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Transcript from interview with President Tilghman

What would you say to those of us who feel proud yet a little intimidated about coming to Princeton?

The first thing I would say is that I’m very happy that you’re proud to be coming to Princeton.  I think you should feel proud that you’re coming to Princeton.  As for feeling intimidated, I think the most important thing to remember is that every single student who comes to Princeton is feeling exactly the same way -- at the beginning.  Many of you have undoubtedly been one of the most successful students in your high school, and you will suddenly be together with nothing but students who have been the most successful students in their high school, and just remember that everyone is going to feel pretty much the same way that you’re feeling in the first few weeks.

What are the most rewarding aspects of being a first year student at Princeton?

Oh, I think the most rewarding thing in your first year is discovery.  You’re going to discover people from different parts of the world.  You’re going to discover students from different cultures, from different religious backgrounds, from different parts of the United States and I hope that what you do in your first year is to explore all of the extraordinary richness in student life that exists on campus.  The other thing you’re going to discover is academic disciplines that you have never been exposed to.  You’re going to discover Philosophy, and you’re going to discover Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and you’re going to discover Genomics -- my own field. And I think it’s just going to be a remarkably exciting time.

Now, is it all work, or do students have fun here?

It is lots of work, as it should be, but in fact, students have a great deal of fun here.  There are literally hundreds of extracurricular activities that students become involved in on campus, everything from the performing arts, to writing for a variety of campus newspapers and weeklies, to club sports, to varsity sports.  There is a fair at the very beginning of the academic year where you will be overwhelmed with all the kinds of activities that you can participate in, and most of those activities end up being some of the most wonderful experiences you will have at Princeton.

What are the most challenging aspects of being a new student at Princeton?

I think the most challenging aspects are learning to balance your time commitments.  Students at Princeton are pulled in lots of different directions in their choice of activities.  There are going to be the challenges of meeting your academic responsibilities, finding the kinds of activities that you want to spend your time outside the classroom, and, of course, meeting and making friends that you’ll have for the rest of your life. And learning to balance those three things is one of the biggest challenges of first-year student -- at any university but certainly at Princeton.  The other challenge is, for many students, this will be the first time you’ve ever lived away from home, and it is different to suddenly be independent, to be able to make decisions about how you want to spend your time, how you want to make choices about how you want to spend your time that used to be made in part by your parents and will not be made by anyone except yourself now.  That is another, I think, large challenge when you’re a first-year student.

How do I get my parents to chill and stop worrying about my going away to school?

Well, I think there are a number of things that you can tell your parents that will reassure them that you are going to be safe at Princeton.  The first is that Princeton, of course, is in a town that is a very safe town.  It is a place where there is very little crime -- very little of the kinds of things that parents worry about when they think about their children going away from home.  The second is that you will spend your first two years at Princeton living in the residential colleges, and those colleges have all kinds of mechanisms to ensure that no student gets lost in the system of the University.  We have a master of the college, we have assistant masters, we have academic advisers, residential advisers.  Everywhere you turn for your next two years when you living in [the residential] college will be people who if you need help, they will be there to help you and give you advice from the kind of courses you should be taking to whether you are really well-advised to be staying up until three in the morning every evening.  So I think that your parents should feel some degree of reassurance that, although you are definitely living on your own and the expectation is you will be making a lot of choices on your own, there will be people there to give you good advice.

What’s the best way to spend the last summer before starting college? And how did you spend yours?

Well, I spent my summer between high school and college working in a bank as a teller.  It was a very good experience.  I had a wonderful time working with the people who worked in the bank.  And, most importantly from my parents perspective, I earned some money that would help contribute to the costs of college in the fall.

I think students can have all kinds of different summer experiences.  I know that some students will look for opportunities to make money as, in fact, I did when I was a student. I think some students will look for opportunities to begin academic experiences that they anticipate at Princeton by taking summer courses, by having internships in other places in the country and potentially even in other places in the world. And I certainly hope that some student will choose to do community- service projects over the summer because one of the things that we think is important at the University is for students to be involved in helping others.

Do you have any closing thoughts that you would like to leave us with?

Yes.  I would like to say how eagerly we are awaiting the arrival of the Class of 2006.  We thought long and hard about each one of you before we offered you a place in the class.  You were chosen among some of the most exceptional students in the world -- international and national students and we are eager to have you here in the fall -- to begin to integrate you into what I hope will be the sense of life-long engagement with Princeton University.