On Wednesday, April 6, the admissions office hosted the Upper School Accepted Students Day for the first time in two years, due to COVID-19 restrictions. This event serves to acclimate students to campus and give families the final push towards enrollment.
The event started at noon, with over 50 prospective students and their families registering and heading over to Roberts theater for the opening program. They received introductions from Head of School Tom Dillow, Head of the Upper School Daniel Gleason, and Dean of Students Krista Sahrbeck. Additionally, seven current students spoke about their experiences at KO, highlighting different areas of their school life. These students spoke about academics, extracurriculars, athletics, and what it’s like to be a new student entering both freshman and sophomore year.
Once the assembly finished, students headed to either a mock class or a mock advisee group led by Ms. Sahrbeck and science teacher and Form Three Dean Kata Baker, with the help of some Shield and Dragon students. Meanwhile, families stayed in the theater for a parent panel discussion, where current KO parents shared their personal experiences with academics, transportation, college counseling, the parent association, and more.
Then, both students and their families went over to Chase Tallwood for the final activity of the day: an interactive program that allowed them to take a closer look at different aspects of KO life. There were 12 different rooms featuring topics such as athletics, college counseling/academic planning, speech and debate, care team (entailing wellness in addition to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging discussions), and academics. Students had the opportunity to explore any three of these rooms, and could even split up with their families to divide and conquer.
Senior Associate Director of Admissions Rebecca Benevides found this day to be a huge success. “A lot of the times you can tell by the energy, and it felt like good energy that day – a lot of smiling, happy faces,” she said. “Some people even brought their enrollment contracts and deposits with them, which is a great sign that they wanted to enroll there on the spot.”
Senior Associate Director of Admissions Meredith Crowther agreed, saying that the success wouldn’t have been possible without the help of current KO students. “Some of the Shield and Dragon students helped us out in parking lot duty, registration, holding doors. Some helped with mock advisory, and rotation of classes,” she said. “Students that did strength and conditioning that weren’t in Shield and Dragon came and helped out, which was great. We even had a couple of students offer to be KoKo, and that actually seemed to initiate some Shield and Dragon applications, which is fun.”
Despite being in-person, planning this year’s Accepted Students Day proved more difficult than anticipated and forced the admissions team to adapt their plans. “Back in January, we were in the midst of a surge of the Omicron variant, so we were a little unsure how that was gonna look, so we wanted a little bit of flexibility to invite students on campus for Accepted Students Day,” Mrs. Crowther said. “We decided to try to do it on a Wednesday afternoon, to allow families to come to campus, but also recognizing that it would be less dense and there would be less people on campus if we did it on a Wednesday afternoon when most of the faculty and students were out of the buildings.”
Looking forward to next year, Mrs. Crowther reflected on her hopes for next year’s Accepted Students Day. “I think ultimately we’d love to get back to an admitted students program where it’s a bit of a more normal day, where we have our students on campus and our admitted students because the vibe of the day feels a bit more authentic,” she said.
Ms. Benevides had a different take. “As we all know, everybody loves the food here at KO; we didn’t make that a part of this accepted students program,” she said. “I think if there is one thing that I could bring back it would be a chance to just have lunch in the dining hall because I think that if they weren’t sold, that would definitely do the job!”
Overall, the admissions team would agree that the day was a success!
