A chief goal of Princeton Preview is to expose prospective students to the academic life of the University. Unfortunately, the program’s current schedule makes this difficult: Many students do not arrive until Thursday afternoon and therefore miss the vast majority of the University’s lecture courses. While students can attend classes on Friday, their options are usually limited to the math, science, engineering and language courses that typically meet that day. As a result, the University cannot fully show off its professors — one of its best resources — and prefrosh are denied the chance to experience the best parts of academic life at Princeton. The University should ask some of our better-known faculty to deliver sample lectures during each preview weekend. While the professor’s obligation would be minimal — to give a lecture they have likely given dozens of times before — this proposal would substantially increase the prospective students’ exposure to Princeton classes.
In addition, the University should work towards increasing student hosts’ involvement in Princeton Preview weekend. A frequent complaint among prefrosh is that hosts often spend little time with the prospective students they sign up to house; in fact, Princeton specifically highlights the minimal nature of the commitment: Students are told that their only real obligation is to meet prefrosh when they arrive and give them a place to sleep. Professors should try to refrain from scheduling due dates for papers during or immediately after preview weekends — in particular, writing seminar deadlines should be extended, because many hosts are freshmen — so that students would not be forced to choose between spending time on their work and spending time promoting Princeton to prospective students. Furthermore, the University could schedule more Princeton Preview events that will appeal to both hosts and prefrosh, thereby encouraging greater interaction between the groups.
Finally, the University should recruit more upperclassmen hosts. Underclassmen’s knowledge and experience of Princeton is limited compared to that of their upperclass peers, who are more capable of addressing the full range of questions and concerns prefrosh might have about Princeton, such as writing a thesis. Currently, hosts are recruited by Princeton Preview captains in each residential college, who tend to be underclassmen and therefore tend to recruit other underclassmen. More upperclassmen — including upperclassmen not affiliated with a college — should be recruited as captains; these upperclassmen, in turn, could recruit hosts from the broader campus population.
As it stands, Princeton Preview is a well-run program that does an excellent job of exposing the University to prospective students. Nonetheless, we believe the changes outlined above will further improve the program and should be enacted.
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