Dear IIT Alumni,
Greetings. For only the second time in nearly 30 years, the IIT community welcomed over 520 new first-year students and an additional 140 transfer students. We continue to see strong growth in the enrollment of international students (16% of the first-year class), women (31% of the first-year class), and students of color (15% of the first-year class).
One of the strongest themes among many of our new students is their interaction with members of the alumni community. In fact, while our overall yield rate was 31% last year, the yield rate among those applicants with connections to our alumni community was 52%. Our goal for 2008-09 is to increase the number of students recommended to IIT by our alumni from 150 to 450-500 students, and we can do this with your help.
We are very pleased with the response from graduates, like you, to the re-launch of the Alumni Admission Program at Illinois Institute of Technology. Our alumni continue to achieve great things in their work in every corner of the globe, across a wide range of professions and industries, and we are proud of their talents and grateful for their service. Please join us.
Here are 3 GREAT IDEAS recommended by other IIT alumni:
- Get involved with your local professional chapter.
A number of you have written to encourage IIT alumni to look for ways to "spread the word about IIT" through a range of opportunities available through local, regional or national chapters of professional organizations and associations. If you have some ideas and think we can help, please let us know. A Chicago-area alum recently asked us to host a "day-long event" that introduced over 200 high school students from an all-girls school to engineering and the sciences at IIT. We are ready to partner with you; talk to us. Let us know how we can work together.
- Send news about IIT to friends and business contacts across all of your networks.
We have received a terrific set of responses to our invitations to volunteer from graduates of IIT's professional and graduate programs. One recent law school graduate now living in Atlanta (originally from China) was delighted to connect with the undergraduate program at IIT and indicated that she would share the word about IIT across the breadth of contact bases in order to help identify the next generation of students who share the IIT dream about changing the world.
- Explore the outreach programs available through your firm or company.
An alum recommended that IIT explore the full range of opportunities available through their companies which might already have strong ties to secondary schools, community colleges, or groups such as FIRST robotics, or the girl scouts and boy scouts. Again, if you get involved, and we can help, please let us know.
Here are 3 VERY GOOD IDEAS that we recommend:
- Forward the electronic versions of our materials to colleagues and friends with a personal note from you.
Offer them a story about how your alma mater is making a difference in the world, and invite them to think about a young person who might be a good match for IIT.
- Update your information with your secondary school, community college, or graduate/professional school.
The Class Notes sections of various alumni magazines are the most widely read in any issue. We can utilize this important and friendly vehicle to share IIT with our communities of affiliates—including your own fellow alumni.
- Share the best kept secret on the South Side of Chicago!
My goal is to encourage our IIT alumni, staff, faculty and students to "tell the world" about IIT over the next 30 days, and to send over 1,000,000 emails to family, friends, classmates and colleagues to share what we do and how we impact the world. Let us know how many emails you send so that we can advance the "grid in the office" as we march our way forward to 1,000,000 unique contacts. With your help, we can reach this goal by mid-November.
We welcome your support and energy, and look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Gerald P. Doyle
Associate Vice President
Undergraduate Admission
To volunteer: Email Jill Sifuentes, Associate Director of Undergraduate Admission, at sifuentes@iit.edu.
To share ideas about recruitment: Email Gerald Doyle at doyle@iit.edu. |
