Tag: Undergraduate Admission Office

A Series of Firsts: Loyola Weekend Spring ’19

A Series of Firsts: Loyola Weekend Spring ’19

Hey everybody! Welcome back to “A Series of Firsts,” where I tell you about my many first experiences navigating the resources that Loyola offers its students! Today it’s all about Loyola Weekend, and how it was working for UAO during the busiest time for the office, and Loyola itself.

A little about Loyola Weekend: every Spring Semester, admitted students and their families have the opportunity to visit campus and experience first hand what Loyola has to offer its students. From staying overnight with a current First Year, to touring our campuses and meeting Staff and Faculty from the different Departments at the University, Loyola Weekend is a weekend full of activities so that admitted students can picture themselves as being part of the Wolf Pack!

The Weekend itself is run by the Undergraduate Admissions Office (where I work) with the help of other Departments in order to better accommodate the needs of the incoming families without disrupting normal University activities. It really isn’t a job for the faint of heart. In order to make sure that the Weekend would run smoothly, UAO recruited all of its student workers to give a little help in as many tasks as possible; that’s where I come in. Having decided last minute that I was going to work on Saturday for Loyola Weekend, I had only a slight idea of what I was getting into since I had already worked for a similar event last semester.

Nothing had prepared me for the work that went into preparing for the arrival of the families: days passed and the student workers had to prepare folders for every student that was to come, with information specific to the group they belonged to, as various hundreds of folders were needed for the weekend. I helped with folder making one day, and got a glimpse of all the other things that had to be done before Friday came: Faculty and Staff had to be reminded to attend their respective meetings, as were the Registered Student Orgs that were to participate in the Student Life sessions. The Panels for the different Schools and Departments needed to have enough people in order to give a rather full picture of the experience at Loyola. Students coming for auditions for Fine Arts Programs had to be accommodated properly, as were the students from the School of Business and School of Communication. enough Campus Tour Guides had to be available in order to show everyone around, and Student Ambassadors had to be available to provide the families with directions and help.

There are so many other things that had to be done that I might not know of or not even remember, but every single role was important to be fulfilled, and our advisors at UAO made sure that we student workers knew that. As a tour guide for the Halas Recreational Center, I saw how important it was to show our admitted students what their new home looks like, how crucial it is for them to envision themselves as living in Loyola. As hectic as the whole experience was, with everyone running up and down in order to get everything done, I really enjoyed the experience. At the end of the day, I had enjoyed sharing with others a little of my time at Loyola and to express my opinion towards the different resources that Loyola has to offer its students. I felt that my voice was being heard whenever a student or my parent would ask me to go off-script to tell them a little more of what being a Rambler is like. And I felt great being able to welcome them to the community the way the Loyola community had welcomed me when I was a First Year.

If you came to visit campus during this past Loyola Weekend, leave a comment and let me know what your favorite part of the whole weekend was! And if you have any questions about life at Loyola, just leave them in the comments section!

Deposit Paid and Forms Signed: Now What?

Deposit Paid and Forms Signed: Now What?

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Well done, you. So you’ve done everything the UAO asked you to do – took the placement tests, promised to keep doing good senior year (right?), turned in your money, signed away your life. Now all there’s left to do is… what?

Chances are, you’re going to go into this whole process without knowing where you’re exactly going to live, without knowing who you’ll be rooming with, without knowing how you’ll handle being away from home for a big chunk of your life for the first time. And you’ve got all summer to worry and get yourself into a frenzy about all the unknowns.

Let me give you the number one pro tip that saved my life.

Join the facebook group. Whatever your class will be, Class of 2020, 2021, 2050, join or make the facebook group. Chances are it’s already been made, but you never know. Go join it. And then, if you’re in any other groups, join or make those too – like Honors, or your LC, or even ‘Loyola Class of 2020 Students from Michigan.’ Anything like that. And then get involved in them.

Now, I’m not saying use it like a blog, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt to make introductions and put your opinion out there on some questions, or do some research and help to answer some questions people with less Googling skills than you might have. Be active. Make friends. Make a group chat. Go into campus with people you already know, so that you can start with a solid base of people to branch out and hang out with, if only for that first week before you make other friends.

Now for number two: communicate with your roommate, when you get them.

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Text them. Call them. Pack your stuff while Skyping with them. Meet up with them, if you can. You don’t have to be best friends with your roommate, but if you start it off with a foundation of friendship, or even mutual respect, it’s gonna be a whole lost easier. Disliking people you live with is something you want to try to avoid all your life – it’s just not good. It helps nobody.

For a lot of things, you won’t know until you get here which of you is more likely to wash dishes or take out the trash, or if they scratch in their sleep, or if they’re the type of person that will go out every. single. night. Most people haven’t gotten the chance to learn who they are in a non-monitored living environment, so they can’t tell you honestly whether or not they’ll go to bed late or if they’ll eat in their bed, just because they can. All those sorts of things are totally unknown until you find the rhythm that works best, so you have to try to start everything off on the right foot.

Number three: when it comes time, make a packing inventory list. Make a packing list for things you’ll need for college, but don’t set it in stone – be willing to add or detract things you find you might or might not need. But write it all down, and make some sort of note when you definitively have packed it. You’ll know what you have left to pack, what you have packed, and what you have overall so that you’re not at the very last moment going crazy on whether or not you’ve packed deodorant or gotten all your school books.

And, if you have forgotten something, don’t worry. I’ll tell you in advance that a time-honored tradition of Welcome Week is a late-night Target run for everything you didn’t know you’d need.

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Number four: enjoy your time right now. Enjoy the last few weeks of your senior year, enjoy your parents cooking and your hometown. Enjoy each and every moment you spend with your friends, cause it’s gonna be a lot harder to get together when the fall rolls around again. Give your pets as much affection as your heart can handle. Lie around and watch tv. Recognize that your job is gonna be useful when you’re in college and all you want to do is go down to Molly’s Cupcakes and get some cupcakes, and you can do that because you have the funds.

Really, don’t dread it – be excited! This is whole new world and an opening to experiences you can’t even begin to imagine right now. It’s going to be great. I’m excited for you!

It’s Time for Trivia

It’s Time for Trivia

There’s nothing I love more than a good trivia night. Getting the chance to host one was right up my alley.

On of my communications electives this semester is Special Events Planning. One of our class projects was to secure an opportunity to volunteer at an event. Working directly with the event’s coordinator, we would gain hands-on experience planning and running an event.

I didn’t have a particular event in mind when this project was assigned, so I went to my supervisor in the Undergraduate Admissions Office, Mary Bennett. Thankfully enough, this assignment ended up helping both of us out. Part of Mary’s job as an admissions counselor is to coordinate overnight visits to Loyola for admitted high school seniors.  She needed a host for the trivia night taking place during the overnight visit and I was more than happy to help her coordinate this event.

Although I’ve never been to an overnight myself, I’ve heard great things about these visits and the unique way they let students experience Loyola. Overnight visitors have the chance to eat in campus dining halls, attend classes with their hosts, sleep in a residence hall and attend on-campus events. One option to keep students busy for the evening is going to a trivia night. Mary asked me to create the trivia questions and host the game on March 17th.

Since I’ve been to my fair share of trivia nights, creating categories and questions wasn’t all that hard. The six categories I created questions for were: food, movies, U.S. states, famous landmarks, Chicago and Loyola. The game was split into five rounds, with each round having one question from each of the categories. When answered correctly, each question was worth five points, except for the Loyola category which when answered correctly was worth zero points, and when answered incorrectly was minus five points. I put all of this into a PowerPoint so that I could use the auditorium’s projector for everyone to see the questions. I used the game Mary had created previously for reference and borrowed her answer sheet design.

I asked a friend of mine to come with me to the trivia night to help with scoring (and moral support). We went to the Life Sciences Building auditorium at 8:30 to set up for our 9 P.M. trivia. Unfortunately, another student group was using the room until 9. It took them awhile to clear out and for us to set up the projector, but we got our game underway by 9:20. 14 students and their hosts came, so we had two teams of seven.

“The Dream Team” vs. “Vince and the Ramblerz.”

The game itself went off without a hitch and the teams enjoyed some friendly competition. When the teams tallied their scores at the end “The Dream Team” had won by 5 points. “Vince and the Ramblerz” asked for a recount so my friend and I double checked the answers and scoring only to find out that “Vince and the Ramblerz” had done their math wrong and were the true victors of the trivia night. Luckily for everyone I had two bags of candy for prizes and let each team split a bag.

This experience was ideal in prepping me for the world of event planning. I got to be involved in the process from start to finish, had to deal with a minor crisis and managed to pull off a successful event.

If you want to put your trivia skills to the test, check out the game we played here:

Trivia Game

Where to Work as a First-Year Student

Where to Work as a First-Year Student

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Ooh, a job. For some of you, it might be a scary, new prospect that just a reminder of the incoming doom of life after school. For others, it’s something you’ve known for years. Whether you’re looking to get a job to help pay for this expensive (but worth it) school or just so you can get bopngrill every week, let me tell you about the state of jobs and Loyola, both on and off campus.

Even if you live just down the block from Loyola, things change when you get here. In the job quest, you might qualify for work-study – or you might not. Luckily, no matter your needs, Loyola is here to help! We have job fairs every single semester that host companies looking to hire college students and RamblerLink, a website that also connects prospective employers to potential employees.

Of course, there’s more than that, too. That’s mainly off-campus. Near-campus opportunities include working at The Coffee Shop, Subway, Insomnia Cookies, and so on, and so on. Businesses hire, and you don’t have to take the CTA to get to work! There’s also online freelance jobs perfect for students, like writing for The Odyssey.

It’s Chicago. There’s lots of job opportunities, if you’re willing to go out and get ’em! And if you’re not comfortable leaving the campus or your schedule won’t allow for a thirty-minute commute, then on-campus is for you!

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On-campus has a lot, a lot of opportunities. Unlike other schools, our dining halls are run entirely by Aramark employees, so you don’t have to resign yourself to working to feed your peers. Instead, you can work at the Undergraduate Admission Office, like me! Or you could become a Desk Attendant, an RA, a lab assistant, or a tutor. You can work at the Phonathon, or with Campus Reservations, or even Conference Services. There’s also Orientation Leaders, Welcome Week Leaders, College Coaches, and on and on and on. You could be a security guard at LUMA if you wanted to give that a try. If you can dream that Loyola has a need, then there’s a job.

So where will you work? There’s so many choices, it’s really up to you, your circumstances, and your need.  Trust me when I say that the job market isn’t something you have to worry about being too small here in Chicago and on campus. Happy hunting!

Only 13 Days Left!

Only 13 Days Left!

 

13 days or 312 hours or 18,720 minutes or 1,123,200 seconds… until our priority deadline: December 1st!

That means you better request your transcripts, test scores (ACT or SAT), and letters of recommendation right away so schools, counselors, teachers, and testing agencies have time to send it all over to Loyola before our postmark deadline. Also make sure you submit your application, your essay, and your optional resume. Meeting this deadline will allow you to be automatically considered for all of Loyola’s merit-based scholarships, which are based on high school GPA, test score, and class rank (if available).

Please be patient if you have requested materials be sent to Loyola in the past 3 weeks and they are still not showing up as received in your status page. It typically takes 3 weeks or so for us to upload or process a document and update your status page.

If you have already submitted all of your materials, be sure to check your applicant status page regularly for a decision! Click here for tips on what to do while waiting for a decision. 

Don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or concerns!

Loyola keeps winnin’

Loyola keeps winnin’

It’s difficult to not sound cliche every time I have to answer the question: Why did you choose Loyola?  First, let me take you to 2007.  I remember that year perfectly because I had my list of universities I wanted to apply to.  Loyola was the first one down on the list.  My mother’s good friend had two sons who had just graduated from Loyola and she always talked to me about it.  Always.  Among DePaul, U of I, UIC, Saint Louis University, Iowa State University and Northwestern, I knew Loyola stood out the most to me, but I wasn’t sure as to why just yet…

It wasn’t until my senior year of high school when I received all of the acceptance letters that I started feeling overwhelmed.  I took it one step at a time and decided to visit the campuses.  You know how they say don’t judge a book by its cover?  I had to.  No other campuses compared to Loyola’s breathtaking views.  Needless to say whenever I mentioned Loyola to anyone they always “oohed” and “aahed.”  It’s prestige made it that much better.

I had finally realized why Loyola stood out to me the most.  I always wanted to be a city girl, but still be close to home.  I wanted a prestigious education, but at a reasonable price.  I wanted a beautiful campus, but still feel at home.  I wanted to meet people, but make lifetime friends.  I wanted to challenge myself as a student, but find myself as a person.  I knew Loyola would make all of this happen and it did.  It also made me realize that it’s OK to sound cliche when you appreciate your education THIS much.

Breaking Down Loyola’s Deadlines

Breaking Down Loyola’s Deadlines

Every school has their own set of deadlines and it can be a lot to remember. Below I have outlined all of Loyola’s major deadlines and share some helpful tips to follow throughout the process. My #1 tip: create a calendar that lists ALL of the Loyola’s deadlines (and other collegiate/scholarship deadlines) so you have all of the information in one place where it won’t get mixed up with homework assignments, exam dates, and your schedule of extra-curricular activities.

December 1st

This is the priority deadline to submit Loyola’s application.

What does this mean? You must submit your online application, your essay, one letter of recommendation from a teacher or counselor, all high school transcripts, and your ACT or SAT scores in order for your application to be complete. If you meet this deadline, you will automatically be considered for all of Loyola’s Merit-based Scholarships, which can go a long way in helping to pay for your collegiate experience.

Suggestion: Don’t wait to start your application! You can send in your application and supporting materials in any order so request documents & scores right away so your school or College Board has plenty of time to submit everything for you before the deadline approaches. It’s also better to get an early start because your senior year will only get busier and we near the winter season and you’ll want plenty of time to spend on your applications and essays.

February 1st

This is the general deadline to submit applications for the Honors Program, the Business Honors Program, and for specific scholarship opportunities that require specific applications or essays.

What does this mean? Many programs and scholarships will have their own deadlines, but many of them will be February 1st or early in the month.

Suggestion: Each one will have their own separate requirements and process so be sure to closely monitor everything to be sure you don’t miss the deadline!

March 1st

This is the suggested deadline to file FAFSA (or the Free Application for Federal Student Aid).

What does this mean? You will want to file FAFSA to insure that you receive the best possible financial aid package and don’t lose out on any financial assistance because funds could eventually run out if you file to late in the year.

Suggestion: Even if you don’t think you will receive any financial assistance, you should still apply and the results may surprise you. Submit your FAFSA as early as possible (even if this means using last year’s tax information and updating it later on in the spring). However, if you do miss the deadline, you should absolutely still apply.

May 1st

This is the national enrollment deadline when colleges and universities across the country ask students to make a final commitment to a single school.

What does this mean? This is your deadline to submit the $500 enrollment deposit to Loyola. If you miss this deadline, the class could potentially fill and close resulting in you losing your opportunity to attend Loyola.

Suggestion: Make your enrollment deposit sooner rather than later. You are able to make your deposit starting the day you are admitted and it is refundable through May 1st should you change you mind.

What to do When Waiting for a Decision

What to do When Waiting for a Decision

It’s that time of year when applications are complete and the waiting game for decisions and acceptance letters begins! Here are a few tips on what you should be doing with this admission process down-time:

 

If you have any additional questions, give us a call at 800.262.2373 or email us at admission@luc.edu.

Tips for College Fair Attendance

Tips for College Fair Attendance

Oh man, it’s been a minute since I last blogged. But the Fall is upon us again which means another admission cycle and more importantly, COLLEGE FAIR SEASON!

While College Fair Season isn’t an official season like Summer or Fall, there are a number exciting things about the start of this time of year. College fairs are one of the best ways to see and learn about a large number of universities in one foul swoop. They’re also a great way to get excited about the prospect of higher education.

But just like any season there are adjustments that need to be made. And that’s why I’m here. I’m here to give you some tips and pointers to maximizing your college fair experience. Let’s dive on in:

Do Some Pre-Planning– Most fairs have a list of institutions attending well before the start of the fair. If you can, check out the list and note the top school you’re interested in. Then, mark some schools you’ve heard of and want to know more about. When you arrive to the actual fair grab a map and head to your top schools first (but don’t run) then your secondary schools. Once you’re done with those wonder around for a bit. Explore some places you’ve never heard of and grab their information. The point of these fairs is to learn more about the schools you’re interested in and to explore others you may have never heard of before.

Think of Some Questions Before Attending– You don’t need to have a list of written questions you ask to every table you visit, but having a couple pre-thought questions will help you utilize your time properly. Asking simple fact questions (like size, minimum requirements etc) can be avoided since most of those answers are in the hand-out materials. Instead ask more in depth questions like, “what makes your school unique?” or “what are some of the popular and active student groups on campus?” Asking these types of questions will help paint a more well-rounded picture of the college or university beyond stats /figures. If you’re stumped on what questions to ask, see your college counselor. They are a wealth of information in all aspects of the college search.

Avoid Asking, “How good is your X program?” and “What do I have to have to have get into your university?”– These are my least favorite questions to receive at a college fair. They’re difficult questions to answer when they’re phrased that way. How do you want me to judge good? How do you judge good? And when you ask about minimum requirements for admission you might be missing other (equally important) aspects of application review. Luckily, there are two extremely easy ways to ask these questions and receive the same information. Ask, “Can you please tell me more about your X program?” This allows the admission representative to tell you about the curriculum, student involvement and accolades a program might have received. The other is, “How do you review applications for admission?” This allows the admission rep to explain the  whole process beyond just the numbers.

Snatch and Grab Politely– If you want to be strictly business at these fairs, go for it. But if you’re going to just grab information from a table then go to the next please be polite about it. When you approach the table smile and say “hello” grab what you’d like then say “thank you.” Most counselors understand your time is precious and you probably have other things you need to worry about that night. But, running through the fair grabbing anything you can is not cool.

Enjoy The Fair– Seems like hokey advice, but it’s still valuable. I see too many stressed out parents and students at my fairs. They run around the fair grabbing everything they can and talking with absolutely every school. If that’s what you want to do, go for it. But, I think people lose sight of the fact that we (admission reps) are there to serve them. The college fair is your time to explore and learn more. Don’t feel like to need to get to the fair right as it starts and stay until it ends. Use your time the way you want to. Ask questions, walk around casually, see a variety of schools and make connections with admission counselors. Most importantly, enjoy this whole college search experience.

Loyola’s admission counselors will be out all over the country over the next couple of weeks. To read more about each counselor and their respective territory check out this page.

Sunrise, Sunset

Sunrise, Sunset

It feels like forever since I’ve last seen a sunrise or a sunset. I’m either in class or somewhere indoors when the sun sets, or it’s cloudy outside, or the skyscrapers of Chicago cover the radiant sky. So I decided, for those people who agree with me, to post some photographs, both new and old, of some sunrises and sunsets taken by me in the Chicago area as a reminder that they do still exist.

I took this photo back in the day when I was still in high school, when I was waiting for the bus one Winter morning.

This is one of my favorites, taken in the early morning after my high school graduation at Glencoe Beach, where my whole graduating class was meeting the start of a new beginning for all of us.

This is a recent sunset photo taken over this past Winter Break from the window of the Undergraduate Admissions Office.

This sunrise photograph was taken in the suburbs of Chicago.

This photo was taken when I went for a walk in the Botanical Gardens near my home in the suburbs.