Dan Reilly
Glorious Gregarious Admissions Counselor...

…since 1973, which means, as he says cheerfully, that he has worked for four university presidents and seven bosses, labored with more than a hundred fellow counselors, and admitted some twenty thousand young men and women to the University — among them rodeo queens, beekeepers, race-car drivers, two sixteen-year-olds, two sixty-year-olds, a seven-foot-tall man from Japan, a three-foot-tall man who went on to be a television actor, and maaaaany others.

“I mostly remember students by high school — if you give me the school, say Coquille or Nyssa or Dufur or whatever, their faces come back to me. Changes over the years? Students are a lot taller, seems to me, and the academic talent and expectations are a lot higher. Almost all applicants have done volunteer service too, and a huge number of them are aiming at postgrad service. Applicants still ask me the same questions, though, isn’t that funny? Is the food any good, are the women pretty, do I have to have early classes, do I have to be Catholic, do I have to go to church every day, where is the financial aid office? [Answers: terrific, yes, yes when you are a freshman, no, no, downstairs.] And women are still far more interested in what their rooms will be like than men, who wouldn’t care if we housed them in tents.

“When I started we got maybe 2,000 applications and enrolled some 400 students. Today we get 8,000 applications and enroll about 800. It’s a lot more competitive. But our craft is the same — you’re trying to envision an applicant as a student here, which is different from anywhere else. I read about 1,000 applications a year, and meet about 500 applicants, and I am looking not only for qualifications but for fit, curiosity, passion – how much do they want to be here? What’s hardest, I suppose, now that the University is harder to get into, is that we can’t take as many chances on a marginal kid as we used to. But you sure remember the ones you took a chance on — something about them just spoke to you, you know? Like Donna Beegle, who had the childhood from hell, who lived in a car when she was a kid — she wanted to be here so badly, and went on to earn her doctorate…

“My wife Liz and I have five kids, four of whom enrolled here, which makes us proud. I always remember when our daughter Maria graduated — all the graduates stood and locked eyes with their parents in the stands and applauded us — I’ll never forget that….”