In 1970, Middlebury’s admissions office had a challenge on its hands: fill the space left behind by an extraordinarily high number of juniors abroad. The administration proposed that the College fill these beds each spring by increasing the number of admitted transfer students. Fred Neuberger, dean of admissions at the time, had a slightly different vision.
“I told them, ‘I could get you hundreds of great freshmen,’” he said. “I went back to my office and told the guys, ‘We can add 30 more.’ It didn’t take my people five minutes before they each had a stack of folders on my desk. From day one, it was a howling success.”
Thus, the era of the “Feb” quietly dawned on Middlebury. Speaking largely in absolute terms, Neuberger described an intuitive, uncomplicated approach to the new program, praising his former colleagues for deemphasizing any potential difficulties.
“You could sit there and see all kinds of problems,” he said. “‘How are we going to house them? What are we going to do about roommates?’ You could find all kinds of problems if you wanted to, but nobody did.”
Moreover, he considers the development as entirely independent of other institutions’ influences.
“I had no interest in what anybody else was doing,” he said. “I cared about what we were doing. It was probably one of the few things at Middlebury where nobody worried about what they were doing at Dartmouth or Williams.”
While this process seems to correlate regular admission with higher achievement, given the quality of the applicant pool, Neuberger maintains that discrepancies between the initially admitted students and the additional 30 were trivial.
“These were all folders that people really wanted to take,” he said of the first Febs’ applications. “They probably had some little flaw along the way that knocked them out of the first group, but right from day one, they were the people who ran their schools, and everyone thought they were great.”
Today, of course, February admission is no longer simply an extension of the acceptance list, but the result of an entirely separate sort of consideration.
“There are what we might call ‘Febby’ qualities,” said Bob Clagett, current dean of admissions. These qualities, largely intangible and transcending quantifiable measures, come through in the student’s more personal submissions, such as the essay and letters of recommendation.
“We know when they come in February that they’ll hit the ground running and be able to contribute to the College academically and certainly personally … There’s just a sense that there are really impressive personal qualities that we would love to have in the student body.”
To dispel any rumors, Clagett said, Febs are no less likely than “Regs” — students admitted in September — to receive financial aid, and their scores and grades are “absolutely comparable.”
Indeed, as the student body welcomes new Febs into the climate and conventions of Middlebury each year, it simultaneously benefits from the sudden infusion of fresh faces.
“Having these 90 to 100 students coming in and living all over the community reinvigorates this place in all kinds of ways,” Clagett said. “It’s a whole new group of interesting personalities who will make Middlebury a more interesting place.”
Clagett is particularly proud of the way the February admission program fosters an appreciation for one’s education.
“For too many students, getting into college — getting into ‘X’ college — has become an end in itself,” he said. “I think people lose sight of the fact that it’s actually a means to an end — going to some fine institution and hopefully coming closer to realizing one’s potential and discovering what one’s academic interests and passions are.”
The concept of the “Febmester,” he said, “put Middlebury on the map of being institutionally in favor of students taking time off before college.”
Neuberger and Clagett share faith in the program’s staying power, and not simply because it perpetuates itself with each Feb class that graduates.
“In all the years I’ve been here,” Neuberger, who is now retired but still resides in Middlebury, said, “I’ve heard glitches about everything. I haven’t heard any glitches about February admission … I can’t imagine why they’d drop it.”
According to Clagett, “I have no reason to believe that our commitment to the Feb program will change.”
Despite the numerous advantages of February admission, certain aspects of the admission process indicate that a significant number of applicants still do not see it as desirable — or at least as desirable as fall admission.
As Cloe Shasha highlighted in her March 2010 Campus article, “[The] College excludes Febs from diversity stats,” because it is much less likely for students of racial minorities to be admitted as Febs unless they specifically indicate that preference. In an effort to create a racially diverse student body, Clagett says, the College tends to offer these students September admission, as this is historically correlated with a higher chance of matriculation.
“It’s not as though I think that students of color might not profit equally from a semester off,” he said, “but one of our challenges is increasing the multicultural diversity. We want to make our offers of admission comparable to everybody else’s.”
This measure demonstrates a tension between presenting February admission as attractive and dealing with the reality that people do not always realize its merits. One obstacle in marketing efforts is other institutions’ tendency to offer second-semester admission as a second-choice option. The University of Southern California, for example, allows first-years to enroll in the spring instead of remaining on a wait list.
Thirteen years ago, in an attempt to strike a balance between a cap on the number of incoming students and a desire to fully utilize the available space, USC’s admissions department considered creating a waiting list for undergraduate applicants. According to Kirk Brennan, associate dean and director of undergraduate admission at USC, the idea was short-lived.
“Waiting lists are good for schools, but not for students,” he said. “We wanted to focus on students.”
Each spring, the student population of 32,000 was decreasing by approximately 400 to 500, which Brennan largely chalks up to independent decisions to graduate early. Much like Middlebury’s situation, this open housing opportunity led to an innovative solution.
“Because we have this extra space, why don’t we just offer students a spot in the spring instead of putting them in limbo on the waiting list?” he said. “That way, they have a place to call home if they want, and if we do find that we have room in the fall within this new cap, then we’ll invite them to switch over to fall.”
The university makes great efforts to welcome their “Feb” class, providing them with an orientation experience much like that of their fall-admission peers. Brennan feels that the extra attention paid to the spring admits’ applications lends them a degree of emotional support from the admissions staff.
“Although they might feel like they’re second class, we feel like we fought the hardest to keep them,” he said.
Still, the knowledge that September admission is certainly offered to those students if possible gives this approach to second-semester admission a tinge of undesirability — one approach among others, that could potentially influence how Middlebury’s program is viewed.
Fortunately, there seems to be no shortage of applicants who not only possess what Clagett refers to as “Febitude” but also have at least a vague idea that being a Feb is something special.
According to Brennan, when spring admits arrive at USC, they may “feel a little different, and we want to make sure they don’t feel that way.”
In contrast, if Will Bellaimey ’10.5’s graduation speech last month is any indication, for Middlebury Febs blending in is by no means a priority.
“In just a few days,” he said to a chapel full of fellow graduates and loved ones, “people will be shuffling into Proctor, feeling worn out and grumbling about how short the break felt, and then suddenly, they will appear: a gigantic nuclear swarm of enthusiasm just so excited to be actually eating in Proctor.” The new Febs.
This zeal for life, reinforced each year as Feb leaders share their values with their protégés, is one mark of the archetypal Feb. As Bellaimey put it,“Febs are just excited to be.”
According to Clagett, Febs tend to be disproportionately represented in leadership positions across campus and their GPAs have been higher on average than Regs’ as of late; yet given the nature of their selection and culture on campus, these descriptors ring hollow in comparison.
Perhaps Neuberger’s description was most poignant in its simplicity: “They’re great kids.”
Future Febs, interpret as you wish.
For more on Feb-hood, see:
Don't You Wish You Were Febulous
CS Monitor: Is a dream college worth waiting for?
"Febitude" — Past and present deans of admissions discuss what it means to be a Feb
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