Dis-Orientation is in full swing for soon-to-graduate students. For several years now, the completion of classes has been followed directly by a pre-Commencement week-or-so of communal fun, just as the first semester of classes is preceded by a week of Orientation. Today’s activities are a daytime duck tour, followed by evening karaoke. Other activities have been more cultural (touring Newport mansions) or less (many themes of party), but surely no one could complain that there’s not enough to do. And because even nearly two weeks of togetherness may not be enough, some students have already offered to host a farewell brunch for their fellows on Monday.
In April, after I wrote my last post from the Hall of Flags, I was emailing with Manjula Dissanayake, one of the students featured. A week later, we sat down and he described the incredible path he has followed from his pre-Fletcher days to now. With Commencement just around the corner, I’m featuring Manjula’s story.
It all starts in 2007, when Manjula was working in finance in the DC area. He and his roommates had previously raised funds for Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami, but they felt they could do more. They decided to focus their efforts in the area of education, forming Educate Lanka. Before long, Educate Lanka was occupying so much of Manjula’s time that he decided to dedicate himself to the effort, starting by pursuing graduate study in development and social entrepreneurship, either through an MBA or an international affairs degree. An application process later, he enrolled in Fletcher’s MALD program in September 2010 as a Board of Overseers Scholar, and quickly got to work on building his own intellectual infrastructure to run the organization, which currently has a core volunteer staff of ten, and a larger pool of about 40 to draw upon.
I should pause here and describe Educate Lanka. The organization’s main activity is securing micro-scholarships of $10 to $20 for students who lack funds but have a high potential to become future leaders, by connecting the kids with sponsors from around the world. 100% of the sponsorship funds go to the students. There are no administrative expenses (this being a fledgling organization), but if something comes up, funds are raised through a separate fundraising process, which also generates some scholarships for students without sponsors. Currently 275 students are receiving scholarships. A total of 350 have received funds, about 30 of whom have completed school (though a few left school and the program). There are over 400 sponsors in 15+ countries. Once they are in the program, the kids are funded through their undergraduate studies, starting as early as fifth grade (age 10). Over 12 million Sri Lankan Rupees (about US$100,000) has been awarded.
Back to fall 2010. Manjula settles in, registers for courses, etc. Good things started to happen pretty much right away. The first was that Educate Lanka was selected to receive the funds raised through Fletcher’s annual Asia Night event. That same semester, Manjula drew support from Empower, a project of the Tufts Institute for Global Leadership (IGL). And Educate Lanka took third place in the Tufts 100K Business Plan Competition. Not a bad start for one semester, and at that point Manjula started to think Educate Lanka had the potential to become a larger organization.
In spring 2011, Manjula took a microfinance class with Kim Wilson, and cross-registered for a Harvard class on education and social entrepreneurship with Fernando Reimers. Both professors offered advice on complementary models for Educate Lanka, and on how to make the organization more sustainable and scalable. Should it continue as a 501(c)3 (non-profit)? Or should it turn into a blended social business? Also that semester, after attending the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference, someone referred him to USAID and the State Department, because he works with the Sri Lankan diaspora community, which led to an invitation to speak at the Secretary’s Global Diaspora Forum.
Come summer 2011, while also interning in the Education Investment Group of the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, Manjula was a finalist in the MassChallenge competition, as a result of which he received mentorship and guidance. Toward the end of the summer, he used a fellowship from IGL to travel to Sri Lanka, visiting the north and east of the country, where Educate Lanka wasn’t yet working. He returned with a sense of how to achieve near-term organizational expansion in Sri Lanka, including a corporate partnership model.
Meanwhile, Manjula’s roommate, Sadruddin, was thinking of replicating the model in Bangladesh, and had received a good response to the idea. He hopes to pilot the project by the end of this year. (Here they are together.)
Back at Fletcher in September 2011, Manjula reconnected with Prof. Wilson and Prof. Reimers, who together mentored him and helped him to think about global replication and to add a corporate partnership model to Educate Lanka. An MIT class on Development Ventures required him to take his ideas and act on them. He received another IGL/Empower fellowship to return to Sri Lanka during the winter break. And he continued entering business plan competitions. He was one of two finalists in the MIT 100K Elevator Pitch Competition.
His Fletcher classmates sent more funds Educate Lanka’s way from 2011 Asia Night proceeds, and Manjula was one of a small group honored as a UN Volunteer of the Year in Sri Lanka. Also helpful, more Fletcher students were jumping on board, including a group that wrote a consulting report on the concept of distance learning in Sri Lanka. He received additional funding from the Center for Emerging Market Enterprises, and IGL is committed to supporting Manjula, even after graduation.
In spring 2012, Manjula was a semi-finalist at the Harvard Social Entrepreneurship Pitch Competition. And this semester also found him in two classes specifically selected to build his skills set. Along the way, he needed to write a thesis and do the other things expected of Fletcher students. Oh, and he attended Clinton Global Initiative University in March, and was an Echoing Green semi-finalist. In preparing to graduate, he created his own Fletcher Field of Study: Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship in International Development. (His second field is International Political Economy.)
I asked Manjula to reflect on his Fletcher experience, which seems to have been uniquely successful in connecting him to the local academic community. He said that he came to Fletcher “with the idea to get more guidance, more advice” and to “test the model and see if it has legs.” He confirmed that he was able to do that through classes, the business plan competitions, talking to mentors, seeing the response of people who believe in the Educate Lanka model (including some who want to replicate it elsewhere in South Asia and in Africa), and talking in panels and at conferences. All of this pushed him to move Educate Lanka toward a sustainable social business model while maintaining its core scholarship model.
What’s coming up after graduation? There are five or six fundraising events set up for the summer. The model will be starting up in Bangladesh, leading to “Educate World” in many countries. There’s a plan to start an online platform to arrange one-on-one mentoring for underprivileged kids, enabling knowledge-sharing between the developed and developing world (and also generating more traffic for the Educate Lanka website). The mentoring program would offer a new means of involvement for people who can’t contribute funds, and builds the community of people Manjula says are energized with “‘change the world’ spirit.”
Finally, Manjula took a minute to say “how much I appreciate all the support and backing I have received from my fellow Fletcher students, from all three classes (’11,’12,’13) with which I had the privilege to share my experience, as well as faculty, staff, and alumni. I owe them my thanks.”
I’m going to try to keep up with Manjula and Educate Lanka through the coming year, and I’ll report back on Manjula’s post-Fletcher path. Based on his success in the past two years, I’m guessing there will be plenty to write about.
Is summer a good time to visit Fletcher? Well…truth be told, it’s not optimal. But there are plenty of people for whom summer is the only opportunity to visit. If that’s you, come on over — we’ll do our best to provide a warm welcome! We’ll be offering Information Sessions most Mondays from June 4 to August 6, and we have just hired two new interns who can answer your questions about the student experience. You can also arrange an evaluative interview.
What we don’t have a lot of is classes to attend. Or buzz. It’s crazy quiet here in the summer. But a summer visit is better than no visit, so check out the list of sessions and sign up for the one that’s convenient for you.
Meanwhile, I just finished talking to Kristen, who updated me on plans for this summer’s Coffee Hours. She put out the call yesterday, and within minutes (in that wonderful Fletcher way), 25 students had offered to host a coffee in their far-flung locations this summer. Kristen will finalize the plans in the next few weeks, and then you’ll be invited to sign up for a coffee near you.
I’m very pleased with the results of my first ever blog survey, which has provided me with a nice list of topics of interest to readers. Several people asked me to write about the waitlist. Done! And the suggestions of others will be covered in future blog posts.
A few people asked me to pull out my reporter’s notebook and start writing about professors and students. As it happens, I have been working on a long post about one of our soon-to-graduate students. Look for it next week! And I’ll try to do more in the future. Meanwhile, I’m going to use today’s post to point you toward information about students that’s already on the web site.
First, there are the brief pieces, including pre-Fletcher work and education experience, about the fall 2011 entering class — the folks who will still be around to meet our incoming students, and the fall 2010 entering class — the students to whom we’ll soon say good-bye. And, you can access more profiles by degree program for MALD, MIB, LLM, MA, and PhD students.
I enjoy interviewing people, and I will definitely take the time to include more features on the blog in the future. But I’ll also occasionally point you toward information that’s already out there and ready for you to read.
Writing about the waitlist is a dangerous exercise for me: I don’t want to be either excessively rosy or unnecessarily gloomy. Today, though, I’ll throw caution to the wind and try to shed a little light for you. Let’s start with the chronology of the waitlist so far.
March: We made a bunch of offers of a space on the waitlist for each program.
March/April: Applicants let us know if they wanted to wait.
April 20/May 1: Admitted applicants responded to their offers of admission. We added everything up to figure out whether the number of enrolling students was too low, too high, or just right.
May 1-3: The staff sifted through the boxes of application files of those who had decided to remain on the waitlist.
And that brought us to Friday, when the Admissions Committee offered admission to a very small group of MALD applicants on the waitlist. Why such a small group? We need to ensure we meet that “just right” number, but we’ll go slowly so that we don’t end up with more students than will fit in the school. Having made the offers, we’ll wait for the responses, and check the numbers again.
What does this mean for you, if you weren’t in that small group? More waiting, I’m afraid, but we admitted so few students that you should not draw any further conclusions about your prospects.
For now, continue to update us on any changes to your profile. I usually suggest that applicants decide how long they want to wait. Some people have decided that they’d wait until May 1, but no later. Others decide that, so long as they can give their employer two weeks’ notice, they’ll take an offer as late as August. Most people fall between those two points.
Finally, I realize I’m not answering a key question, regarding how many more people we’ll admit. I simply don’t know. What I can say is that we’re watching those numbers for all degree programs, and we always aim to have our entering class defined by the end of June.
As I mentioned back in March, Fletcher Admissions will provide feedback on unsuccessful applications to applicants who may want to reapply. At the risk of increasing our workload, if you plan to reapply to Fletcher, I strongly encourage you to request feedback on your application. To do so, send us an email. Your message should include the following:
♦ A sentence or two for the request, noting the date of your original application.
♦ Any special questions you have about your application.
♦ Your plans for the coming year.
♦ Your expected timeline for reapplying.
In this recent admissions cycle, we reviewed applications from people who requested feedback, followed the advice, and were admitted this time around. We also read applications from reapplicants who didn’t request feedback, made the same mistakes a second time, and were not offered admission. Asking for feedback and following the suggestions can give a real boost to an applicant.
Last, now that I’ve encouraged you to make us work harder, please be patient. Reviewing applications takes time, and there’s already a bunch of waiting requests. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible, but it may take a little while.
Like all semi-serious bloggers, I have an analysis program telling me what type of person is checking out the blog. For example, I know that there are Admissions Blog readers throughout the world, even if most are in the U.S.:
Why no readers in Greenland? Must do something about that…
What I don’t know is the reader characteristic most relevant to the Admissions process: Are you an applicant, looking for nitty-gritty information about the application process? Or are you a current student, looking for different information entirely. So I decided to put together a survey. It’s only three questions, and I hope you’ll provide your input so that I can best tailor the blog to readers’ interests. Thanks, in advance!
As someone who can fall victim to distractions, I’ve always valued the slightly-out-of-the-center-of-things location of Tufts. Students can focus on student life while on campus. Or they can wander a short distance from campus to surrounding neighborhoods with food, services, and fun. A short distance further off, they’re in the broader academic community of Cambridge. Or, with little fuss, they can take advantage of all that Boston has to offer. For starters, from Fletcher, it’s about a 15-minute walk to the subway (which we all call “the T”). Bus lines broaden the territory covered by mass transit (and make it easy for students to find housing with easy access to campus). Here’s what our options look like:
Buses 80, 94, and 96 actually come onto the campus, and the 87, 88 have stops five minutes from Fletcher. (Curtis Street and Packard Avenue bracket Fletcher on the Tufts campus. You can find the full map here.) So transportation links are pretty easy.
But what if all these multicolored noodles of bus and subway lines make it seem that traveling to Boston is a major expedition? Well, if you have a little time, you can always choose to walk or bike. Here’s one suggested route, for a day when you want to ice skate at the Boston Common (or, in summer, join the crowd of children splashing in the spray pool):
The spring goes by in a blur of admissions work for me, but outside our office, it’s about the most interesting time of the year. In just the past few weeks, Fletcher students ran or attended a successful Energy Conference, and listened to a whole bunch of special lectures. Since I can’t list them all, you might want to click on the highlighted dates on the April Fletcher calendar.
Classes end Monday but that doesn’t mean the events have come to a quiet close. Instead, recent Fletcher grad Andrew Lewis will highlight a conversation session with the Diplomacy Club. And today, there’s a featured talk about the Turkish economy, before students start tying their bow ties for tonight’s annual Diplomat’s Ball. (Sadly, no links to share — you’ll need to trust me that it has been the source of much discussion.) Dip Ball attendees will want to cut short their sleep to attend tomorrow’s Spring Fling. (Even I might come up to campus at about 1:00 to catch Lupe.)
There are two past events that warrant particular mention. First was Brian William’s participation in the annual Edward R. Murrow Forum on Issues in Journalism. The event was sponsored, in part, by Fletcher’s Murrow Center for Public Diplomacy. And the second was the very special lecture last Friday by Muhammad Yunus.
Honestly, I have no idea how students manage to complete all their academic work.
An amusing aside — no matter how advanced their technology, some phones are still not a good match for a student in international affairs. Margot shared her failed attempt to convince her phone to allow her to tell a friend that she had walked by Muhammad Yunus. In an email, she further noted, “It’s not every place where passing Muhammad Yunus on the sidewalk is something worthy of a text in the first place — that’s sort of a Fletcher thing.”
Unlike real journalists, I like featuring good news stories. So, when I sent a note of congratulations to PhD candidate Ivan for receiving the university’s Presidential Award for Citizenship and Public Service, and Ivan responded to my question about the work for which he was honored, my brain lit up: BLOG POST!
Here’s what Ivan told me:
I was very honored to receive the award. I believe it was for general work/public service to the university, but also related to my other service work. The main components included: being the Resident Director at Blakeley, helping with continuing education through Osher Lifelong Learning, student initiatives such as serving on the PhD Committee and organizing the PhD conferences and colloquium, and, outside of Tufts/Fletcher, the international civic engagement program I helped lead in China (sponsored by Duke University and the Gates Foundation).
That’s a lot to fit in around Fletcher study and the writing of a dissertation! Congratulations to Ivan on making such a strong contribution to the community!
