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Welcoming Address to the Class of 2012 Nancy Sinex August 22, 2008 
Director of Admissions Nancy Sinex entertains newly arrived students and their parents at Chase Stage with her annual analysis of the incoming class. You are finally here! All of you. In one place. It's exciting for me as one member of the admissions office to look out on your faces and be reminded of the exceptional group of students who applied for admission to Earlham for this school year. How much better it is to actually see you in person and to be reacquainted. I know my colleagues in admissions, all here and wearing similar gold shirts, share my enthusiasm for your decision to choose Earlham. This summer, I spent some time reading through your application files — again — this time to gather some interesting facts so that we could tell you a little about yourselves and help define the character of the entering class of 2008, with most of you, hopefully, becoming the graduating class of 2012 (recognizing some of our new transfer students will leave us even earlier). This part of the official college welcome has become a New Student Orientation tradition, one I hope you can tolerate now and will appreciate more later. So bear with me for about 10 minutes as I, in great detail, tell you about yourselves. You number 370 students (one of the largest entering classes in several years). Most of you are just beginning your college careers, while others — 26 of you — have transferred to Earlham from other institutions of higher education. Thirteen of you from Japan and Mexico are "visiting" with us for just this year. Twenty-six of you took a "gap" year and share a myriad of experiences since graduating from high school. You come from 32 states and over 40 foreign countries, and represent 277 different high schools. Five of you are home-schooled. At least 69 of you have homes outside of the United States — coming to Earlham from Turkey, Afghanistan, United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Cameroon, Angola, Tanzania, Bahamas, Tajikistan, Bangladesh, Swaziland, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Sri Lanka, Bulgaria, South Africa, Burkina Faso, Singapore, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Croatia, Russia, Hungary, Romania, France, Panama, Palestine, India, Pakistan, Norway, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Japan, Mexico, Jordan, Lebanon, Kenya, Iraq, Germany, Tibet, Mali, Indonesia, Rwanda, Latvia and the Republic of Korea. The states represented by the greatest number of new students are California, Illinois, New York, Minnesota, Ohio, Washington, Maryland, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Michigan. Two of you are the only representative from your state in the new class. We offer a special welcome to those students Montana and Idaho. Thirty-seven of you are Quakers, and 64 have relatives who attended or are attending Earlham — some of whom are parents, grandparents or siblings joining us in the audience today. At the time you applied, you had 543 siblings. Fifty-three of you are the only child in your family. Twelve of you are twins, (we have two sets of twins enrolling), and six of you have twins among your siblings. More of you were born in the months of May and December. April 2, May 6, June 13, July 8, August 21 and September 10 are the most prolific birth dates, with four of you sharing birthdays on each of those days. As has become our practice, we want to recognize the students having a birthday on or closest to the first day of New Student Orientation. We have four students who celebrated their birthdays yesterday and two who have birthdays to celebrate tomorrow: Ayumi Fujita, Allison Pierce, Leah Morehouse, Josh Lewis, Cara Stone and Porfia Yambo. The most popular name in the class for the second year running is Sara(h). There are eight of you, with and without the "h". There are also six Davids and five Benjamins, Madelines and Daniels and four Andreas Josephs, and Katherines. Together you scored 345,880 points on the SAT. The National Merit Scholarship Corporation named seven of you National Merit Finalists. On average you completed 49 classes or units of study in high school and, collectively, submitted 1,732 college applications. The essays accompanying your applications helped the admissions committee learn more about who you are, what you think, what challenges you have faced or are facing, what issues are important to you — all things that continue to inform your lives. The subjects of your essays included important people, whether family members, coaches, teachers, neighbors or friends. Lucy, Nate, Gilbert, Donna, Jeff, Duncan, Jemma, Molly — were or are some of the important role models or persons who in some way influenced your lives. You wrote passionately about relief work and fundraising in the continuing aftermath of Katrina, the genocide in Darfur, global warming, the health care crisis in the U.S., immigration reform, animal welfare, eating locally, the war in Iraq, the loss of a family member to cancer, the invisible children in Uganda, gun control, the importance of the small family farm, using public transportation, performance-enhancing drugs, world hunger, abortion, the social consequences of gene therapy, and the importance of the arts. We read about various wilderness adventures, music recitals, athletic competitions, self-discovery and appreciation for cultural differences during travel abroad, being adopted, and the changing relationships with parents following divorce. On a lighter note, you expressed anxiety about leaving for college, writing your college essay, or not completing homework assignments, becoming an uncle at the age of five, and celebrating unique holiday traditions. Your stated career preferences include lawyer, aerospace engineer, research biologist, child psychologist, art conservationist, archeologist, social worker, veterinarian, urban designer, pediatrician, photojournalist, film director, mathematician — to mention a few. There are students among you who aspire to be a Supreme Court Justice, an Air Force pilot, a philosophy cartoonist, professional musician or "citizen of the world." A number of you talked about becoming change agents, whether leading NGOs, volunteering with the Peace Corps or Doctors Without Borders, serving as political diplomats or conflict mediators, finding a cure for AIDS or cancer, or being instrumental in addressing global warming. Many, if not most, of you remain undecided about your future career paths and are expecting that college will help define your career.
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Earlham
College · 801 National Road West · Richmond,
Indiana 47374-4095 |