“Congratulations on your acceptance to the Georgetown Class of 2018!” reads the GAAP website on its page for admitted students.
The Georgetown Admissions Ambassador Program provides one of the most crucial services to the Georgetown community each year. The open house weekends work wonders to convince admitted students who may be on the fence about Georgetown to enroll here. This function serves not only to benefit the prospective students who are unsure of what Georgetown has to offer, but it also provides a service to the student body that will accept these eager students into their community come next fall.
With each of these busy weekends, GAAP leaders must try to accomplish the mammoth task of showing each of Georgetown’s innumerable facets to the hundreds of high school seniors who have travelled here to see our school for two short days. And while seeing the social and residential aspects of the Hilltop are of paramount importance to these students, the GAAP program should allow prospective students to delve into the academic prospects at more than the cursory glance than is currently allowed in the brief tours of Healy Hall.
GAAP should more readily promote one solution that already exists as an alternative to the open house weekend but is clearly underutilized: class visits. By encouraging willing professors to open their empty seats to prospective students, all parties involved stand to gain from the added level of transparency in the college selection process.
Prospective students would be more likely to get an accurate feel for Georgetown’s primary strong suit: academics. Beyond a basic understanding of Georgetown’s intellectual life, more students would be able to see an extended glimpse into a topic of their interest, letting them adequately gauge how well Georgetown can help fulfill their specific academic goals.
And for current students and professors, GAAP groups would know to avoid classrooms that might not be at the optimal point in the curriculum to treat visitors well — say, during an exam or presentation as is often common in March and April.
Portraying the Hilltop as a fun, engaging and supportive place to go to school is crucial in the admissions process. Providing a more in-depth opportunity to consider academics would only improve the GAAP experience for prospective and current students alike.
