Sally Champagne of Harvard and Martin Walsh of Stanford were here this evening telling us about their respective institutions and then taking questions (and asking a few). I counted 45 people at the technical start of the session, but something like another ten had stealthily joined us by the end. As with the University of Chicago info session Tuesday night with Ted O’Neill, we were asked to tell them pertinent information which would help them to understand our particular group of Exonians and Exeter in general. Champagne has been reading Exeter applications for a long time, but Walsh was new to them, so this seemed extra true.

In addition, Angela Henson, an Exeter and Harvard alumna, was there to offer her thoughts “not from an admissions perspective.” She was not a particlarly recent alum of either but her insight was of course still valuable.

We were asked which of the two should begin first, and after much vacillation (for clearly the crowd did not want to express an outright favor for either one) someone said “Ladies first” which gave Champagne the clear to start her abbreviated stump. One word, first: I had Sally Champagne do my info session back in March when I went one fateful afternoon down into Cambridge. Truth be told, it was not my favorite info session of the last year. I was therefore pleased by the difference I heard this evening; it just goes to show how an impression can linger long after one individual’s ‘off day’ has passed.

Champagne started by saying her school was sometimes seen as a victim of the “terrible toos” –”Too expensive, too far from home, too hard to get into.” I’d never heard of Cambridge / East Coast being too far from home, but that must be because 10 miles from downtown.

Fun fashion watch: John Yoshida, class of 2008, was wearing a Princeton t-shirt! This was much joked about, and I think by the end he was regretting his decision. Mike Maruca, 2007 class president, was wearing an “Animal House” ‘College’ shirt himself. He got a playful rubbing about that one, too. A dreadfully high number of people were still in dress code–I assume to impress the admissions officers. All the same, it does break my heart to see people supporting that unnecessary vestige of Exeter’s past. Then again, I won’t drone on about my strong feelings about dress code; you can check out my whole vice presidential campaign about that.

It was Walsh’s first time outside of California, apparently–he was San Francisco born and bred, and touched my heart by mentioning the similarities between the “bay area” and the “bay state” –although he was doing so in reference to Harvard, not my life.

Champagne started with numbers. 3500 courses, 40 concentrations, seminars of 12 people or fewer, etc etc. From there she went into less statistical observations, which I felt were much more valuable. I had already heard the spiel so I was just picking out little pieces which I felt echoed what I recalled from the first time I heard her speak; sadly, the index card notes to that March session disappeared in the muck of spring term.

Martin Walsh went right afterward. He was very cavalier about recognizing the spin Stanford’s marketing put out; he asked if “they could say ‘entrepreneurial’ any more” in the viewbook. He mentioned the ‘Silicon Valley’ aspect of Stanford–fast moving, which is good and bad. He described an “intellectual vitality” about the place–people were were passionate about something and who generally came to Stanford with an idea already. He wanted to know why someone might get on a plane and choose to go to the west coast, as far as exeter applicants were concerned–Stanford draws more from west of the Mississippithan east.

Best of all, he acknowledged that there are “a million great schools” and that it was important to find the one feel where you could thrive. This is not the first time I’ve heard an admissions officer remind students they should be looking somewhere based on “fit,” but I still like to hear it. It’s rare. It deviates from a purely promotional script in some ways. My one word impression of Stanford, from his talk: Vitality.

Then questions; particularly boring questions this round, too many which could have been answered by a visit to the website or print materials of either school. I asked the same interdisciplinary question of Champagne that I had back in March (trouble with big, excellent science departments inhibiting interdisciplinary collaboration?) but in the rush of the question stampede I didn’t get a really clear answer. Too bad.

To conclude, Mike Maruca asked a ridiculous question about the problem of “ego” and “arrogance” among students at these top schools. Champagne spoke about the ‘H-bomb’ effect, where students won’t tell people what school they attend. Single funniest moment, though? Martin closed by telling us to “enjoy the process” since it is a “very special time in our lives.”