As Dean of Admission Fred Hargadon retires this year, his replacement, current Wellesley admission dean Janet Rapelye, faces many challenging new assignments.
Perhaps the largest is that Princeton's admissions department handles nearly four times the number of applications as Wellesley, an all-female school.
But Rapelye says she is looking forward to the new challenges, especially the University's plans to expand its class size as it implements the Wythes Plan, which calls for a 500-student increase in the student body over several years.
"I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to doing that — what a dream for an admissions officer," she said.
The administrative turnover comes at a crucial point in college admissions. National debates over early admission programs, the role of athletes in admissions and on campus, as well as affirmative action — in light of the forthcoming Supreme Court decision on the challenge to University of Michigan admission procedures — will most likely make Rapelye's first year at Princeton a memorable one.
She said that though she has no immediate changes planned for next year — her "learning period" — she is "looking forward to helping Princeton form policies that are responsive to this very changing world we're living in . . . any institution of higher learning right now is facing the fact that we have to do things differently in the future."
Dean Hargadon, a well-known figure both at the University and among his fellow admissions officers nationally, sat down yesterday for a candid talk on the admissions process as his retirement approaches. He spoke on the intricacies of the job he will hand off to Rapelye next fall.
"I think . . . when a new dean comes in, it's a good time to take a look at everything we do, see if there are different paths to follow, take a fresh look at everything," he said.
But, he added, institutional change comes slowly, occurring "at the margins" first, because so many givens are built into the admission process, like the number of departments and the athletics and music programs.
Hargadon said he couldn't put a concrete number on the students in the Class of 2007 planning to take part in arts-related activities. "Frankly, I don't think we're lacking in students participating in the arts," he said, rattling off a list of all the student performances put on last weekend.
In reading applications, he said, "We don't go by school or state . . . we're not trying to stamp a cookie mold of the same class every year."
He joked that the only people who can accurately generalize about an entire class are the deans who deal with disciplinary issues. The problem lies in looking at 17- and 18-year-olds, he said, as no one can predict with any accuracy which ones will become outstanding artists.
Instead, many students will get involved in something they've never had the opportunity to try elsewhere, adding that one of his favorite things has been watching students grow through their experiences at Princeton. Rapelye seems to share that philosophy. In looking for talented students, her goal revolves around a recruiting pool both broad and deep. No quotas will be set for some "x-percentage of every group," she said. "We're going to look at students individually."
One of the criteria for a broad applicant group, she added, is diversity. "You can't choose a diverse class if you don't have diverse students in your applicant pool," she said, stressing that "diversity has a very wide definition; [it] includes diversity of background and of thought and of talent."
Hargadon said Princeton's main task in recruiting minorities has been to "get them on our radar screen, get us on their radar screen," and that the hardest thing about working with University admissions "is the image people have of our institution."
He said he could not imagine students at any other college being as down-to-earth and "not climbing over each other for a grade" as Princeton students, while the public may hold a different conception of the University.
Although he won't be sending out any more 'Yes!' letters, Hargadon plans to remain in the Princeton area, where he aims to finally take advantage of all the speakers and performances offered at the University, in addition to writing a book on the changing world of admissions he has witnessed over the past 30 years.
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