Refactored

Refactored Yes, several days without blogging. Im sure youve been waiting with bated breath. Where have I been? Well, for the past ten minutes, I was down in the Admissions Records Office, checking in on things there. Today was a huge mail day. The records staff is currently working through 14 buckets of mail, plus all of the online application pieces. Its pretty crazy. So, if youve been watching your application tracking on the MyMIT portal, be patient. We still have a lot of application pieces to enter and file. Before that, Ive been catching up on email and phone calls. This morning we had our weekly staff meeting, a good chance for all admissions staff to get together and catch up. And before that, I was sleeping off last nights IM hockey game: November 1, 11pm MIT Intramural C League Ice Hockey Phi Sigma Kappa 3 MIT Alumni Club of Boston 1 Alumni goal: Leon Hsu Sadly, a loss in our first game of the season. Our next game isnt until after early action selection (thankfully!), against a team from astrophysics. And before that, I was coming back from a weekend-long conference in Chicago (what a city!) sponsored by the College Board. The conference brought together admissions officers, college guidance counselors, AP teachers, school administrators, and financial aid officers. The conference was quite interesting. Some of you might be thinking that a conference like this would Have a lot of smoke-filling rooms with admissions people and counselors making secret handshake deals, but really this was a conference about ideas and solutions to the problems that we all face in American education. I attended sessions on urban education (K-12) policy, on writing in a democracy (with Bob Herbert from the New York Times), on international education and admissions, and on socioeconomic diversity in college admissions, among moany of my weekends activities. I also learned that there were a number of people out there who knew me from this blog perhaps this is making a difference (feel free to leave a comment letting me know what has been helpful, and what might be helpful for you in the future). Quick news update: I have changed the name of this blog from The McGann Factor to McGanns Factors, which I think is a bit more clever and less Fox News-y. For the history of the original name, you can check out this historical entry, where I amke it clear that the original name was all Bens fault. While were on the general topic of blogs, I really hope youll continue to check out The Barkowitz Blog, which is both clever and informative on the topic of financial aid. Tomorrow, Ill do a rundown of your questions and also a little bit on the election. Not the same few colleges: Macalester College in St. Paul, MN. Before UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan got his graduate degree at MIT, he got his undergraduate degree from this diverse campus.