Sadie Nott graduated from Fieldston in 2008 and headed to Bowdoin College. “I arrived at Bowdoin not having any idea what I would study, though I assumed it would be something in the humanities,” she says. “Sophomore fall I took Drawing 101 and was hooked (this was the first studio art class I had taken since 7th grade!); suddenly I had found my major.”
Ms. Nott is now the Assistant Director of Admission for Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA. “College admission work is cyclical—in the fall I primarily recruit students, visiting college fair programs and high schools (I make a trip back to Fieldston each fall!). I’m then responsible for reading all the applications from my territories, evaluating them, and making admission decisions.” She chose this job after interning at the Bowdoin Office of Admissions during her senior year, “my primary responsibility was interviewing prospective students, which I just loved—I loved the idea that talking about something you loved all day and inspiring others to find avenues for similar growth was, in fact, a job.”
Before she dominated the Ultimate Frisbee scene at Bowdoin, Ms. Nott was a tri-season athlete – field hockey, basketball, and softball – at Fieldston. She was also an STS leader and even wrote for the Fieldston News.
“If you look back far enough in the Fieldston News archives, you’ll find a series of goofy Faculty Profiles that I put together with a friend.”
Some of her fondest memories of Fieldston weren’t her athletic or academic achievements, but rather, the smaller ones, “sitting in Howie Waldman’s office for advisory pumping our blood with baked goods, or the tons of laughter that emanated from our STS leader meetings.”
When she is reading applications, she looks for “students who have a heightened level of enthusiasm for intellectual engagement and for the passions that make them who they are. I want to find the kind of students who would make for thoughtful yet critical members of classroom discussion, who are the kind of roommates and teammates that you learn something from outside of the classroom. I’m always really excited to see when someone has thoughtfully considered why Whitman specifically will be a good home for the next four years (essays in general are my favorite parts of the application to read.)”
Of course after reading so many applications, there are some red flags that pop up, “I notice when an essay or a list of extracurriculars reflects not a student’s genuine interests or beliefs but instead is based upon what she thinks an admission officer would like to hear.”
Now that she’s experienced the “other side” of the college process, “it seems to me that the level of stress surrounding the college process has only grown since I applied, and this is saying something, because I remember feeling pretty anxious about it all when I went through it.” She wants to remind Fieldston students that, “as an applicant to colleges, [you] should be getting something out of the process too. You can learn so much about yourself through selecting a college—that’s why it’s called a search!”
In the seven years since she left, Ms. Nott’s Fieldston education has stuck with her in all of her endeavors. “Above all, I credit Fieldston with giving me the tools to learn to think. I took these tools with me to college, where the campus became my studio. I’ve also grown to see that Fieldston’s emphasis on Ethical Culture has been much more impactful than I expected.”
So what’s in store for Sadie Nott in the future? “I imagine that within the next five years I will return to school—I really miss being in the classroom. What I love most about my job is that I help people; I could see bringing this with me into fields outside of education too, but perhaps on the larger scale of entire cities or neighborhoods. We’ll see!”
