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Princeton Preview events
offer final chance to recruit
When Mark Pullins ’13 attended the two-day Princeton
Preview program as a high school senior, he sat in on a
math class. When it ended, the professor invited him
and a few other admitted students to the department’s
afternoon tea, a gathering of faculty and students that
has been held daily in Fine Hall since the 1930s. A few
minutes later, Pullins was shaking hands with legendary
mathematician Andrew Wiles, who famously
proved Fermat’s Last Theorem.
For a math lover, meeting Wiles was
“the equivalent of seeing a rock star,”
Pullins said. “It’s all we could talk
about for the rest of the trip.” That
interaction — and his conversations
with other math faculty members —
contributed to Pullins’ decision to
choose Princeton. It was just the kind
May 16, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu
of experience the University hopes this
year’s admitted students had during the
Princeton Preview programs, held
April 19–21 and 26 –28.
“We want students to realize that
they can have close personal relationships
with faculty members, that the
academic mentoring that goes on here
Princeton joins consortium to offer free online classes
Princeton is teaming up with
Stanford, the University of
Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania to make lectures
and other classroom materials available online for free.
The four schools are partnering with Coursera
(www.cousera.org), a company founded last year by two
Stanford computer-science professors. Coursera’s offerings
include video lectures with interactive quizzes and assignments
and discussion forums. No credit or certificate will be
offered to those who take the classes.
Among the 39 courses listed by Coursera in an April 18
announcement were eight by Princeton faculty members:
“Introduction to Sociology,” taught by Professor Mitchell
Duneier; “A History of the World Since 1300” by Professor
Jeremy Adelman; two courses on analytic combinatorics by
Professor Robert Sedgewick; two courses on algorithms by
Sedgewick and senior lecturer Kevin Wayne; computer architecture
by assistant professor David Wentzlaff; and statistics
by senior lecturer Andrew Conway. In the first eight days,
78,000 people signed up for the Princeton offerings.
The University’s primary interest is to experiment with
Web-based platforms to see how they might “enhance teach-
is very special,” said Dean of Admission
Janet Rapelye.
The April courtship period —
accepted students had until May 1 to
make their decisions — is critical. This
year the University offered admission
to 2,095 students, or 7.9 percent of the
26,664 applicants for the Class of 2016.
“The recruitment in April is more
important than it was 10 or 15 years
ago,” Rapelye said. “These students have
excellent choices, and we want to make
sure they understand all the resources
Princeton has for them. When admitted
students visit campus, we have
found, there is a greater probability
they will enroll.”
In April, more than 1,300 students
(about 62 percent of those admitted)
arrived on campus to meet professors,
hear a capella groups, eat college food
— and decide whether to enroll at
the University. The percentage of students
who accepted Princeton’s offer,
known as the yield, was 57 percent
last spring.
In 2008, Princeton Preview expanded
ing and learning on our campus,” said
Clayton Marsh ’85, deputy dean of
the college. The University is paying
the costs associated with developing
the Coursera offerings to encourage
innovations in teaching methods at Clayton Marsh ’85
Princeton, he said.
Duneier said his six-week online summer coursework
“won’t be the same as my Princeton class, but will have some
overlap with it.” He said he looks forward to seeing how his
class translates to a global audience. “In sociology, there are a
wide variety of ways of looking at a problem,” he said. “The
perspectives of the people taking the class matter a great deal.”
His class will have two sessions per week: a 50-minute lecture
with embedded quizzes and videos, and a seminar-style
discussion of course readings. Essays will be evaluated
through peer grading; there will be midterm and final exams.
Both Marsh and Duneier stressed that there is much more
to learning at Princeton than what will be offered through
Coursera, in terms of both student/faculty interaction and
the residential-college experience. By W.R.O.
BRIAN WILSON/OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS