Tufts Blogs

How strange.

When ED1 decisions were released in mid-December, eighteen students submitted their on-line deposits during the first overnight.  And now it’s happened again!  We announced decisions for ED2 yesterday morning and, voila, we have another 18 deposits this morning.  How does that happen?  And why did the numerical fates produce 18 deposits for ’17 rather than 17 for ‘17 not once but twice?!  (I think I’m asking for too much...)

Anyway, ED2 added 184 students to the growing herd known as the Class of 2017.  Since it was well received last round, I’ll use the arrival of their deposits to share a (random) sample of their personalities and backgrounds.  

In December it took about an hour for the first deposit to arrive after our 3PM release.  This time, the reaction time was a smidge slower: it was about an hour and fifteen minutes until the photojournalist and typewriter restorer (kind of random but interesting nonetheless) from Lexington, Mass., grabbed the gold medal in our ED2 deposit sprint.  It was 12:15. “I have captured drag queens marching for their rights to be seen as equals, strong and elegant in their femininity…and the faces of young men and women who have gone overseas to make decisions no person should ever have to make,” she wrote in her essay celebrating the power of photography. She plans to major in peace & justice studies.

Thirty minutes later, an “expressive” Singaporean English major and painter joined the class. “My approach to painting has always been centered in realism with a pinch of Emotionalist techniques,” she told us.   (Our first two enrollees have a clear artsy bent!)

And then we waited until school let out (at least on the East Coast of the US) before another freshman joined our class.  At 3:48, the environmental activist from Northern Virginia made it a trio.  He’s also the three-time captain of his varsity cross country team and performs freestyle rap.

Freshman #4, the premed from Dayton, Ohio, arrived at 4:23.  A “military child” born in Germany, he was an intern with Organizing for America during Ohio’s presidential campaign and volunteers with the Red Cross.  He also shared his “nerdy” passion for Hitchcock and Tarantino films; the admissions committee liked his “well-roundedness.”

#5 clocked in at 5:05.  (Nice.)  This one is a football recruit from Missouri who’s considering pre-law and music as his majors.  He also has a part-time job at a fueling company. Nineteen minutes later, a guy from South Florida appeared.  He collects foreign language dictionaries.  And he told us he’s a foodie who’s obsessed with empanadas (who isn’t?) and he also organizes quarterly “Spanish Table Potlucks” to immerse his peers in Hispanic culture. Not surprisingly, he’s interested in IR, economics and Spanish.

It was dinner time in Medford when the legacy from West Hartford enrolled at 6 o’clock on the dot.  He loves chemistry and sailing and cross country running; he works as a parking lot attendant, volunteers at a Catholic home for the aged and teaches catechism.  (Maybe he was an altar boy.)

Two gals from Chicago enrolled within three minutes of each other.  The first was in the house at 8:23. This book club head and slam poet is also a member of the LGBT Alliance and the Alliance for Women, is captain of the cross country team (hmm, I see a theme developing…) and founded the winter running club.  (That makes sense: she’s from Chicago.) 

Her fellow Illinoisan arrived at 8:26.  Her “Why Tufts?” response asked Tufts out on a date: “Thinking about you is like hugging someone wearing a fleece Snuggie.” The psych major-to-be and All State field hockey player reported that her house has “eternal bedhead.” She’s also captain of the slam poetry team and a founding member of her school’s Science Olympiad team.

Our first Jersey Boy (for this round, anyway) deposited at 9:33 (while I was walking my dog through the snowdrifts of Boston).  Another cross country runner, he’s thinking about international relations and studying abroad at Tufts in Chile.  Five minutes later, an econ major from Nanjing, China arrived.  She placed first in a national cheerleading tournament, teaches dance and aerobics, and plays the four string Chinese lute.

A burst of boys deposited between 10:30 and 11PM.  At 10:31, we said hello to the philosophic guy from Western Mass., who’s a peer counselor and tutor, plays “various instruments” and has been practicing tae kwon do for three years.  Then Texas showed up at 10:42.  The son of two professors at UT-Austin, he’s a debater and tennis MVP, a cellist and a staff writer for the school newspaper who likes economics and political science; he’s thinking about studying the communist legacy of the Czech Republic.  (That’s interesting.) And at 10:55, the mechanical engineer from Friday Harbor, Washington clicked submit on his deposit form.  Originally from LA, he’s an Eagle Scout and captain of the robotics team, the president of the National Honor Society and a quidditch fan.

Back to China for #15 as Shanghai’s founder and president of Junior Octagon Optimist International Service Club claimed her seat.  And aloha!  A Hawaiian violinist jumped into the class at 3:44AM (although prime time TV was still airing in Honolulu…).

All was quiet in the wee hours of the morning.  And then #17 appeared as the Admissions Office reopened at 8:30AM.  A math and physics whiz from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, he’s created an iPhone app (“iBard”), plays chess, fences on the national level and studies Norwegian on his own.

Finally, at 8:39, we tallied the last deposit from the first overnight. It was from an orangutan (psst, we’re elephants!) fundraiser from Jakarta who also plays the sax and badminton and plans to study chemical engineering.

So that’s my second, totally random peek at another set of eighteen members of the Class of ‘17.  And we’ll have more peeps to join them in a few more weeks…