Shadow SCU seeking more student ambassadors
By Emily Entress
Santa Clara has recently launched a new program in response to the increase in applicants over the past few years. Shadow SCU, a student-led organization that branched off of the Ambassador program, was created two years ago to meet the demand of prospective students who want to visit the campus.
"Shadow SCU started as an ambassador based program, but since the number of our applications have grown over the past five years, there's been a much higher demand of students who want to come and shadow a class to help make their decision," commented Danielle Wenzel, the assistant director of the admission office and the staff member in charge of Shadow SCU. "The program had to expand in order to meet that demand, and that's where the idea of the VIPs came from."
VIPs, which stands for Volunteers-In-Promoting Santa Clara, is the term used to refer to the 23 freshmen and sophomore volunteers who give their time to host prospective students. The president, Alexandria LeeNatali, is a sophomore who was one of the original members of the team when it was created last year.
"What we do is basically pick up prospectives and take them to class, and if they would like they can stay the night in one of our dorms and just chill and just kind of get the feel for the different dorms," said LeeNatali.
The idea behind the program is to give prospective applicants a student-like experience on campus so they can get a sense of what it would feel like to actually attend Santa Clara.
"I can talk to a student all day as an admissions counselor about why it's great to go to Santa Clara," said Wenzel. "But when students can experience it and hear it from the source, from a current student, it's a completely different mindset that I think really is valuable."
So far, it has been a huge success. In a recent presentation given by Wenzel, 60 percent of the students who participated in Shadow SCU during the winter quarter and 70 percent of those who participated in the program during the spring quarter actually ended up attending Santa Clara.
Obviously there were other factors that played a role in their decisions, but for many prospective students the shadow program gave them a deeper insight into the Santa Clara community.
"I got more out of the overnight stay than I did just touring the campus," agreed Dillon McCord, a freshman at Santa Clara who actually participated in the program while he was applying to Santa Clara. "I got to ask a lot of questions, and the student I shadowed knew a lot about the school, which was really helpful."
In fact, many of the students who participated in the program as prospective students have become VIPs themselves.
"I had a great experience with doing the shadow program when I was looking at the school," said McCord. "I thought it would be cool to pay it forward and host other kids."
It looks like the VIPs will have their hands full these next two quarters. Although the program starts on Jan. 24 for the early admission students, there have already been 12 students who have signed up to shadow a VIP, according to LeeNatali. "I'm a little worried to see how many shadows we will get in spring, these are just the early admission kids!"
LeeNatali has plenty of reason to worry; the Shadow SCU program is expecting a high volume of students for only 23 VIPs to take care of. Last year, when the program was in its beta stage, there were between 150 and160 students who participated. This year, Wenzel says, because of the increase in applications to Santa Clara, the program is expecting between 175 and 200 students to visit.
With so many prospective students visiting the school, the VIP program is looking for volunteers.
"One of our initiatives is to expand the VIP program," said Wenzel. "We'd like to see the program be over 100 students or even more than that so we have more variety to the types of majors, interests, backgrounds, and geographic locations of current students."
So, if you are live on campus and are interested in sharing your experience at Santa Clara with a prospective student, contact either Wenzel or LeeNatali.
Contact Emily Entresss at eentress@scu.edu or call (4508) 554-4546