Already preparing for 2009 enrolments
Already preparing for 2009 enrolments
Sunday, 5 October 2008
For students in Hong Kong, applications for 2009 entry will close on 16th December this year. In preparation for that deadline, we held our first Open Day this morning on the College campus. To be frank, we were very worried about the weather for this event, as the Observatory had forecast yet another typhoon heading for Hong Kong. Fortunately, although the weather was overcast and windy, the typhoon stayed far away enough for us to proceed. As you can see on the image to the right though, we were nonetheless being buffeted by some quite significant wind and rain.
Coincidentally, I have also spent much of this week working out the offers to overseas countries for 2009 entry. I had to send our preliminary offers to the UWC International Office in London by 1st October, and I just managed to meet the deadline. This information from all the UWCs will be collated by the International Office in preparation for the next biannual (i.e. twice-yearly) meeting of the UWC Principals, which will be held in about three weeks from now, this time at Atlantic College in Wales. At that meeting, we will discuss the balance of the offers in the light of input from the International Office, and once we have agreed that the balance of offers between countries and Colleges is fair and appropriate, we will send the preliminary letters of offer to the various Selection Committees around the world.
The visit was originally scheduled to commence at 2:30 pm on Thursday afternoon, so you can perhaps imagine my surprise when I received a phone call at 7:45 am that morning, informing me that everyone was already on the bus and they would be arriving at 9:10 am instead.
Fortunately, like most Principals, I have experience in coping with these sorts of things (I could never pretend to have been trained to cope with them), and the visit was highly successful and most enjoyable despite the (almost literally) last minute change of plans. I even managed to start teaching my Theory of Knowledge class right on time at 10:20 am.
Kurt Hahn’s quote, visible on the banner in the photo above, seemed highly appropriate to the occasion in many ways!