Jack's Visit to Brown College at Monroe Hill

The Dorm Tours are some of the most popular parts of Days on the Lawn. The University doesn't allow tour groups into the residence halls on a daily basis for privacy and security reasons. Can you imagine how disruptive it would be to have three groups like this parade through your home each day?

The dorm tours include the McCormick Road halls ("old" dorms), Alderman Road halls ("new" dorms), and a couple residential colleges. Residential Colleges are special-interest housing options. You can read about all of the options on the housing website, but I thought I'd give you a glimpse into one of them, Brown College at Monroe Hill, on the blog.

Brown is centrally located and just a few steps away from many academic buildings and Newcomb Hall (where they have a private dining room inside the dining hall!).

While traditional halls at UVA house first years, the residential colleges aren't specific to one class. First, second, third, and fourth years live in Brown.

Brown is known for being an inclusive community where everyone is welcome. I think that's why there are students who move in as first-years and stay in the Brown community for the rest of their college career. 

Each portal (four-room suites) in Brown feels homey, in part due to the mantles in many of the rooms. You can tell a lot about the residents by how they decorate their mantles.

The building is low and rambling, with lots of nooks and crannies. While I was walking around with Jack, we stopped in this sitting area for a moment to admire a letter the Seven Society sent to Brown residents several years ago.

The common areas in Brown include lounges and kitchen spaces. The one below known as Smith Cafe, which turns one of the study lounges into a little coffeehouse on certain evenings.

The different parts of the building are connected by tunnels in the basement. I think running through the tunnels was Jack's favorite part of our tour.

Brown has a bunch of beautiful courtyards. It's hard to believe we were so close to the hustle and bustle of Newcomb Hall and McCormick Road when we took these pictures.

The building isn't really the main attraction. The students are the best part of a visit to Brown. If you have a chance, make sure to stop by during your Days on the Lawn.

Be sure to keep an eye out for the Brown application. The questions tend to be interesting and lots of students say they had fun filling it out. There have been times in the past when the Office of Admission has asked the Brownies to contribute a question to the essay choices on our application!

Paying a Deposit and Next Steps

The National Candidates' Reply Date is around the corner! By May 1st, you should pay a deposit to join the Class of 2017 at one of the schools on your list. We obviously hope you are planning on joining us at UVa!

Paying a Deposit
When you go to pay your deposit, click the "accept" button under your admission decision letter. Be sure to turn your pop-up blocker off. The payment screen will launch in a new window. The deposit system is an e-check system. You'll enter the routing and account numbers from the bottom of a check to pay the deposit, much like people who e-file taxes do. The system will take a couple kinds of credit cards, but it's a check system first and foremost, so it doesn't work with every kind of credit card.

At this point, you become a matriculated student. It might not sound like a big deal, but due to the security built into SIS, I can't "see" what you do beyond the admission process. While I will always, always be happy to help you, you have to get used to talking to other offices when you need something as a matriculated student.

Aside from collecting your final transcript and testing (see the last section below about that), the Office of Admission doesn't handle you any more.


Next Steps
Bookmark the Summer Orientation website and get familiar with it. That website lists out everything you need to do to prepare for coming to UVa. After 72 hours, you can take UVa's responsible computing quiz, set up your email account, and register for orientation. Housing, dining, and health forms get taken care of after that.

The Office of New Student Programs will send out a welcome book to give you things to think about as you get ready to come to orientation. If you're curious about that, you can read last year's welcome book online. I think they normally ship those out sometime in May.

Summer orientation is required, but there are lots of sessions offered. There is programming for parents and guests running concurrently with the program for new students during orientation. Additional orientation programming will take place in the fall.

Registration, Housing, Dining, etc.
We are not a school that gives priority housing to students who deposit early or come to an early orientation session. Pick the session that works best for your summer schedule. As long as you have forms submitted by the deadlines on the Summer Orientation website, you will be just fine when it comes to housing.

As you start to poke around in the registration system, do not be alarmed by classes that look full. Seats in the classes that first-years typically take are set aside for each orientation session, so a class may look full at the end of Session A, but seats will be opened up for Session B.


Final Transcripts and Test Scores
You must have your school send a final transcript once the school year is over. You will also want to send official results from any tests (AP, SAT IIs, IB) when they are available so you can get credit for some of your scores come orientation time.

If we don't get a final transcript from you, you'll have a hold placed on your account. I don't want to scare you, but it's not easy to get this squared away when your high school is closed for summer break.

Questions?

Class of 2016 Facebook Page & Group

Years ago, an enterprising young college student had an idea to market a business to college bound students through Facebook in a new way.  Through made up Facebook accounts, he or his unpaid interns became administrators for hundreds of "Class of 20xx" Facebook groups.

Back then, most admission folks let Facebook groups grow organically.  Some excited student would start a group for their class and others would join as they got their admission decisions.  I shared that view. After the made up accounts were connected by a group of admission officers interested in social media, what was happening got picked up by the media and dubbed "Facebookgate."  The full story unfolds on the Squared Peg blog, but you can read a quick synopsis on this blog.

Each year since, that same enterprising, young man has tweaked his practices and tried again, more recently for his roommate matching website.  In 2010, even The Choice blog at the New York Times covered what was happening.


Why am I telling you this?  So you understand why I stepped in a few years ago to create class groups on Facebook.  I have absolutely no interest in tracking you on the internet or looking at your profiles.  My interest is in creating a page and group for each class where content won't include advertisements and your information won't be mined (my worry with groups that are tied to a company). 


Over time, I developed a plan for each class' Facebook groups.  I would create the group (and more recently, a page and a group) for each class.  Once the class was enrolled, I'd turn administration of the group over the current First Year Class Council, who would best answer questions and give advice.  When the incoming class elected their Class Council, class officers would become the new administrators.  I'm happy to say that most of the groups I created over the years are still in use.  

I've already sent an email to see if we can get the First Year Class Council to take over the Class of 2016 page and group.  I hope they'll be on board in a few days.  Until then, you'll see my name on the groups, but know that I'm far too busy with the application review process to keep up with your conversations there.

Click the images to go to the group and page for the Class of 2016:

By the way, if you're interested in how housing works, check out this post from last year, written by the Director of Accommodations in the housing office here.   He shared a ton of info about requesting a roommate or going through the roommate matching survey/process that his office runs. It's a really fantastic post!


Oh, one more thing.  Every year, the Alumni Association has a logo made for the incoming class and it becomes the avatar for the Facebook group.  So, don't be alarmed if the image changes at some point.  


ETA:  Groups that overlap can definitely co-exist on Facebook.  In past years, I've seen groups created by incoming students from a certain country or students who are in the scholars programs.  I think that's a great way to foster community, if there's an interest in them.