November 22, 2000

Features

Spreading the gospel

by Bill Paul

Thomas Faix '47 of Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, actually gets a kick out of traveling overnight in blinding snowstorms to visit applicants who live in the upper reaches of Minnesota. "I get excited about interviewing," he says, explaining that it keeps him in touch with young people. It also helps him in the course he teaches at Moorhead State University on multicultural perceptions of education.

Faix is one of nearly 5,000 alumni interviewers, each of whom volunteers for different reasons. Many, like Faix, enjoy meeting high school students. Others think of interviewing as a contribution to Princeton. Still others liked their own Princeton experience so much they're eager to go out and win new converts - not to mention relive their glory days.

The Alumni Schools Committees got their start in the early part of the 20th century. As far back as 1909, Chicago-area alumni were visiting local prep schools to spread the word about Princeton. In the 1930s, two young alumni, James Carruthers '25 of Cincinnati and Pete Leland '28 from St. Louis, began recruiting talented high school students from their hometowns. By the early 1950s, there were many such regional groups, and the program was formalized as the Alumni Schools Committees, organized by the Alumni Council but reporting to the admission office. Today the National Schools Committee oversees 170 regional Alumni Schools Committees in the U.S. and 61 in foreign countries.

Interviews can be memorable. Neither interviewer, Robert Jiranek '52, nor interviewee, Tom McLaughlin '84, will forget the 1979 airplane trip to Princeton that Jiranek arranged for McLaughlin and three other applicants from their homes in southern Virginia. Explains Jiranek: "Unable to effect an instrument landing at Princeton, we executed a missed approach. Then engine trouble developed, necessitating an emergency landing at Teterboro on a foamed runway." McLaughlin, obviously, was not scared off.

Laurel McFarland '84 still recalls an interview she conducted in England in the early 1990s. The applicant, a young man, asked if the interview could be done by candlelight because he was an Edgar Allan Poe devotee. "He wore all black," McFarland says, and he wrote his application in red ink.

Another interview taught the interviewer the value of perspective. Doug Levick '58 once asked a Chinese-American applicant why she wanted to go to Princeton. She answered that she wanted to go where there was more diversity. "I asked her what that meant," Levick says, "and she said that her high school -- 2,000 students in the middle of Silicon Valley -- was 55 percent Asian and she wanted to go to a university where she was in the minority."

Some volunteers say they took up ASC work because of the impression made upon them by their interviewer. Volunteer Jay Czarnecki '87 remembers when he was a prospective student. Near the end of his interview, his interviewer led him downstairs to the basement of his home to show him - "with unconcealed pride," Czarnecki recalls - his Princeton crew oar, mounted above the mantel. "I distinctly remember thinking that Princeton must be a pretty special place to merit that kind of reverence."

Unconcealed Princeton pride can sometimes be detrimental in an interviewer, however. Sharon Keld '80 recalls, "My interviewer sat with his chin in his hands so that my line of sight led directly to his huge Princeton ring, and I thought he was a bit arrogant." Undaunted, Keld chose Princeton anyway, and became an ASC volunteer right after graduation. "I love talking to the applicants," she says. "Of all the volunteer work I've done for Princeton, I find ASC work the most rewarding."

To be sure, the cynical observer might say that, given Princeton's extremely low acceptance rate, alumni interviewers had better enjoy the experience, since they're unlikely to feel that their reports back to the admission office make a difference in whether a candidate is admitted. When one long-time ASC volunteer died a few years back, his obituary in PAW mentioned how proud he was when one of the students he helped was admitted - tactfully omitting the fact that the student was the only one of his interviewees ever accepted.

But while Dean of Admission Fred Hargadon is careful to say that alumni interviews are "not decisive" and that applicants should not consider the ASC interview a "test to be passed," he also emphasizes that "almost invariably, [alumni interviews] add yet more background, or one more color, or one more dimension, to the picture of an applicant whom those of us reading applications are doing our best to capture in our imaginations." Equally important, Hargadon says, is that the alumni interview "provides the applicants an opportunity to meet, come to know, and ask questions of those who themselves went through Princeton."

With those benefits in mind, Rosalie Norair '76, the chair of the National Schools Committee, is working to increase the number of volunteer interviewers so that more than the current 75 to 80 percent of applicants can schedule an alumni interview. In just three months in the fall of 1999, Norair added almost 400 interviewers to the ASC roster -- a tribute, she says, to the power of the Internet to get the word out. Her goal is to interview every applicant.

Adrienne Della Penna Rubin '88 would support that plan. When her interviewer, Morton Kahan '64, called to congratulate her on being accepted by Princeton, Rubin told him that her father objected to providing his social security number and would not complete the Divorced/Separated Parents Form. As a result she had been denied financial aid and would be unable to attend. Kahan called the financial aid office to explain the situation and got them to waive the requirement, allowing her to receive an aid package and attend Princeton. "Mort's act of kindness changed my life," Rubin says. "It demonstrated to me what a special place Princeton is - a place where people really care about one another."

And where they certainly care about spreading the Princeton message.

Bill Paul '70 is the author of Getting In, an inside look at the college admissions process.