunately for me, because they had already inadvertently revealed the correct answer (“What is ‘roll out the barrel’?”), I was not allowed a shot at it; they turned us around, rolled tape, and Alex buzzed Sheryl as incorrect and buzzed out the clue so I didn’t get a chance.

(If you still have the show on DVD, check it; it doesn’t look like there should be any reason why I don’t get a chance to answer.)

My other highlight was also in the polka category. The answer asked which of 2/4, 3/4, or 4/4 was the genre’s time signature; Dave guessed 4/4, Sheryl guessed 3/4, and then with a jubilant “Yes!” I correctly answered 2/4.

Dave, however, kicked it into overdrive in Double Jeopardy. A Nevada question (“Harry Reid”), a gun question (“rifling”)… it seemed like everything came up Belote, and he ran away early and made it stick, taking a runaway lead into Final Jeopardy:

DAVE $25,600
CHRIS $6,000
SHERYL $6,400

The category came up: THE 13TH CENTURY. Dave was uncatchable, unless he did something silly. My only hope was second place and the extra $1,000 bump that comes with it, but in order for that to happen, I needed Sheryl’s help. I figured she was likely to bet just enough to guarantee herself second place if she was right, which meant if I bet nothing, I was safe; I was already guaranteed third-place money, so there was no point in risking any money. I had to hope Sheryl was wrong.

They tell you whether or not FJ is going to be a “Who?” or a “What?”, which is actually very helpful. They don’t want anyone to forget to phrase it in the form of a question, so you write “what is” or “who is” at the same time you write your wager. So I knew going in that it was a “Who” – which meant my mind went immediately to Genghis Khan. I thought I was set! I mean, who the heck else was there in the 13th century, right?

So the question comes up – asking for an explorer – and I knew immediately ol’ Genghis wasn’t the answer. Problem was, I spent the first eight or ten seconds panicking that it wasn’t ol’ Genghis, and so I didn’t have a whole lot of time to come up with the answer. I knew Vasco da Gama was wrong, but he was the earliest explorer I could think of. As soon as Sheryl’s correct question – “Who is Marco Polo?” came up, I kicked myself, because I should have known that.

(I went back to my Big Book of Knowledge and checked out the “Explorers” page, to see if, in fact, I should have known Marco Polo. When I looked, though, it turns out I left him out of my list, because I was confident that his exploration was so distinctive, both in time frame and location, that I’d know it immediately. Dammit.)

The turning point, really, was my “S” on “Rachel Getting Married.” (I apologize to the lovely Anne Hathaway for not knowing the correct title of her movie, and I promise to make it up to her in person someday.) If I don’t put that S there, then Sheryl goes first in Double Jeopardy and the whole game unfolds probably very differently, because maybe she doesn’t start with the polka category.

Ultimately, success on “Jeopardy!” comes down to three things: first, getting lucky on the categories and the questions, which I didn’t; second, getting the timing right on the buzzer, which I didn’t – you can see me get frustrated midway through the DJ round when I got outbuzzed on six or seven clues in a row that I definitely knew; and third, not facing an Air Force colonel whose entire career depended on pressing the button on a fighter jet in life-or-death situations when seemingly all the clues have something to do with the military, airplanes, or Nevada. Which I very much did.

Congratulations to Dave Belote – he’s an extraordinary competitor who was a pleasure to face, and I’m glad to say we’ve stayed in touch since the taping. I wish him all the success in the world as he goes forward in his Jeopardy! career, and I’m going to root like hell for him when he gets the call for the Tournament of Champions at the end of the season.

(And I look forward to the day when they call me for the Tournament of Nice Players Who Lost to the Colonel Dave Belote Juggernaut.)

Watch me tonight on Jeopardy!

2009-12-04T10:48:00.002-05:00

Will I win? Watch and see! I've gotten a ton of questions about my time in Los Angeles, and I'll answer them all in a long blog post either later tonight or over the weekend.

It's Been A Long Time

2009-11-20T09:23:00.002-05:00

Well, I'm back. I apologize for blowing off an entire semester, but with applications starting to come in for fall 2010 (and decisions going out for spring 2010), I'm sure you all have lots of questions, so I'm here for you. I haven't forgotten you, I've just been busy.

But no more excuses! Here are some of the things I'm working on for the next few weeks:

A preview of a guidance counselor luncheon in Norwalk, CT on December 17 (for all you Connecticut guidance counselors out there)Checking in with some of our current students, as well as discussing some incredible students I met on the road this fall
Getting in touch with Dr. Peter Angelo from our Adapted Aquatics minor, which I knew virtually nothing about until a week ago... but I now think it's one of our most amazing programs!
And a preview of my forthcoming appearance on "Jeopardy!," coming to a TV near you on Friday, December 4. (Yes, thatJeopardy, the real one!)

I have to prepare for class now, but I'll get a post up this afternoon. Thanks for your patience, everybody!

Wolfie at Stony Brook's Starbucks

2009-06-26T09:15:00.001-04:00

Yes, we have a Starbucks in the old Stony Brook Union that opened this year. Very nice perk for all you coffee fans out there. We have a Dunkin' Donuts too, but it's on the wrong side of campus for me. I love my coffee, but I'm also horribly lazy.

"I'll Take 'Potent Potables' For $800, Alex."

2009-06-25T10:15:00.007-04:00

Had a fun little adventure yesterday, heading into NYC for the second round of the Jeopardy! auditions. I went down this road three years ago, and was glad to have the opportunity to give it another shot.

We're strongly discouraged from revealing any salacious details, but basically, they want to see if you're still smart (by giving another 50-question test, on which I think I probably only made a handful of mistakes), and if you'd play well on TV (by playing a mini-game with two other potential contestants, buzzers and all). Maggie, Robert, and Charlie, the contestant wranglers, are a lot of fun; they keep the mood light, even though we're all teetering on the edge of stress. Realistically, though, the "official" word is that everyone who makes it that far is in the contestant pool, and can be called any time in the next eighteen months.

They try out thousands of people, though, for what works out to only about 400 spots on the show every season... so the odds are pretty tough. It was actually funny for a university admissions guy to be on the other side of this process for once, if you think about it. I might be more qualified to be a contest wrangler than I would be to be an actual contestant, especially if they keep throwing literature and poetry categories up there.

Highlights:

Did pretty well on the written test, and hopefully my charming personality during the mini-game makes up for a few silly blackouts on the exam.
My knowledge of Jeopardy! history won me a cool J! water bottle. (Thank you, Frank Spangenberg.)
Maggie agreed with me that a bear could totally take down a moose.
I met a fellow baseball card collector, of all things; she works for the Animal Protective Foundation in Scotia, New York, which sounds like a wonderful organization.

A good experience, and hopefully I'll have a trip out to Los Angeles in the next eighteen months to share with you all.

Quoted in The Chronicle

2009-06-17T10:20:00.001-04:00

Yes, that's me. :)

What They're Saying About You... and What You Can (And Can't) Do About It

2009-06-10T16:30:00.002-04:00

Thanks to those of you who attended the workshop, either at SUNYCAP or SUNYCUAD. Here are some links to all of the resources I mentioned in the presentation:

Me, on Twitter: @cdorso
The Cluetrain Manifesto
BlueFuego, social media consultants (they're on Twitter too)

Some useful Facebook links:

Become a fan of Stony Brook!
Coming this Saturday: Facebook Usernames

Twitter:

Celebrities (@THE_REAL_SHAQ, @alroker, @trent_reznor)
Admissions Offices (@cdorso, @timinbuffalo, @Nealy1027)
Mascots (@WolfieSeawolf)

Twitter Resources (note: outside of Tweetdeck, which I love, I don't specifically endorse any of these... just sharing the links):

Blogs:

Bloglines
Google Reader
A quick how-to guide: Grow Bigger Ears In 10 Minutes

Other sites:

Unigo
Princeton Review's Survey Page
Google Alerts
College Confidential (message boards, visit reports, etc.)

Some white papers and guides:

NACAC: Reaching The Wired Generation - Nora Ganim Barnes
Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World - 52-page PDF
Noel Levitz E-Expectations - interesting series of research studies

Some higher ed folks who are doing it right, both SUNY and external:

Rachel Reuben (SUNY New Paltz)
Tim Nekritz (SUNY Oswego)
Mark Rothbaum at Varsity Outreach
Catie at U360
Mark Greenfield of Higher Education Web Consulting (and bloghighed)
Karlyn Morissette at .eduGuru

Thanks again for coming -- feel free to share other links in the comments!

Live From Lake Placid!

2009-06-09T22:06:00.002-04:00

Well, long time no post indeed. I'm back from paternity leave, and I've jumped right into the thick of the summer conference season. Had a nice -- albeit short -- time at NYSACAC last week, and I'm writing this from the Crowne Plaza in Lake Placid, putting the finishing touches on my "What They're Saying About You... and What You Can (And Can't) Do About It" presentation, which I'll give for SUNYCAP tomorrow afternoon at 4:30 and for SUNYCUAD on Thursday morning at 9:00.

I'll have a post with more details tomorrow.

What a place Lake Placid is! I was all set to chide both groups for having their conference a hundred miles from nowhere, but WOW is it gorgeous here. Breathtaking from the minute you get off the Northway all the way into town. And they have a ski jump! I wish they turned into a waterslide in the summer. I'd be all over that.

Thanks, FJ Gaylor Photography!

2009-05-05T07:03:00.002-04:00

Got three great days of photography from FJ Gaylor Photography last week... here are some of the great shots:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

(Hey! Who is that dapper young guy doing some counseling in the third photo of the "day three" set?!? Very nice.)

Deadline Day, and Taking Some Time Off

2009-05-01T16:11:00.003-04:00

Well, another May 1 is upon us, which means it's the last chance for all you admitted potential freshmen out there to get those deposits in. (A quick link to our New Students page for you, in case you want to log in and pay online.)

So... with that, welcome to Stony Brook's Class of 2013, all of you!

My big news is that I'm taking the next couple of weeks at home to spend some time with my daughter, who was born in January. I'll be posting from home as much as I can, with updates and details about all the conference excitement this summer (NYSACAC, SUNYCAP, ACT EPC in Chicago in July), as well as any and all news you need to know.

See you in the office after June 15!

SSK Student Arts Festival Starts Today!

2009-04-22T09:04:00.000-04:00

Forgot to mention this -- the Shirley Strum Kenny Student Arts Festival starts today. Full schedule is here. Lots of cool things coming, including:

The Stony Brook Idol finals today during Campus Life Time (12:40-2:20), on the Staller Plaza.
Romeo and Juliet opens tomorrow night.
There's an electronic music concert Friday night at Staller. (Cool!)
Saturday brings the Wang Center's annual Cherry Blossom Festival at noon, and a Thillana dance performance and the Complexions Contemporary Ballet performance, both in the evening.
Monday night is Undergraduate Music Recital night.
Next Wednesday during Campus Life Time is Dancing With The Stony Brook Stars (hmmm...)
and the Battle of the Bands final is at the Tabler Center on Thursday night, April 30.

And that's just a few of the things on the schedule! Lots of things happening as we wind up the spring semester!

Tweet!

2009-04-21T19:35:00.003-04:00

Stumbled across a tweet today from the College of Human Development, one of the fabulous Undergraduate Colleges here at Stony Brook. Very exciting to see them on Twitter -- the first of our UGCs to do so! Here's their link:

http://twitter.com/hdvcares

If you're a prospective student, make sure to follow them... Joe Robinson, the college advisor, and David Scarzella, the Kelly Quad Director, are both excellent guys who contribute a lot to the Stony Brook experience. Both of them are important people to know on campus, so make sure you check them out.

Hopefully the rest of the colleges will follow suit soon!

Don't forget to follow all these Stony Brook Twitter-ers:

@WolfieSeawolf - Wolfie, the best mascot in college sports
@sbueats - Campus Dining services (full site here)
@sbuballroom - our Ballroom Dance club team (So, am I doing this thing next week or not? I'm so ready to start promoting the heck out of this.)
@alekacos - Aristotle Lekacos, who runs the Stony Brook MBA program
@THiNKMagazine - "the progressive publication of Stony Brook University"
@Matt_Hammer - part-time NYC-area weatherman, full-time SBU student
@wtfoodge - Joel Liu is a Stony Brook student who's fun to follow (Joel! Where's my sticker?)
@TonyCai - Stony Brook admissions blogger
@luapula - Tino, former Admissions grad assistant and intramural softball legend
@hdvcares - Again, the Undergraduate College of Human Development
@cdorso - your friendly neighborhood Admissions Guy

Lots of Stony Brook folks out there tweeting -- anyone else I missed?

SUNYCAP & SUNYCUAD, June 10-12

2009-04-20T12:38:00.003-04:00

Cool! I am putting together a workshop titled "What They're Saying About You... And What You Can (And Can't) Do About It" for SUNYCAP this summer, and the folks at SUNYCUAD, one of our sister organizations, have asked me to present for them as well. What fun we'll have in Lake Placid this June!

Earthstock 2009

2009-04-17T16:50:00.001-04:00

A few photos:

Earthstock this Friday!

2009-04-14T15:15:00.002-04:00

From the release from Dr. Kenny:

I invite all members of the campus community to participate in a Stony Brook tradition -- the campus-wide celebration of "Earthstock 2009," this Friday, April 17, on the Academic Mall and Student Activities Center Plaza (rain location will be the Wang Center) -- five days prior to the national observance of Earth Day. Earthstock is an award-winning program comprising 29 programs over 9 days on the main and Southampton campuses of Stony Brook, and is made possible through the support of more than 40 university and private/corporate sponsors and collaborators.

Our signature Earthstock event, the Opening Festival on main campus, begins at 10 a.m. with over 100 educational exhibitors, Spring Pride Patrol, music, dance, entertainers and activities, with the official opening ceremonies at 12:15 p.m. near the fountain, followed by activities continuing throughout the day and evening. The day will center on the theme of "Sustainability - The Future is Now," providing exhibits and activities all afternoon, and culminating in a special Provost's and Living World lecture - a live telecast from Australia to the Wang Center Theater at 7:30 p.m. entitled "The Coral Reef Crisis" by the Director of the Center for Marine Studies at the University of Queensland, Ove Hoegh-Guldverg.

The festivities kick-off at Stony Brook Southampton on Wednesday, April 15 with Vice President and Dean, Dr. Mary Pearl's lecture, "New Frontiers in Conservation Science" at 1 p.m.in the Avram Theater, and continue throughout the week with a Green Film Series, a Green Formal, and one hour ecological boat rides on the bay.

Earthstock 2009 includes significant involvement from our academic sector, such as the panel presentation "The Baked Apple: Metropolitan New York in the Greenhouse," featuring Stony Brook faculty and members of the New York City Panel on Climate Change. Other highlights include an Environmental Exhibition of Student Research on April 17, a lecture on April 19 as part of the department of Geosciences "Our Environment" series, a showing of the award-winning film, "Farming our Future" on April 20, and participation in "IBM's Smarter Planet University Jam," a 72 hour global online conversation to help develop solutions to climate change involving 180 universities worldwide.

Earthstock activities extend from April 15 through April 22. Last year, more than 4,000 students, faculty, and staff enjoyed the festivities and the opportunities to learn about environmental sustainability. I hope you will find time in your day to join us on the Academic Mall and other locations for this exciting and educational event. For a complete Earthstock weeklong schedule, more specific information about each event, and information about taking the Green Pledge online, please visit the Earthstock website

My few cents to add:

Peat Moss & The Fertilizers will be playing on the Academic Mall on Friday at 11:30. Woo!
Don't forget to buy a duck for the 2:00 duck race down the "stony brook"!

See you on campus on Friday!

Admissions -- a 24-hour job

2009-04-09T12:57:00.002-04:00

Okay, so I'm exaggerating a bit. I don't know how much Stony Brook proselytizing I've done in the middle of the night. But as I left the Student Activities Center just now after I enjoyed a nice lunch, I noticed a woman and three high school students wandering aimlessly around our Academic Mall, holding a worn, marked-up campus map.

Seeing as it's my job to help these types of wayward souls, I approached them and asked if I could help. And sure enough, it was a mom with three high school students from Carmel, New York, who were visiting campus and were totally lost. They didn't realize that our students are on Spring Break this week, and as a result, a lot of things would be closed and that most of our students wouldn't be around. (Thankfully, most of the offices and a few of the dining halls are open, and I was able to direct them around enough to get a sense of the place.)

But it raised an interesting point... in student affairs, you're really never off the clock. As much as I'd like my day to end at 5:00 Monday through Friday, I make sure to check in on our Facebook group almost every night and a couple of times over the weekend. I wear Stony Brook gear -- a polo shirt or my Seawolves hat, usually -- on the weekends. I know I'm a little bit crazy, and I certainly don't expect everyone in my office to be the same way, but in our business, every moment counts.

I don't know if these students I met today are merit scholars or not, or even if they're ultimately admissible to Stony Brook. But if they were lost on campus, it's possible that they might have left here with a bad impression of us. And with thousands of colleges out there, you can't afford to leave a bad impression with a student. You wind up with this:

"Oh, Stony Brook? Yeah, we visited there a few weeks ago. We got lost on campus. It's true what they say; it's a big, impersonable place."

instead of this:

"Oh, we had a great visit to Stony Brook. The people there are really friendly; even though it was Spring Break, someone showed us around and was really helpful."

It goes a long way. So maybe you're not always on the clock, but you really could be... because you never know when you have the opportunity to impact your enrollment.

On a side note -- here's my recommendation of the day for all you Deans of Admissions out there: Hook up your staff -- or at least your counseling staff, the ones who work with students, if not the entire staff -- with meal cards so they can eat on campus regularly. It's a relatively minimal expense; if every counselor in our office had a $250 meal plan for the year, it'd cost the office only $3,500 for the year, and it could be worth much more than that in public relations down the road. I try to eat on campus at least once a week, and as a result, I know what the food is like when students ask. I see the flyers that the clubs and organizations have posted on the bulletin boards, so when students ask what's happening around campus, I can share that.

And I see our students; our wonderful students, with whom we, as Admissions folks, tend to lose touch once they've enrolled. We immediately start looking toward the next class, and it's easy to forget the students you've spent the last eighteen months or so developing relationships with. Knowing that they're here, enjoying their Stony Brook experience, makes my job not only worthwhile, but easy -- I'm actually helping people, not just clicking mindlessly through transcripts and test scores.

(As my wife reminds me, "People leave your office and go out to dinner to celebrate." I think we lose that sometimes in the clutter.)

The Difference Between Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at Stony Brook

2009-04-01T11:45:00.002-04:00

It's a question we get sometimes... what's the difference between math and applied math? A poster at College Confidential named SBUMathGrad put it pretty well, so I'll simply copy and paste his thoughts:

Here is my assessment of MAT and AMS (I double majored in both).

AMS is definitely more about getting a job. I really recommend doing AMS + compsci minor rather than AMS MAT double major if you care about a job and not about graduate school in pure math. Some of the students have gone on to become actuaries, the AMS department offers 2 courses that helps you pass the first 2 exams before you graduate (this is standard actually but a good head start nonetheless).

A lot of the professors are quite good, very experienced in their field. Basically if you are worried about your career opportunities, I really recommend an AMS/Compsci double major. It might take longer, but you have a lot of career opportunities since you know statistics and programming. Very very useful. They also have some good contacts, you just need to let them know your intentions early. Stop by Alan Tucker or Joseph Mitchell's office and have a chat with them, both are very nice guys.

The MAT route, many will disagree, is pretty much if you want to go to a pure math PhD program. I have not heard of too many MAT majors getting jobs out of undergrad, this is just my experience. But on the other hand, all the good MAT majors go on to graduate school.

Career wise, MAT is really about I want to become a research professor. AMS you can still go to graduate school but have some nice employment opportunities. AMS also lets you get a BS/Masters combined degree in a field like stats, operations research and something else that I forget. They also have a good mathematicial finance professor in James Glimm (who is also a world class pure mathematician) and he seems to still be active.

Just another word to the wise, for pure math majors, Linear Algebra is considered one of the most important courses. Now 211 is the numerical one, where all you do is compute, but 310 is really the first "pure math" course you take. It's all proofs and abstract reasoning. It's used almost everywhere in math and many math professors say if you don't understand or like linear algebra, you probably won't like pure math. With MAT, you'll get more of the same with 310. Everything will pretty much be proofs, be long winded and frustrating. You have to like doing proofs. That is the name of the game.

I would like to say that a reason a lot of MAT majors don't get jobs is probably because that's not their main goal; their main goal is to get into grad school and usually pure math grad school. Unless you really want to do pure math, I wouldn't major in MAT.

Now if you like problem solving AMS is a good option. Some of my AMS courses were actually more FUN than my MAT courses. If I had pursued AMS as heavily as MAT, I probably could've gotten a nice paying job out of undergrad.

So to summarize:
AMS Pros - good employability, good range of courses which prepare you for real jobs (statistics, probability, actuarial, operations research) and a double major with compsci is really a great idea. I say this because with any real applied math job, you need to know how to program, either statistics programs like SAS or with computer programming like C++ or Fortran.

AMS Cons - Hard to say, a con depends on context of who is asking. If you want to go to graduate school for pure math, AMS does not really help that much. Not proof intensive.

MAT Pros - If you do well, not just in class but with research and grad courses, you will get into a very good graduate school (If an idiot like me can get into top level grad programs, anyone can).

MAT Cons - Very little career training, but this should be understood from the beginning. You don't major in pure math to get a real life job. It happens, but applied math has so many more industry jobs. It's not even fair to compare them. And most industry jobs for pure math majors (i.e. I'm talking about those mathematical finance jobs on Wall Street) require a math PhD from a top school.

I liked almost every class I took in AMS and MAT, but I also love math, so again, context matters, it might be different for you.

EDIT:

Here are some potential careers coming out of an AMS with programming skills:
Statistician (rated the BEST job by the Bureau of Labor or the BLS)
Actuary (considered a top 5 job by the BLS)
Mathematical Finance (need to do a masters or a PhD, but if you do, it's big money. James Glimm who runs the math-finance department at SUNYSB has good connection with James Simons, the hedge fund mananger billionaire).
Operations Research Analayst
Code breaker at the NSA - the AMS department actually offers a course on code breaking, i think it's AMS 351. It teaches how you to encode messages using number theory and groups and how to break those codes sometimes.

These are all very nice high level jobs.

So the point is: AMS - better for your career, MAT - if you want to become a research mathematician. But of course if you do AMS, you can also go to an applied math grad program, very easily too. The faculty at both the AMS and MAT department are pretty friendly and will do their best to see you succeed. However, if you do just AMS, you will not be competitive enough to get into a pure math grad program.

In my opinion, both programs are really damn good. I loved almost every class I took in both majors. They both have some excellent professors who will dedicate time to their students. It's just they offer different things. In AMS 312 the mathematical statistics course, it was very hard and had lots of proofs. Then I had some courses where we didn't prove much but assumed a few key facts and solved some really cool problems, like in AMS 345 - Computational Geometry with Joseph Mitchell. We worked on robotics motion planning, where to place cameras to catch art thieves, very cool *****.

I would say the real "test" of whether or not you like MAT is when you take MAT 310, 320 and 313. These are the basic foundational courses in MAT. They are all proof intensive and very abstract. In 320 you rigorously prove all the facts you used in differential and integral calculus. 310 you take about more linear vector spaces, matrices, rigorous definition of the determinant and trace, complex operators, spectral theorem, etc.

Another way to test the waters, instead of talking to some math professors, spend an hour or two looking at the 310, 320 textbooks in the library. The linear algebra book is "Linear Algebra Done Right" by Axler and the 320 textbook is "Introduction to Real Analysis" by Bartle and Sherbert. Both are available on reserve at the Math Physics library. Really look through them. You'll see almost no applications. It's very abstract. Compare that to my 345 course where we did some very applied, real world things. Combinatorics is used in computer science and computer algorithms, statistics is used to model tons of real world situations. I believe Nancy Mendell works in biostatistics. Everyone in the AMS major can place one of their feet in the theoretical world and but also firmly place the other foot in real world application, and hence industry.

Thanks, SBUMathGrad!

Sound Advice

2009-04-01T11:22:00.004-04:00

From Mark at Montgomery Educational Consulting, one student's advice for those of you who might not have been admitted to your top schools.

There is not one school who will meet all of your needs and fulfill all of your dreams. There are dozens... hundreds even. You are likely, at this point, sitting on at least one, if not more than one, welcoming college admission letter. Go for it! You applied to these schools for a reason, right? Well, explore that reason further, and I'll bet you'll find a lot of other compelling reasons to attend that (or those) school(s).

Best wishes for your future... you've earned it!

Stony Brook on YouTube EDU

2009-03-27T13:37:00.002-04:00

YouTube, ever on the cutting edge, no matter what Alec Baldwin says, has launched YouTube EDU, which amalgamates all of the wonderful things that colleges and universities around the country are releasing.

(And yes, Stony Brook's on board.)

I don't know how necessary it is, other than having a nice jumping-off point for college-related videos. Every school has their own agenda and their own collection of videos, which really have no bearing on the others, but it's interesting to see which schools really buy into social media like YouTube and which ones don't.

Our athletic program has their own "Stony Brook Seawolves" page on YouTube as well, although it's not affiliated with this EDU effort.

Admitted Student Receptions!

2009-03-26T14:19:00.002-04:00

Had a great time last night at the Crowne Plaza Southbury at the first of two receptions for admitted students. We had eleven students and their families, along with our dean of admissions, our area representative, and one of my favorite alumni, Joe Ruggiero, on hand to help students get all the information they could possibly need about why Stony Brook is the best university in the whole entire world. (You think I'm exaggerating? Maybe.)

I'm writing this from Mystic, CT; we'll be hosting reception number two this evening at the Mystic Marriott. Looking forward to another exciting program... full report tomorrow when I'm back on campus!

Slideshow!

2009-03-23T13:59:00.001-04:00

Neat!

Stealth Applicants and the College Fair

2009-03-20T15:13:00.000-04:00

Andrew Meyers from Hope College wrote about his experience at the NACAC Western New York swing last week and the introduction of new "scanners" that will help streamline the experience for students and college representatives. Students have the option of pre-registering and printing out a bar-coded identification sheet, which can then be scanned by the colleges at the tables, saving them time from completing inquiry cards at the table.

I think it's a fascinating development, and you'd think that anything that makes the college fair easier would be a good thing, right? Not necessarily.

The benefits are easy: no more misspellings due to hastily-scribbled names and addresses, and no more incomplete or incorrect information, such as a student not listing a zip code or their high school or intended major. And the time factor is a big one, especially at the large NACAC-sponsored fairs, where you have hundreds of colleges represented, usually three or four times as large as a typical college night that a high school might host.

But if the college fair is truly changing, as Andrew says -- and he's right, it definitely is changing -- then how much does this truly help? Are students being serious when they're beeping their information into the scanner, or are they just running around, making a few connections so they can tell their counselor or parent that they did something that day instead of just hanging out with their friends? (We, on the other side of the table, know that there's a percentage of you who are at those big fairs during the day mostly just to get out of class. But please don't waste our time if you're just there to screw around.)

And are students really going to use the scanners? We saw a lot more students decline the offer to fill out an inquiry card this year, instead preferring to take an informational piece home to review at their leisure, then deciding whether or not to follow up with us on their terms, not ours. That's insanely frustrating to us as college representatives; I work hard to build relationships with students and parents I meet when I visit schools, but when I don't have a name, phone number, and e-mail address for you, then there's nothing I can do but sit back and hope you contact me. When you know that admissions is really a sales job in counselor's clothing, it's hard to lose "leads" like that, especially when you have a good conversation with someone and really want that follow-up.

With the dramatic increase in stealth applicants, I'd be more concerned with what we're not getting at the college fair than with what we are getting there. Students aren't using the college fair the way they were; it's not the only source of information for them any more. There are too many ways of getting college information that are faster, easier, and more complete than walking around a convention center or a high school cafeteria for three hours. Top students know they can get what they need online and take schools on and off their lists quickly and easily, without having to worry about being inundated with letters and brochures and e-mails.

I don't know that the college fair has an easy solution, and something tells me the fair as we know it will soon go the way of the dodo. It'll be interesting to see how we, as a profession, adapt.

Insight from students at KASCAC

2009-03-20T10:14:00.002-04:00

Thanks to Tom Williams for this! Tom sat in on a student panel at KASCAC this morning, and tweeted these insights about their college searching experience:

An overnight with a student is huge. Students don't want to hear the canned stuff.
Students are thinking about college as early as 6th grade. College tours as sophomores.
Don't set up a table at a high school. This passive recruiting is not effective. Assemblies are more effective.
Word of mouth is very important in choosing a college.
Choose your tour guides carefully. Coach and train. A bad college tour experience can cost you students!
Don't over-call your prospective students. Don't be a college stalker.
Students are looking for campuses that are multicultural.

There is so much we can learn from this, whether we can control it or not. I completely agree about the "table" thing -- I have more thoughts on that, and I'll post those later -- and on the tour guides, as I posted a few days ago. The "college stalker" comment was funny also.

The great equalizer, though... how can you control word of mouth?

"But Another Kid From My School..."

2009-03-19T10:07:00.003-04:00

With the next batch of admissions denials and waitlist letters hitting the streets this week, I figured I'd address a few things here.

Our admissions process for freshman this year was difficult. Very difficult. We'd love to admit a huge freshman class, but realistically, there's a limit on space -- space in the residence halls, space in classes. So when the applications pile up, we need to be more selective.

If you receive a waitlist letter this year, and you're interested in remaining in the active pool -- make sure you return the bottom of that letter indicating your interest ASAP. We can't promise we'll take anyone off the list this year, but if we do, we'll pull from those who have indicated that interest first. Wait list decisions will be made after May 1, however.

Jay Mathews in the Washington Post has great thoughts for high school seniors about how to survive the April "college crunch." My favorite point:

How to handle happy, or grieving, friends: The college admissions system, at least for our most selective schools, has become as rational as who wins bingo night at church. Nobody, including the college admissions officers, has a clear idea why certain students are admitted and others are not. Some rejected applicants are just as good as the accepted. Through no fault of their own, some of your closest friends will get into their first-choice college and some will not. You should put aside your own worries for a moment and practice two short speeches. To those who win this lottery, you should say: “That’s terrific. You worked so hard. You earned it. You are going to have a wonderful time.” To the losers you should say: “Of course you realize this is totally random. It has nothing to do with you. You will have a great time at East Pecos State. You will be running the place, and as you know, the research shows the name of your college has no effect on your success in life. All you need is great character and drive, and you have that.”

There's a good amount of truth in that, and The Quick and the Ed had an interesting post about the "randomness" of the admissions process at selective schools. I would never call our process random, but there's certainly an amount of randomness to it, especially when you're looking at a very small piece of the puzzle, i.e. you and a handful of other students you might know who also applied who have different admissions decisions than you do.

Yes, there is likely someone with "worse stats" than you who might have been admitted. And there might be people with "better stats," too. You can't believe everything you read on the internet, and everything your friends tell you. I'd say more than half of our students tell me their GPA and/or SAT is one thing, but their transcript says something very different. Or they're thinking of a weighted average, but we're looking at the unweighted grades. Or they're just looking at junior year, or senior midyear grades, when we're looking at the whole picture. Or they're thinking of their 1500/2400 SAT score, when it's really only 960/1600.

There's a lot that goes into the process, and again... I'm sorry we can't admit everyone. For those of you who will be headed elsewhere this fall, I wish you the best in your future endeavors, and I encourage you to keep us in mind should you wish to transfer down the road.

(Two quick side notes: One, I wouldn't follow Jay's waiting list advice at Stony Brook, though, as I honestly don't think that it'll help. And two, as jealous as I am of their success, let's go Binghamton! Beat them Dookies!)

Computer Science... Back In The Saddle

2009-03-17T13:25:00.002-04:00

Interesting data from the New York Times regarding how Computer Science is making a comeback at colleges and universities nationwide. It exploded within the last five to ten years as it became a lucrative field, but with the dot-com bubble bursting, the numbers fell off... but this year, they're back up. That's promising, and good to see that Stony Brook's followed the trend (see page 3 of this PDF), up last year in total students after shrinking by half over the previous four years.

Our ABET-accredited Computer Science program has changed and grown with the times, thankfully. We've added combined BS/MS and BS/MBA programs, added mandatory coursework in Professional Ethics, built a top-notch Computer Science Honors program, and developed two specializations, in Game Programming and in Human-Computer Interaction.

I don't know if this is a blip or a trend, but it certainly bears watching.

You Never Know...

2009-03-13T10:43:00.002-04:00

...what's going to help push a student to a particular school. Had a fascinating discussion yesterday with a parent of an admitted prospective freshman... to summarize, her daughter has a severe peanut allergy -- as do I -- and she had an attack from eating in the cafeteria on campus when she visited one of her schools recently.

This, in and of itself, wasn't the problem... those of us with food allergies are painfully aware of the dangers of eating unknown food, and although she was being careful, you can't always tell what's in certain foods. But the problem began when the college safety officer refused to transport her to the nearest hospital, which was, according to the mom, "several miles away."

I have an epi pen in my desk at all times, and I bring one with me on the road. Thankfully, I've never had to use one, but I know that it's not a panacea; you still need medical attention. Eventually, the student got the attention she needed, and she's fine; but it brought to light a very serious concern for her and her parents, and she called us to ensure that we had the proper facilities and services to handle emergency medical situations. (Obviously, having the largest teaching hospital in Suffolk County right on campus is a nice perk, and you can call "911" from any phone on campus and be immediately connected with a service professional, 24 hours a day. Here's a link to SBVAC, our Stony Brook ambulance corps.)

Students apply to a lot of schools that fit their needs, academically and socially. But you never know when "medically" gets added to that list of reasons as well!

A Veritable Beaver

2009-03-11T14:26:00.003-04:00

Busy, busy, busy today. Finally got in after taking my three-year-old for his checkup, and there's so much to do, so little time!

First, I'm hitting the road tonight for the first time, but it's local; I'll be at North Babylon High School's College Information Night. If you're a North Babylon parent, stop by and tell me how much you enjoy reading the blog!

Second, spaces are filling up for my two Connecticut receptions at the end of the month. I'll be in Southbury at the Crowne Plaza on March 25, and the Mystic Marriott on the 26th. RSVP here.

Plus, my e-mail inbox is full, my TweetDeck is tweeting like crazy, and I still have two jugs of water to drink before I leave at 4:00! (Gotta get my two full bottles of water a day.)

See you all on the road!

Tough Weekend for the Seawolves

2009-03-09T10:00:00.002-04:00

Ugh. With Vermont losing earlier in the day, I thought maybe, just maybe, this would be the year. It's okay; I like our team; it's the best team we've had since we made the jump to D-I. They'll be back in '09-'10.

Double Ugh. I'd comment, but... well. Coastal Carolina 36, Stony Brook 3. Yikes. Credit Joe Goglia and Jeremy Nowak for pitching a scoreless seventh and eighth innings, respectively!

Thank You, Thunder

2009-03-05T16:30:00.000-05:00

A little personal vignette for a Thursday afternoon...

Summer 1992: I was a teenage metalhead wannabe, reading either Circus or Metal Edge magazine (I don't remember which), when I stumbled across a review of a new CD from a band I'd heard very little about -- a British band called Thunder.

I was somewhat familiar with two of their songs, "Dirty Love" and "Love Walked In"; they had gotten a little bit of airplay back when MTV showed music videos all the time:

(Yes, that's a young Pamela Anderson in that video, before she became a "huge" star.)

Anyway,the review raved about the disc, track by track. So I figured I'd pick it up... and I was just blown away by it. That disc, "Laughing On Judgement Day," become a permanent fixture in my life, right next to Aerosmith's "Pump" and Tesla's "Psychotic Supper" as my three "desert island discs."

Every song hit me then, and they still do today: "Does It Feel Like Love?," "Everybody Wants Her," "Long Way From Home," "Today The World Stopped Turning," "A Better Man"... there isn't a bad track on there. The studio version of "Like A Satellite" is one of my favorite songs of all time -- but it's well worth the effort to track down the "Trident Sessions" acoustic version, which is gorgeous. (And hard to find, so it might be worth just picking up their 1998 double live disc, which includes a live recording of the "Trident" version.)

Looking back, "Laughing" was on the fast track to wild success; it had a hit producer (Duran Duran's Andy Taylor, a long-time friend of the band), a world-famous cover designer (Storm Thorgerson, best known for his work with Pink Floyd, including the iconic "Dark Side of the Moon"), and legendary A&R man John Kalodner, who appears in the "Dirty Love" video above, drumming alongside Harry James.

Sadly, Thunder fell off the map for me after that, as they never hit it big here in the States again. Before the Internet, it was much harder to keep tabs on what bands were up to if they weren't on MTV or in the metal magazines.

Several years ago, I came across a Thunder import CD single for a song called "Just Another Suicide" in a dollar bin at a record store. I was thrilled to see that one of my old favorite bands had kept on keeping on, as they say, and I immediately researched them -- only to find that they had broken up earlier that year. I faithfully tracked down all the albums I'd missed and fell in love with the band all over again... just in time to find out that they were getting back together and recording again!

Thunder's been an enormous part of my life the past six or seven years. I've bought everything they've released, even when the American dollar was so bad it meant I was spending $30 or more on a single CD. (Sorry, honey.) I was sure that they'd make it back over here and be big stars in the U.S.; back in my former life as the Director of the first-year Orientation program at Old Westbury, I even contacted their management company to see how much it would cost to have them play on campus. (Way too much, as it turned out.)

Why should you care? Well, on the heels of their latest disc and tour, they've decided to call it quits again. Twenty years is a long time to be making music, and Thunder has certainly delivered, over and over again for their small but rabid fan base. I have all nine studio albums, all eleven live discs (with the twelfth on the way, ordered last week), and lots of other tracks I've found over the years. It's hard to think that this is the end, and that we won't see new music from these guys any more, and I'm disheartened that I never got the chance to see my favorite band live in concert. I hope we'll continue to see them record in other places... and I'll always hold out hope we'll see Thunder Mark III down the road.

Thanks, guys.

The Quest of the Application

2009-03-05T12:09:00.000-05:00

Brilliant.

25 Things About the Stony Brook Admissions Office

2009-03-04T15:02:00.000-05:00

Hey, everyone on Facebook has done it, why shouldn't we?

1. Our immediate office has a staff of 34, from our Dean of Admissions down to the clerical staff, plus a handful of graduate assistants and temps.

2. We went digital this year; every credential received by our office (transcripts, test scores, essays, recommendations, etc.) was opened, cleared of staples/clips, scanned, checked, then indexed. Every... single... piece of paper. That's why we were a little slow this year. We've got the kinks worked out; things will be better next cycle.

3. None of the out-of-state counselors -- there are five of us -- have exterior windows in our offices. In fact, not counting the reception area, only ten of us in the entire office can claim an exterior window as our own. (That sounds a lot worse than I thought it did, now that I've actually counted it out. We should move.)

4. Two of us -- national rep Lauren Shallash and I -- have a college radio background.

5. We have as many graduates from other SUNY campuses working in our office than we do Stony Brook graduates. (Apparently, Stony Brook graduates get way better jobs than working in admissions!)

6. Stony Brook has hired admissions counselors away from just about every other school on Long Island; I came from Old Westbury, Lauren from Hofstra, Amanda and Marianna from LIU, Ryan and Dina from Adelphi, Robin from Nassau Community, and so on. So when we say we're the best school on Long Island, we know of what we speak. :)

7. Members of our staff have served on executive boards for organizations all over the place... on campus (University Senate), regional (WSCA), and statewide (SUNYCAP).

8. I forget what 8 is for.

9. All of our graduate assistants are music students. (Edward Garcia used to be an English PhD student, but he moved off to California this summer.)

10. In addition to our grad students, we're actually a pretty musical group; our Web guy Stefan is a musicologist, Ryan Donnelly is a world-class guitarist who used to play with the drummer from the Bravery, and I used to mangle vocals and acoustic guitar for a band in high school (and jumped up on stage to sing "The Joker" with The Burners UK at SUNYCAP a few summer ago).

11. I have my own personal Stony Brook Athletic Hall of Fame on my wall, featuring autographed cards from Joe Nathan, Craig Ansman, Chris Flinn, and Rollie Massimino, who coached basketball here in the late 60s.

12. Our office door (Lauren, Amanda, and I share a space) opens out to the main building hallway, but we don't have "Admissions" labeled anywhere on the door. It prevents students from getting us confused with the main reception area, which is just next door to the right, but instead, we get confused with the campus ID card office a lot, because they're right next door to the left. (We keep our door closed a lot.)

13. In addition to all of our domestic recruitment travel, our international counselor, Stav, spends several weeks every year overseas; she's in China today, and next week she'll be in Korea.

14. Our counseling staff comes from a wide array of academic backgrounds... almost all of us have master's-level degrees, but only one of us (me) has a college counseling degree; we do have a handful of folks who are certified high school guidance counselors, however.

15. Two of us -- Lyle and Marianna -- also work part-time down the road at Suffolk Community College. Lyle teaches on Fridays, and Marianna works in the counseling office.

16. Our whole office shares one fax machine and photocopier. (Not the same machine. We're not THAT high-tech.)

17. I have music playing in my office pretty much all day, every day. Right now? Thunder's live Christmas show, 2006. (Dina's usually listening to music too, but she's in Mexico right now while we sit under piles of snow here in New York.)

18. I'm on Twitter: @cdorso Follow me! (Stefan's on there too, but he never posts anything because he doesn't get Twitter.) I'm also on AIM, but I never remember to log in.

19. Travel has its perks; Lauren just qualified for a free flight on JetBlue, and Katie's going to Aruba on her Marriott points. (I'm a Holiday Inn guy.)

20. There's no "e" in "Stony Brook." And it's two words, with a capital "B." You'd be surprised how many times we get that spelled incorrectly.

21. Every wall in the office is a boring institutional color, like Navajo White... except one wall in our Associate Dean's office, which he painted a bright red.

22. We have to turn away a lot of students every day who are looking for things we don't offer, like elementary education certification, or night and weekend classes.

23. One of our staff members hit the jackpot two years ago at an Atlantic City casino and won a new Infiniti. (Not me, unfortunately.)

24. Our Associate Dean of Admissions and I went to the same high school, but he graduated several years before I did. (I like to make him feel old by reminding him that he was probably standing behind the Stony Brook table while I was walking around the college fair my senior year.)

25. Stony Brook's "Transfer Office" is part of our department, but despite the name, it doesn't deal with incoming transfer students. They work with transfer credits from other schools. Needless to say, they wind up transferring a lot of phone calls down the hall to our main reception desk.

For All You College Confidential Addicts and Ratings Lovers...

2009-03-03T11:56:00.000-05:00

...I'd like to direct you here.

I've railed against ratings for a long time -- despite the fact that Stony Brook is "getting better" every year -- but never as eloquently as this.

"College rankings are a lot like sausage... the finished product can be appealing, but most people don't want to see what goes into the manufacturing process."

Ha! Love it.

In Like A Lion, Indeed: What's Up In The Admissions Office on March 3

2009-03-03T10:39:00.003-05:00

With March suddenly upon us as we dig out from more than a foot of snow, I figured I'd take a few minutes to update you all on what's going on here in the Admissions office.

If you're a high school senior who has applied and hasn't heard yet... it might not hurt to drop us a line or call us to see what's up. We're pretty close to being caught up on mail, especially if your school mailed your credentials more than a few weeks ago. However -- things are very tight this year on the admissions front. We've had another big jump in applications this year, and we can't grow the class; so as a result, we've had to be more selective than we've been in previous years. I think, from what I've seen, that the average high school GPA is going to be in the high B+/A- range, with an SAT average somewhere well north of 1200 (out of 1600). We're discussing things like waitlists now, although no decisions have been made yet. We do have a large pool of applications that are complete, but don't have an admissions decision yet; please hang in there while we work through the process.

Note: we can't give out decisions over the phone or via e-mail... check the mail, and check SOLAR.

If you're looking to transfer, you fall into one of two categories: either you've COMPLETED 24 college credits, or you haven't. And when we talk about college credits, we mean actual college courses taken in college, not high school or AP classes that earned you college credit.

First, if you have COMPLETED 24 credits -- as of now, not as of the end of this semester -- then we're looking for at least a 3.0 overall GPA. Like our freshman numbers, our transfer applications are up; and we need to see a solid track record of academic success. Get your transcripts in -- from any and all colleges you've attended, even if it's just one class.

Second, if you have NOT COMPLETED 24 credits -- such as if you're still in your first year of college -- then one of two things has to happen. Either you need to submit your final high school transcript and SAT scores, in which case you need to meet our freshman requirements (see above) also, or you need to wait until you get your spring grades.

But here's the big caveat: unfortunately, by the time your spring grades get posted, it's likely that we'll already have closed the transfer class for fall. Due to the volume and quality of the applicant pool, though, there's not a lot we can do about this. We can't honor requests for extensions, and "special cases" are much rarer than you think. We'd love to admit everyone, but unfortunately, that's just not possible.

There might be, however, other options available for you. Take a look at the other local SUNY schools; Old Westbury and Farmingdale both offer competitive programs across lots of academic disciplines, and have historically been a little more academically forgiving than we have been. (I can't speak for 2009, though -- you'll have to call them.)

TWEET.

2009-02-27T10:27:00.001-05:00

Joined Twitter a long time ago, but as I'm preparing my presentation for SUNYCAP this summer, I decided to kick it into overdrive the past few days. If you're on Twitter, hit me up at the link above and follow me! (I put a Twitter widget on the left side of the page here as well.)

New Food!

2009-02-26T13:15:00.002-05:00

Finally got a chance today to pop over to the new Roth Quad cafeteria. Glad I did! It was closed for eighteen months while they did a complete remodeling, top to bottom. Wendy's is there now -- at regular Wendy's prices -- along with fresh pizza & calzones & stromboli, a sub station, and an "international" station with rotating offerings.

Highly recommended!

Also of note -- since I was reminded when I saw the sign today -- Martin Yan is coming to campus next month. I'm excited.

Homecoming Drag Queen

2009-02-25T13:54:00.000-05:00

Last week, George Mason University elected a male student, Ryan Allen -- or, I should say, his professional female drag persona, Reann Ballslee -- as their Homecoming Queen this year. I think it's excellent; I've long been a supporter of GLBT programs and events on campus, and I think it's a great step. (In fact, considering how liberal higher education tends to be sometimes, I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner. Has it? Did we miss it?)

Reann's election "sparked campus debate," according to the Washington Post. One student was quoted:

Electing a dude as homecoming queen is not the way to bolster pride, sophomore Grant Bollinger said. Mason was recently named the No. 1 national university to watch by U.S. News & World Report, he said -- it should act like it.

"It's really annoying," said Bollinger, who works as an ambassador for the admissions office. "The game was on TV. Everyone was there. All eyes were on us. And we do something like this? It's just stupid."

Yikes. Always good to see that your ambassadors have positive things to say about your school, especially when they're quoted in one of the most famous newspapers in the country. (Oops.)

I always tell our students that when they're talking about the school, be "honest but positive." It's part of your job as an ambassador or tour guide or whatever to help create a positive impression of your campus; I know that not every school is perfect, but who needs their ambassadors calling their campus "stupid?" Yowza.

Could This Be The Year? (NCAA Basketball Edition)

2009-02-24T09:36:00.000-05:00

You know, I'm hesitant to dream sometimes, because Stony Brook's still somewhat new to this whole Division I athletics thing. (And our men's basketball team was pretty bad last year.) But I really like what I've seen so far this year from our guys, and if you look at the standings...

Vermont	12	3	-	.800	22	7	.759
Binghamton	12	3	½	.800	19	8	.704
Boston University	9	5	2½	.643	15	12	.556
Stony Brook	7	7	4½	.500	15	12	.556

I know 7-7 isn't exactly setting the world on fire, and I know that they're 1-5 against the three teams ahead of them in the conference. But if you look at those six games:

* Lost to Vermont 83-72 at home, but it was a one-point game with less than four minutes left
* Lost in Vermont 69-64 (in OT), a game that was never separated by more than a few points
* Lost in Binghamton 67-60, but it was a one-point game with less than two minutes left
* Lost to Binghamton 63-61 (OT) at home, a game won by a basket with four seconds left in OT
* Lost in Boston 99-97 in FOUR overtimes, which speaks for itself
* Won over Boston 66-54 at home last weekend, a game that we led from early in the first half

That's not bad, folks. Not bad at all. A lucky bounce, and the Seawolves can beat anyone in the America East on any given night. It's not a stretch to say they could have been 5-1 instead of 1-5 up there. Overall, only six of their twelve losses were by five points or less, including all three above overtime losses. Their only loss by more than eleven points was a December loss to UConn, which might just be the best team in the country.

Two games left before the postseason: against 6-23 Hartford and 11-15 New Hampshire. Could this be the year for the Seawolves in the Big Dance? Hmm....

Financial Aid Frustration

2009-02-23T10:17:00.002-05:00

Interesting piece in the New York Times this weekend about the FAFSA and the hoops that students and their families have to jump through in order to receive government financial aid for college. My first inclination when reading about consulting firms charging hundreds of dollars to help families get the most out of their application was disgust... why should families have to spend money to complete a free application? And the article is right -- that does force the process away from the people who need it most. But realistically, that's the world we live in, and that's not going to change.

What we can change is the process -- make it easier for students and families, and make free help available.

The form is what it is; I think we'll see change over time, if voices are loud enough -- and the article makes me think that the government agrees. The other piece, though, is readily available... there is help already out there for you, and it's free! For example, the SUNY system offers a series of workshops designed to help families through the process, and we offer a system-wide Financial Aid Day on a Saturday in mid-February every year, where campuses are open for students to get the help they need. (Of course, it was last weekend, so I'm a little behind schedule on this.)

It's disheartening to hear that students don't go to college because they can't afford it, because there really are so many financial aid options out there. But, like anything, they take a little (okay, a lot) of legwork; students and families need to get out there and knock on doors sometimes. Check with your local library, for example; maybe they have a program that can help you. (Or maybe they can contact your local college or university and invite someone in who can help you!) And contact the schools you've applied to -- odds are, you've applied to at least one school that's close enough to home that you could visit after school one day, or during evening hours (our Financial Aid office is open until 6:00 on Tuesdays, for example). Get out there and make it happen!

Vote!

2009-01-22T15:14:00.002-05:00

Please take a minute to pop over to the BlogHighEd site and vote for me!

http://www.bloghighed.org/vote/

BlogHighEd is a conglomeration of wonderful insight into the world of higher education, and I'd be honored to be a part of it. So everyone please vote for Chris D'Orso and The Admissions Blog!

I've Been Away...

2009-01-16T19:59:00.001-05:00

...for a few days, celebrating the birth of our daughter. I'll be back in the office next week with updates!

Overwhelmed

2009-01-05T15:15:00.002-05:00

Hey all -- hope everyone had an enjoyable, healthy holiday season. However, it's that time of year -- admissions decision time. And yes, we're swamped. Swamped like we've never been swamped before. I'm a virtual alligator, we're so swamped. We went to a new application system this year, both internally and externally, and it's caused a bit of a backup in the office. Combine that with an overwhelming number of early applicants, and that's a recipe for one overcooked admissions staff!

A few notes as we move forward over the next few weeks:

* HANG IN THERE. As I've said, we're backed up, and we'll be backed up for the next few weeks until the mail slows down. If you've sent everything, wait; it'll get here, and we'll match it up, and you'll move along in the process.

* If you're an Early Action applicant for Fall 2009, and you haven't heard anything yet, don't call! We had a large number of EA apps this year, and we just didn't get a chance to get all of them completed and read before January 1. We're doing that now, and we'll get another round of EA decisions out this week. All of our EA folks should hear something by early next week.

* If you're deferred from EA to regular decision, that's okay; it might not have had anything to do with your credentials. It might have simply been a timing issue. There's no difference between the EA criteria and the regular criteria -- it might just be that we still haven't processed a piece of your application yet. We'll get to it.

* If you also applied into the Honors College or WISE and fall into that "deferred" pool, that's okay; they understand the volume we've been dealing with, and will review everyone who's applied. Those decisions aren't made now anyway.

* Most of all -- again -- relax and be patient. We thank you for applying to join us this fall; we're looking forward to exciting things this year.

Stony Brook 2013 on Facebook!

2008-12-18T20:53:00.003-05:00

Fascinating post by Brad Ward, who I really enjoy, about the proliferation of seemingly "official" Facebook groups for the Class of 2013.

Disturbing, no?

Well, I've created an official group for you all to join, free from the influence of outside groups who may or may not be trying to sell you anything. So as we start preparing the first round of admissions decisions -- yes, I'm talking about you, Early Action/First Priority folks -- here's an online home for you to get to know each other!

In addition, don't forget to visit our official Facebook site and become a fan, and while you're at it, go be friends with Wolfie!

I'm Famous!

2008-12-17T09:48:00.002-05:00

It's been a long time, I know... but honestly, we've been swamped here. A few notes about what's going on here in the office for the freshmen seeking Fall 2009 admission:

* For you Early Action folks -- relax and breathe. The hard part is done -- the pieces are in -- now it's up to us to put them together and get back to you. My one piece of advice to you now? Don't call us. (Please.) Stony Brook has gone to a new online application system this year, and we're scanning every document that comes into our office. That means that we're going a little slower than we'd hoped, and we're a little bit (read: a lot) behind on processing mail we've received. If you've sent a transcript in the last month or so, odds are good that it's not matched up with your application yet, and that's okay. We're all working hard to get everything together, but it takes time. So thanks in advance for your patience.

* For everyone else -- make sure to check with your guidance office to ensure that things have been sent. If you haven't heard from us yet, that's okay; like I said above, we're still running behind. Please don't send another copy of anything unless we ask for it. If you want to get your request for January (after mid-terms) grades, that's fine; doesn't hurt to get that in, especially if you're doing well this year, or if you're taking some solid, college-level (AP, IB, or whatever) coursework.

* If you haven't completed your supplement, do that now. If you used the Common Application, you're done. Make sure it was paid and submitted -- if you haven't submitted it, we don't have it -- but that's all you need to do. If you used the SUNY application, then you should use your Stony Brook ID number, which we e-mail to you about two weeks after we receive your application, and log into our SOLAR system and complete the supplement there. That's where you indicate an interest in any of our honors programs. (That's also where you'll be able to view your admissions decision once they're released.)

* If you're applying for Spring 2009, we are full at this point, and we are no longer accepting applications for transfer students. (I believe we still have a handful of freshman spots available.) If you're interested in being considered for Fall 2009, then please e-mail us at enroll@stonybrook.edu and let us know, so we can get you on the list.

Any questions? You know where to find me.

Oh, and as any of you who have been in my office know, I'm a big Mets fan and baseball card collector. One of my interesting card projects -- an autograph collection from all the players who played in the first major league game I ever attended -- just got referenced on one of my favorite blogs, Faith and Fear in Flushing (the main page for Greg and Jason's incredible site is linked on the left as well). Thanks, Jason!

Harry Potter Septet To Premiere December 5

2008-11-18T09:37:00.003-05:00

What a cool project!

The book that launched a thousand marketing schemes has now spawned a classical chamber piece, composed by a Stony Brook music major with a flair for mathematical wizardry.

The Harry Potter Septet, an ambitious but accessible composition for string quartet, piano, and two female voices, premieres Friday, December 5, at 4:00 pm at the Ravenclaw — sorry, Tabler — Center for Arts, Culture & Humanities. It’s the work of multi-talented senior Vi Hart, whose obsession with J.K. Rowling’s adolescent sorcerer dates back to the sixth grade.

Hart, who received a URECA grant in support of the project, spent more than a year composing under the guidance of her personal Dumbledore, Prof. Perry Goldstein. Somehow, she also found time for research in higher mathematics, authoring and presenting papers on "Using Binary Numbers in Music" and "Computational Balloon Twisting."

You can read more about Vi Hart on her personal Web page and at the URECA site, where she’s been named Researcher of the Month.

Admission to the Dec. 5 performance is free.

Question of the Day: Limits on High Schools?

2008-11-13T09:46:00.003-05:00

Got a great question this morning:

Does the application process base on the fact of how many people from my school are applying to the school itself? In my school, 8 people are applying to Stony Brook - 7 of which are EA. I rank, in terms of academics around 5/8 and for EC's and quality of application maybe round 1 or 2 / 8. This really worries me as I can't imagine the school accepting like 5-6 people from one school alone- a non competitive one at that. Last year about 4 people went so I guess I never know. Stony Brook is my number 1 choice, unlike some of the people that are applying from my school.

I love this question, because it addresses a very valid student concern, but it's one that we very rarely get. I'm making an assumption here, but I believe that high-achieving students are likely to be concerned about their peers -- who's applying where, and how they relate, academically and otherwise, to those students. (It probably goes beyond that -- it's probably one of the top, if not the top, factor in enrollment decisions, but that's beyond the scope of this post.)

So what of it? If we get eight qualified applicants -- or a dozen, or fifty, or whatever -- from one specific school, how does that affect individual admissions decisions?

I've said this a million times -- we're looking for reasons to admit students when they apply, and each applicant is read individually. If we get a ton of applicants and they're all qualified, then it's highly likely they'll all get admitted. We have no quota or limit on how many students we'll admit from a particular school, or a particular state or area of the country. Come on in, the water's fine!

One thing we will do in some areas, though, is look at the overall high school picture and see if things make sense. Let's say I have twelve applicants from a high school, and after all the individual review, it turns out we're going to offer admission to seven of them. I'll look at the seven and make sure they make sense, so ameliorate confused phone calls from guidance counselors as to why we've admitted this student over that student, or angry phone calls from students whose friends "with worse grades" were admitted while they weren't. We know you all talk to each other and compare notes, and we know that systems like Naviance help to identify schools for students based on grading and testing metrics.

But we're also going to make sure we're making the best possible decision for each student. There's a lot that goes into the admissions decision, beyond just the grades and SATs, and it's virtually impossible to generalize beyond looking at the overall averages and ranges for the incoming class every year. We may be filling a specific institutional need -- perhaps a strong journalist or athlete or musician or whatever -- and we may have specific requirements for some programs. We can't just admit everyone who walks in the door.

That said, as the Early Action deadline gets closer and closer (Saturday!), I encourage you to get those applications in and plan your next visit to campus. Open House is November 22 and 23, and if you'd like to come out and see us some other time, please let us know! We'd love to have you visit, and we offer two tours a day, Monday through Saturday.

Now that I'm back from the road -- one more ferry trip, for a college night tonight at the Bridgeport Regional Aquaculture School -- I'll post regularly to let you know what's up on our end and how things are progressing.

Are You A Fan?

2008-11-04T09:47:00.003-05:00

http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/Stony-Brook-NY/Stony-Brook-University/30450493231

Best. College Night. Ever.

2008-10-08T09:07:00.002-04:00

Life on the road as a college admissions counselor can be both fascinating and boring all at the same time. We're up at the crack of dawn to visit high schools all morning until shortly after lunch, then we have a weird break, sometimes as long as five or six hours, in the afternoon, before we head back out to high schools to set up tables at a college night, finally returning to our hotels well after 9:00, ready to crash.

Sometimes, you have one of those nights that really makes it worthwhile, where it seems like you're really helping people and loving what you do. That happened last night at East Lyme High School. East Lyme is, in many ways, your typical suburban high school; their college night is usually very well attended, both by my fellow college representatives -- we filled both their "commons" and their gym last night -- as well as by students, who come from high schools all over southeastern Connecticut.

Last night, I met with outstanding students who had an enormous diversity of interests -- a marine & environmental science student from Stonington High School who I'd met that morning who came back with his dad; a bright young woman whose parents both worked at Stony Brook University Hospital, but who was really interested in our pre-law offerings; a couple of motivated engineering students who were excited about touring our labs; a 10th grade vocalist/guitarist/pianist who was exploring her options early; and so many more. I lost my voice, I was talking so much.

Huge, huge thumbs up to the staff at East Lyme, who really put together an outstanding program every year, and reminded me last night what's so great about this job... helping connect our young people with opportunities for greatness in higher education.

(No pressure tonight, Ledyard High School.)

:)

Farmers' Market on Wednesday!

2008-10-03T15:08:00.002-04:00

What a cool idea! I love it. Here are some links to some of the featured farms:

Satur Farms (Cutchogue)
Schmitt & Sons (Riverhead)

Unfortunately, I couldn't find sites for the others:

Deer Run Farms (Brookhaven)
Latham Farms (Orient)
Fox Hollow Farms (Calverton)

Come on out and support local growers... and you can even use your meal card! Neat.

How Would YOU Change The World?

2008-10-03T09:32:00.003-04:00

Stony Brook Southampton -- our satellite campus focused on the issues of sustainability and our world -- is hosting an interesting contest. Film a 60-second video highlighting your ideas about building an environmentally sustainable future. Upload it, let us know about it, and you could win a scholarship to Stony Brook Southampton!

Full details available here.

(And if you haven't done so, yet, also please remember to vote today for Stony Brook's WUSB Radio for an MTVU Woodie!)

Vote for WUSB - The Greatest College Radio Station in America!

2008-10-01T19:25:00.002-04:00

90.1 WUSB-FM has been nominated by MTVU for a Woodie award as one of the top twenty college radio stations in the country. That's a phenomenal accomplishment, and I'm thrilled for the staff there! I toured the station a few months ago, and I was really impressed. It really cuts to the core of what college radio is all about at the most basic level. So congratulations to the crew!

But now -- the next step. VOTE!

http://woodies.mtvu.com/nominees/college_radio

Voting for WUSB happens this week, so vote early and vote often! Tell your friends!

For The Last 26 Years... I Thank You.

2008-09-28T19:34:00.002-04:00

Some twenty-six summers ago, a six-year-old boy went with his dad to Shea Stadium to watch his beloved Cardinals, running rampant over the National League, take on the New York Mets. The Mets won that game, sending the crowd into paroxysms of joy; the Mets didn't do a whole lot of winning those days, especially not against good teams like the Cardinals, and that six year old sat in his seat and cried while fans rejoiced around him.

Last Wednesday, that same little boy -- now a 32-year-old admissions guy of some renown -- watched as his now-beloved Mets stranded runner after runner, finally losing in ten innings to a playoff-bound Cubs team. That 32-year-old guy sat in his seat and fought back tears again, knowing this was his last chance to say goodbye to a building that gave him so much joy through the years:

1985: Fan Appreciation Day, the penultimate game of a season that just fell short. My friend Lou's dad took a bunch of us to the game for Lou's birthday. We sat in the loge boxes all the way in left field, chanting and yelling along to the "sign man" down in the box seats below us. The Mets lost that day, but we knew this team was something special. (I wonder whatever happened to that Mets scarf that was the giveaway that day?)

1986: Gary Carter hits a three-run homer in the first and a grand slam in the second, then Braves pitcher Dave Palmer hits Darryl Strawberry, setting off the only bench-clearing brawl I've ever had the joy to witness in person. Sid Fernandez pitched a two-hitter, and the Mets won, 11-0. For what it's worth, we barely saw both home runs, as we were sitting in the "obstructed view" back-row seats in the loge that night.

Some Time In The Mid-80s: Bat Day at Shea. I get up to visit the concession stand or go to the bathroom or something, and come back to find someone has stolen my souvenir bat. My dad feels so badly that it got snarked out right from under his nose that he buys one off a guy in the parking lot for five bucks.

1988: David Cone goes the distance and becomes a 20-game winner.

1990: Straw homers twice, Kevin McReynolds (my favorite Met) homers once, a guy who used to coach at my baseball camp catches for the Astros, and Frank Viola plays sweet music in a complete game win over Houston. It was one night that summer that I hung out by the players' parking lot after the game with my dad and met Daryl Boston and got Mets radio guy Gary Cohen to sign a baseball. (Which I proudly still have.)

1990: You know, going through my old ticket stubs, I seem to go to a lot of "last home games of the year."

1994: My first trip to the left field picnic area, courtesy of a girl I had a big crush on in high school, whose dad's company was a sponsor or something. I don't remember much about the game. Luis Rivera was a Met?

1999: Mark McGwire homers twice -- one that broke a lamp high on the scoreboard in right field, and the other being his 50th of the season -- but John Olerud hits a salami and Mike Piazza follows with a home run of his own to tie it in the eighth. Despite Armando Benitez's best efforts to blow the game in the top of the ninth, the Mets score two in their half to win 8-7.

1999: Tied, bottom of the ninth, last game of the year. Mets need a win to stay alive in the playoff race. Bobby Bonilla leads off as a pinch hitter -- we cheer wildly! All Bobby needs to do is knock one out of the park! He grounds out to third. (We boo.) The Mets then load the bases to bring Mike Piazza to the plate. Brad Clontz throws a wild pitch, Melvin Mora races home, and it's the first time I've ever felt Shea Stadium shake.

2000: The first game of the two-park doubleheader versus the Yankees, plus Doc Gooden's return to Shea for the first time since 1994. Chuck Knoblauch leads off with a single, but is awarded second on a horsebleep obstruction call at first. Bobby Valentine comes out, going bonkers and tracing Knoblauch's obviously unobstructed footprints in the freshly-raked infield dirt, but loses the argument and gets tossed. The Mets, inspired, go on to lose 4-2.

2000: Game Four of the NLCS against the Cardinals. The Mets give up two runs in the top of the first, but come out guns blazing in their half... double by Timo, double by Fonzie, double by Piazza, double by Ventura. Todd Zeile, feeling bad for starter Darryl Kile, grounds out to third... but Benny Agbayani follows by doubling in Ventura. The second time I've ever felt Shea Stadium shake.

2001: Opening Day. The National League Championship banner is raised, Turk Wendell is forgotten during the introduction of the rosters before the first pitch. Piazza homers twice, Shinjo hits his first major league home run, and the Mets win handily.

2002: Roberto Alomar plays the best game of his awful Mets career, homering twice in a 6-4 win over the Royals.

2003: Mother's Day at Shea. We have incredible field-level seats, the best seats I've ever had, right behind first base; plus we get to check out the Diamond Club and the Mets Hall of Fame, which was wonderful on a cold, drizzly Sunday afternoon. The Mets win 3-2.

2004: Chris Callas and I play hookey from Old Westbury on a gorgeous Thursday afternoon and watch a young third baseman named David Wright, called up the day before from Norfolk, get his first major league hit.

2008: A new generation begins, as we bring our son Robert to Shea for the first -- and sadly, only -- time. We leave after six, but the Mets hold on to win for him. Mike Pelfrey, coming off six straight losses, pitches seven brilliant innings and doesn't lose a game for two months.

2008: The end. Oh, the end.

There were lots of other games in the middle that I've lost to the ages. (Most notably, our only other picnic area experience, where my wife got so frustrated with a kid who kept standing at the railing in front of us that she threatened to stab him with a pencil. I know it was in the early '00s, and I'm pretty sure Mark Johnson played, and I'm pretty sure it was on a Wednesday night, because those were the "Pepsi Picnic Nights" where you could get in free. But other than that, I can't figure out when it was. This one, maybe?)

And even though this season ended so depressingly, for me, Shea Stadium is a place where I'm a kid again. Wednesday night was so difficult emotionally for me -- the Mets are extended family to me, and that building is a part of that family. It's the only home that part of my family has ever known; I get fiercely defensive when people call it ugly, and I'm melancholy to see it go.

So thank you, Shea Stadium, for all the wonderful memories. You will be missed more than you can possibly know.

Why You Should Live On Campus

2008-09-27T22:25:00.004-04:00

There are a million good reasons to live on campus when you go to college, but I've discovered a fun one recently. I'm out of college for eleven years now, but a few weeks ago, while going through old pictures, I found a photo of the residents of my floor from 1994-1995. I still talk to a handful of those old friends, so I scanned it and posted it on Facebook:

(That's me, with hair, in the bottom row, second from the left.)

Well, I recently reconnected with my old RA (the guy next to me in the vest), and between him and another friend, we've re-identified almost everyone in the picture... and now everyone's coming out of the woodwork! We're all finding each other now, even though we haven't spoken since... well, 1995, for the most part.

It's been a lot of fun reconnecting with old friends. So besides all the tangible benefits of life while you're actually living there, you never know what will happen down the road!

Watch Your Facebook Profile!

2008-09-22T11:19:00.002-04:00

My colleague Brad J. Ward has a nice take on the recent story that ten percent of college admissions offices utilize social networking in making admissions decisions.

I'll say this... it'd be really, really difficult for us to check the Facebook and/or MySpace profiles of each of our 25,000 applicants. (34,000, if you want to include transfer applicants.) It's just not realistic; and as Brad says --

If you do it for one, you must do it for all. And since you can’t do it for all, then just don’t do it. Seems to work fine so far.

I understand the fears that some -- parents? -- have about social networking, and how it's corrupting our youth. They said the same thing about the Nintendo, and the Commodore 64, and punk rock, and Elvis. And we all turned out okay. (Well, maybe not the Elvis fans.) I love Facebook; I'm on it every day.

What's interesting to me is that if I was part of the survey, I would have bumped the percentage up a notch. (Gasp!) Yes, I checked out a student's MySpace page two years ago... because he wrote his essay about starting a rock band and what an educational experience it was for him; so I Googled them, and sure enough... there they were. (And they weren't bad, actually. Reminded me of my old garage band days.) But what if there had been photos of them drinking? Or doing drugs? Or something even more illicit? I don't know, and I'm glad I didn't have to find out, which is why I don't bother with looking up students.

As an applicant, or a student in my freshman seminar, or whatever -- I'm not your friend. I'm your counselor, or your instructor, or your advisor, or some combination of all of those. And it's important that we maintain that relationship. I'll answer questions on Facebook -- my info is on the left -- but I'm not going to be your friend. If you want to chat, you can also e-mail me, or look me up on AIM. Being my friend doesn't mean you're automatically admissible to Stony Brook.

That said, some of my former students, both from here and from my Old Westbury days, are on my Facebook friend list; we developed a collegial relationship, and I'm very interested to stay in touch with them as they graduate and move on with their careers. They're contacts for me as much as I am for them.

It should be obvious to most people now that what you put online stays there forever, as my sister found out when some of her students found an old post of hers on a Poison fan site. (Ha!) It's hard enough to deal with what you can't control from others, so it would obviously behoove you to be careful about what you throw out there about yourself. Be smart about it, and it never has to come into play.

Info Session at the Trumbull Marriott Tonight!

2008-09-18T06:58:00.002-04:00

Writing this from my hotel room as I prepare to wind down the first big week of travel this fall, and I want to remind you all to stop by and visit me this evening! I'll be hosting a small, informal Stony Brook University information session at the Trumbull, CT Marriott at 7:00 tonight.

Questions, answers, snacks, giveaways... come and say hello! Fans of the blog get a secret bonus giveaway.

See you tonight!

I've Been Everywhere, Man

2008-09-15T23:02:00.004-04:00

I was drivin' my Durango along the winding Route 25A road
When along came a ferry with a space on which I could load
"If you're goin' up to Bridgeport, Mac, with me you can ride"
And so I drove up on the boat and I settled down inside
He asked me if I'd seen a ship so majestic and so grand
And I said, "Listen! I'm visiting every school in this here land!"

I'm goin' everywhere, man
I'm goin' everywhere, man
Crossed the Sound a lot, man
I've breathed that Nutmeg air, man
Travel, I've had my share, man
I'm goin' everywhere...

I'm goin' to Suffield, Wethersfield, Brookfield, Pomperaug
Fairfield, Ridgefield, Litchfield, Nonnewaug
Saybrook, Westbrook, Sandy Hook, Middlebury
Vernon, Meriden, Darien, Glastonbury
Stratford, Branford, Guilford, Waterford, New Milford, Waterford, and I'm goin' all over Hartford

I'm goin' everywhere, man
I'm goin' everywhere, man...

Well, so another travel season starts. Full schedule the next few days:

Tuesday 9/16: Amity HS & Lyman Hall HS during the day, and the Guilford HS College Night
Wednesday 9/17: Fairfield Ludlowe HS (mourning the retirement of the wonderful Debby Dwyer), Trinity Catholic HS in Stamford, Norwalk HS, and Staples HS during the day, then Litchfield HS that night
Thursday 9/18: Bethel HS, Masuk HS, and Pomperaug HS during the day, then we're hosting an information session for interested students at the Trumbull Marriott on Thursday evening.

Actually, we're hosting a couple of these over the next few weeks, and I've been remiss in not mentioning that. Here's the link to the full schedule.

Hope to see you Thursday night!

"Clash Of The Crabcake Cupcakes"

2008-09-11T16:15:00.003-04:00

Very cool -- and funny -- to hear Mike & Mike in the Morning talking about the Stony Brook vs Maine football game this weekend. Don't know how long this download link will work, but here you go:

http://podloc.andohs.net/dloadTrack.mp3?prm=1641xhttp://query-origin.andohs.net/8000A6/content-root3.andomedia.com/origin/mp3/espnradio/bestofmm/bestofmm080911.mp3

The Stony Brook bit is about two minutes long, and starts around the 10:45 mark.

Introducing our 2008-2009 Student Bloggers!

2008-09-11T14:29:00.003-04:00

They're back, and bigger than ever! We've expanded our blogroll from eight to twelve this year, including students from all over New York and all over the world.

Check them out!

Andy, a senior Biochemistry/Psychology major from Taipei
Arianna, a freshman Athletic Training major from Irvine, CA
Bradley, a sophomore Spanish major from Kingston, Jamaica
Cher, a senior English major from Riverhead
Emily, a senior English major from Croton on Hudson
Jeff, a junior Geology major from Binghamton
Kaitlin, an undecided freshman from Loveland, CO
Karina, a senior Cinema & Cultural Studies major from White Plains
Mawii, a senior Psychology major from Aizwal, Mizoram, India
Seth, a junior Computer Science major from Marshfield, MA
Tia, a junior Biology/Psychology major from Dix Hills
Tony, a junior Technological Systems Management major from Brooklyn

They're on my master list of links on the left also. Welcome!

Seawolves in the Pros: Gary Novakowski

2008-09-04T13:35:00.000-04:00

Well, it's time for another installment of Seawolves in the Pros. This time we're chatting with Gary Novakowski, who signed with the Kansas City Royals this year, and spent the season coming out of the bullpen for the Idaho Falls Chukars. Take it away, Gary!

Chris D'Orso: Why did you choose Stony Brook?
Gary Novakowski: The reason why I decided to attend Stony Brook was because of what it had to offer academically and athletically. Being from Connecticut I wanted to go somewhere were my family would be able to watch me play, and the baseball program had a great reputation. Coach Senk did a great job bringing in guys that helped the team win. While I was there we won 2 conference championships so I would say the program lived up to the expectations.

CD: I know it's only been a few months, but what do you miss the most about your time here?
GN: Obviously I miss hanging around and being with my friends and teammates, they become a big part of your college experience and life.

CD: Are there any faculty members or advisors who you really liked?
GN: Most of the facility members and advisors at SBU were great, all my coaches and all the other sports coaches were nice and I built relationships with a lot of them. I have to mention Lauren Brown my advisor who was a big part in me graduating. She helped me out whenever I needed it and was there for me all the time, if I was struggling in a class she found me a tutor.

CD: What guidance would you give an incoming first-year student here at Stony Brook?
GN: All I could say to the incoming freshmen would be to enjoy it, it goes by fast and your college experience is what you make of it.

CD: Tom Koehler was drafted by the Marlins this summer... are any other former teammates who are playing professionally that you're still in contact with?
GN: I definitely still talk to Tom once or twice a week; he’s been one of my good friends throughout college and I’m happy for him.

CD: What was it like signing with the Royals?
GN: The whole process of getting picked up by the Royals was very nerve wracking, obviously I personally didn’t have the senior year I would hope for, which didn’t help, but when I got that call it was a dream come true. Just getting the opportunity to play baseball for a living is indescribable, all the hard work you put in finally pays off and it’s a great feeling.

CD: What was it like pitching in the College World Series? Was that your first triple play?
GN: Being able to pitch in the national tournament was unreal. In the beginning of the season as a team you set goals, and one was to win the America East and go to a regional and for me to be a part of it was awesome. I would have to say that it was my first triple play and it couldn’t have come at a better time having guys on 1st and 2nd with no outs.

CD: Is there anyone you've faced or played with -- either in Idaho Falls or in college -- who you think will join you in the majors some day?
GN: That’s a tough question. I’ve played with and against a lot of talented and gifted baseball players. I would like to see any of my teammates make it, whether its Tom or any of them. Tom has worked extremely hard to get where he is and you never know what could happen. It would defnitely be nice seeing him there.

CD: Perhaps a silly question... but do you have your own baseball card yet? (I have to add your autograph to my office Wall of Fame with Joe Nathan, Chris Flinn, and Craig Ansman!)
GN: Our baseball cards are in the process of being made and they will give them to us in the spring I’m told. I’m pretty excited about those to.

CD: What are your future plans, either in or out of baseball?
GN: I would love to continue to play baseball for as long as I possibly could, but if that doesn’t work out I really don’t know what I would like to do. Right now I’m just enjoying the opportunity to play baseball.

Thanks, Gary! And thanks to John Hadden from the Chukars, who provided the photo above.

Calling All Smart College Students

2008-09-04T11:33:00.004-04:00

What are you doing the evening of October 1? Nothing? Then register online for the Jeopardy! college test.

I've taken the regular test twice. The first time, I made it through to the second round, which involved an invitation to a swanky New York City hotel with a few dozen of my closest friends for an in-person test and mini-show. Apparently, I didn't do as well as I thought, because I never got the call to head out to California.

I figure it's because there was another "Chris" that season who was a big winner that caused me to never get off the list. At least that's what I'm telling myself. I tried to be upbeat and chipper and the perfect TV candidate, but apparently it wasn't enough. Hopefully it wasn't the fact that I tried to be cutesy by answering "What you talkin' about, Willis?" as a question (Hey! It's a question!) without adding the "what is" part at the beginning, or the fact that I made fun of the guy who worked for the College Board who was also in my group. (Sorry, College Board Guy.)

(The name thing, apparently, actually happens. I don't know if it was in Ken Jennings' book or an interview I read with him, but he said that they don't allow people with the same name to compete against each other, to eliminate confusion when Alex is calling the name of whoever has buzzed in first. You saw it a bit during this year's teen tournament, when two Rachels made it to the finals. One had the unfortunate nickname "Steve," which Alex called her for two days during the finals.)

Any way, go online and register, and tell me how you do! I'll be rooting for you.

(And if you're in my freshman seminar tomorrow, yes, this will be a "required" activity this fall.)

Wolfie on Facebook!

2008-09-04T11:23:00.002-04:00

So I mentioned the other day that I just friended Wolfie on Facebook. What's extra-cool about friending Wolfie is that now I get reminded about all the athletics events on campus!

(If any of my loyal readers will be at the football game vs Elon this weekend, find me!)

Where Are We?

2008-09-03T10:54:00.002-04:00

We've had some problems with a server, so our off-campus visit schedule is down for a few days. If you're looking to know where Stony Brook will be this fall -- and whether or not we'll be at your school -- check here.

It's a temporary solution until we can get the server back up. In the meantime, all other important admissions-related info, including information on how to apply, is here:

http://www.stonybrook.edu/ugadmissions

See you on the road!

Seawolves in the Pros: Tom Koehler

2008-08-29T15:38:00.003-04:00

Hot off the success of my discussion with Nick Abel, I turned to recent Marlins draftee and current Jamestown Jammers pitcher Tom Koehler, recent Stony Brook graduate, for a quick Q&A as well.

Chris D'Orso: Why did you choose Stony Brook?
Tom Koehler: Its location - close to home and the city, a chance to play winning baseball and get a great education while doing so.

CD: I know it's only been a few months, but what do you miss most about your time here?
TK: The family environment, but I still have the friends for a lifetime.

CD: Are there any faculty members of advisors who you really liked?
TK: Professor Lebovics and Professor Nutter of the History department, and Lauren Brown, my advisor.

CD: What guidance would you give an incoming first-year student here at Stony Brook?
TK: Sit back and enjoy the experience. Enjoy meeting new people and be open-minded to new things.

CD: Gary Novakowski signed with Kansas City this summer... are there any other former teammates who are playing professionally that you're still in contact with?
TK: Jon Lewis & Nick Abel, but mostly Gary. We're great friends.

CD: What was it like pitching in the College World Series? You took a tough loss against Arizona State.
TK: It was awesome being there, but I wish things went differently. We had our chances, but just made too many mistakes.

CD: Silly question... but do you have your first baseball card yet?
TK: Yes I do! Just got it.

CD: What are your future plans, either in or out of baseball?
TK: Making it to the majors! Then either teaching or coaching.

Thanks for the time, Tom!

Welcome to Stony Brook!

2008-08-29T09:48:00.003-04:00

Well, this is it. Opening Day! Everyone's buzzing about students coming back, which starts tomorrow. Here are a few words of wisdom from your favorite Admissions Guy for those of you who will be joining us for the first time this fall.

1. Get out of your room and do something. There are lots of activities the first few weeks of school; find one or two or three (or twenty!) and do them. Go, even if your roommates don't want to go; there will be other people there.

2. Go to the football game tomorrow night. The Seawolves face the Colgate Raiders at 6:00 at LaValle Stadium. Colgate's athletics site says that their head coach needs one win to become the winningest coach in Colgate history. And their senior running back Jordan Scott (#30 in your program) is an all-world athlete who's trying to set all sorts of career marks this year too. We can't let that happen on our watch, can we? Go out there and blow the doors off the place.

3. Get to know your Undergraduate College folks. Your faculty director, your advisors, your 101 instructor -- get to know them all. Go to your 101 class every week, because you're going to get a lot of good information there, and you're going to meet people who are interested in the same kinds of things you're interested in.

4. Find at least one club and join it. You have over 300 to choose from; don't tell me you can't find at least one thing, if not five or six, that you're interested in.

5. Check the calendar regularly. Bookmark it and swing through it at least once a week to see what's up. And while you're at it, check the Staller Center and the Wang Center calendars too; some of their programs are incredible.

6. Try to visit every dining facility on campus at least once in the first two weeks. When you include all the carts and everything, there's twenty-something options, all over campus. (And that doesn't include the new Roth, which should open soon, I think.) Highly recommended: the new Union Commons, which I've really missed this summer.

7. Check out the libraries. Again, you have a lot of options with some of the specialized libraries; check out the space, check out what they offer. Better to get acquainted now so you know what to look for when you need it later in the semester.

8. Bookmark the Undergraduate Colleges' advising site. Info on pre-med and pre-law, choosing a major, registering for classes, taking a foreign language challenge exam, making an appointment with an advisor... it's all there, and more.

9. Read the Policies and Procedures page. I know it's wordy, but it's important stuff that you need to know to survive here, including the Student Code of Conduct, which you already acknowledged that you've read. (And you know you haven't actually read it yet. So read it.)

10. Stick around for the weekend. I know that historically, Stony Brook hasn't been the most happening place on Saturdays. But things are changing, and you're a big part of it. If you stay, your friends will stay. And their friends will stay. And you'll all go to the game, or the concert, then order a bunch of pizzas and sit around the residence hall playing card games and Playstation and making idiots out of yourselves and doing things that you're going to be wishing you were still doing fifteen years from now. It's college; get involved and enjoy it. If you want to love this place, you will love this place. If you're going to act like it's a chore to be here, then you're going to have a negative experience... and it's not worth spending the time and money during the most important years of your academic life hating it. If it was such a horrible place to live, why would over 90% of our freshmen want to live on campus? And why would we be building new residence halls to handle all the students who want to be here? Stony Brook now is not the Stony Brook of five or ten years ago, so don't expect it to be. Be a force of positive change.

I could go on forever, but that's enough assignments for the first two weeks. You're part of a special family now, and we're thrilled that you're here. Welcome, and enjoy!

New Campus Recreation Center!

2008-08-28T16:37:00.001-04:00

We'd been hearing about this for a long time, but it looks like it's finally happening...

Stony Brook University has received the additional $18 million dollar allocation needed for the construction of the new Campus Recreation Center (CRC) on the main campus, announced President Shirley Strum Kenny. The $37.5 million 85,000 square foot Campus Recreation Center is a student-oriented facility featuring contemporary work out space, space for a quality intramural program and for sports club teams for practice and competition. Senator Ken LaValle was instrumental in securing funding for this exciting new project, which should be completed by 2011.

The new facility will be located between the Sports Complex and the Student Union. The patio will serve as the entry way to each facility, and students, faculty, and staff would continue to access the Sports Complex for recreational swim, racquetball and squash.

The CRC is designed to become a campus landmark with glass windows spanning much of the exterior. It will be visibly prominent and inviting, providing those on the outside with a view of the many diverse activities available within, including a three court gym; an indoor multipurpose sport court; aerobic/martial arts rooms; spinning studio; cardiovascular, free weights, and weight machine area; jogging track; locker room facilities; and staff offices.

Wolfie!

2008-08-28T11:25:00.002-04:00

Wolfie has a blog!

And a Facebook page!

And a Picasa photo page!

Excellent.

Seawolves in the Pros: Nick Abel, Part II

2008-08-22T11:31:00.003-04:00

I realized today that I never finished posting my brief discussion with former Seawolves pitcher Nick Abel. Since May, Nick's been on a bit of a roller coaster, taking some time off with muscle tightness, which he's working back into form down in Port St. Lucie. Here's the rest of our May interview:

Chris D'Orso: What has the Mets organization told you about their plans for you? You closed a bit in St. Lucie last year, but now you're sharing a bullpen with a guy who was a top draft pick in Eddie Kunz.
Nick Abel: The Mets organization told me in nutshell to keep doing what I have done in the past 1.5 seasons. Being in the same bullpen as Eddie is a great experience, he is a very talented pitcher and you can always learn from a guy like him.

CD: What are your future plans, either in or out of baseball?
NA: My plans right now until I am out of baseball are to make it to the Major Leagues. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not in this to play minor league baseball; I am doing this to help a Major League team win a championship and make a career for myself in baseball. As a Major League baseball player I would reach out and help other kids reach their goals in baseball, as Rob did for me. If baseball doesn’t work out I plan on going back to school for a graduate degree in Kinesiology.

CD: What was it like making your professional debut in Brooklyn? Any great memories from your time there?
NA: Playing in Brooklyn for the Cyclones was a pleasure and an honor for me. Every kid dreams of playing for their hometown baseball team and the fans in Brooklyn welcomed me there with open arms. Most importantly my family and friends could watch me play very often. With the support of my two amazing parents Peter and Jitka, brother Chris and other family and friends I don’t think I would be where I am today.

CD: You also share a bullpen with Joe Hietpas, a converted catcher trying to make it as a knuckleballer. What have you learned from his experience?
NA: Just to set the record straight, Joe Hietpas was a converted catcher to pitcher but not a knuckleballer. The guy you were thinking of was Zac Clements. Anyways Joe is a great guy to have in the bullpen. His being a former Major League catcher/hitter gave me first hand experience from a catchers or hitters point of view sitting next to me in the bullpen.

Hopefully we'll hear more from Nick in the future. Good luck with the rest of the season!