No, it’s not a Terry Pratchett discworld novel, but I did get a letter dated January 10th from Chris Murphy, the admissions officer who reads for Phillips Exeter [Post about his info session]. The fact that Yale’s admissions office has been colluding with the USPS to send mail that hasn’t been written yet is quite understandable given the significant load of applications they have to deal with. Time-space warping aside, the letter was quite simple, just reminding me of all the things I like best about Yale.

The first line–after “I am as delighted with the Commitee’s deicision as you are”–talked about how “being a Yalie is about belonging to an exceptional community” which is what I decided was the most important factor when it came to college! It then rattled off some of the many interesting visitors to campus from last year, and then talked about some of the interesting things that students had been doing before ending with some institutional achievements (won the Ivy League football title, reopened the Louis Kahn Art Galllery, etc).

I was reminded again of how much fun Bulldog Days is in the letter; I’m getting more annoyed that I can’t come with every additional mention of its good times. There was a little note at the bottom of the letter “I see you will join us! Great” handwritten, but I expect that was an autopen or an intern or something. It could have been printed but it didn’t seem to be from the same ink as the rest of the letter.

Anyhow, long story short: I liked this letter because it was a friendly reassertion of how happy Yale was to have me. If, as Chris Murphy said, he was as happy as I am, he’s very, very happy. I hope all the admissions readers sent out letters like this, but I’m not sure; I’ve posed the question to the yale prefrosh group. Anyone admitted early elsewhere get similar stuff?

update 1/10/06: I just noticed that this may have been posted as ‘private’ so I am changing that back to ‘published’ — my mistake. I’m not sure if it was originally published or not, but it’s back up now.