Stuart Schmill '86

INTERVIEWER: Stu Schmill is MIT's Dean of Admissions, a post he has held since 2008. His career at MIT began in 1982 when he enrolled as a freshman. Following his graduation in 1986 with a degree in mechanical engineering, he spent a year designing cars at General Motors before returning to MIT.

During his long tenure at MIT, Stu served the Institute in a variety of positions, including Director of Crew, Director of Parent, Student, and Young Alumni programs in the Alumni Association, and Director of MIT's educational council. He joined the admissions office in 2002, was appointed interim director in 2007, and dean in 2008. Stu has been honored with the MIT Dean for Undergraduate Education Infinite Mile award for leadership. He was named coach of the year in the Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges, the most competitive rowing league in the country and has won numerous medals as a coxswain in the head of the Charles regatta.

Beyond MIT, Stu served as trustee, founder, or adviser to a variety of organizations, including the College Board, University of Cambridge International Examinations, Wayland-Weston Rowing Association, To the Water Inc., and the Mandela Townhall Health Spot. He lives in Needham with his wife Debbie and two daughters Sammy and Becca. Stu, thanks a lot for coming in today.

SCHMILL: It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

INTERVIEWER: So let's just start at the beginning. Tell me a bit about where you were born and where you grew up.

SCHMILL: Well I grew up in New York City, in Queens, on the far Northeastern side, in a place called Little Neck. And I grew up playing stickball and paddle ball, a lot of New York City kinds of things. My playground was a cement schoolyard. So that's where we

used to play and hang out. Went to a big public school in Queens. And my graduating class at Cardozo High School was about the same size as my freshman class here at MIT. So it wasn't such a big transition for me.

INTERVIEWER: What about your family? Your parents, what did they do? What were they like?

SCHMILL: So neither of my parents had gone to college. They both grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in tenements there. And after they got married, was when they were able to leave, move out to the country of Queens. But they always appreciated education and gave me every opportunity when I was growing up to pursue the things I wanted to do.

INTERVIEWER: So it sounds like a pretty big transition for you, deciding to go to MIT, thinking about college in general. How did that happen? Were you really interested in math and science in school? Or how did that decision process take place?

SCHMILL: Well I certainly was interested in math and science. And I think I can even pinpoint the moment that really sparked my interest. In ninth grade, which where I grew up, was still in junior high school. So my high school for me was 10 through 12.

So in ninth grade during the winter break, one of our assignments was to go to the Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and answer bunch of questions about-- I remember going through a few of the different halls, but particularly the earth history. And I remember going through that and just being completely absorbed in it and thinking it was just absolutely fascinating.

And from there forward, it really sparked an interest in learning about science and the way the world worked. And so I carried that into high school, and started doing things like math team, and took all the AP science classes that I could, and all of that, and just really loved it. It was great. Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: As someone who's ended up spending their career in admissions, it seems like this would be a great question to ask you. How did you become aware of MIT as an option when you were in high school and you're trying to think about where you wanted to go?

SCHMILL: Yeah. So MIT, I guess I had heard of it. And my guidance counselor had mentioned it. It wasn't something-- It was far off in my consciousness. I hadn't really traveled outside of Queens to visit colleges.

I did participate for two summers when I was in high school, back in the late '70s, early '80s, 1980s, the National Science Foundation used to sponsor the summer programs for students. And I did two of them. I did one in Wichita, Kansas at Wichita State University and another one down in Charleston, South Carolina. And those were summer programs focused on science and math. I learned how to program computers at the one in South Carolina.

And so MIT, people had been conscious of MIT. And so I'd heard of it. Never come up here to visit. And so basically I applied-- When I was applying to colleges, I applied to three schools, the local state university of New York at Stony Brook, which was on Long Island, near my house. And MIT was the second. And the third was a school that had actually given me a merit scholarship before I had even applied.

And it was one of these-- It's a school that offers these high school awards for students. And if you get admitted to the school, you get a merit scholarship. So it was in my consciousness. So I applied to three schools fully planning that I was going to go to the State University and would have been very happy with that. And that would've been great.

But somehow I got into MIT. And even after I got in, first of all I thought it was a mistake. I thought maybe somebody had misplaced, put my application in the wrong file. But once I realized I'd gotten in, I still wasn't sure I was going to go, because it was going to be a lot more expensive. And now we did receive a lot of financial aid. But still it was a bit of a stretch.

And I actually remember my father sat me down and he said, if you have a shot to go to a place like MIT, we'll make it work. And I'll always remember that and really appreciate it. And so I did. And that's what we did. I went to MIT. And the rest, I guess, is history here. I've been here for very long time.

INTERVIEWER: So you mentioned that you hadn't visited MIT. Did you visit MIT then in between as you were making the decision or before you actually enrolled?

SCHMILL: Right so the first time I actually set foot on campus was for orientation week. I had not visited. I remember my parents taking me into the middle of Queens. I got on a Greyhound with a big duffel bag. And I took the bus up here, got into South Station. Somehow I found my way on the "T" to make it here. And that was it.

First time I saw the campus was walking here from-- Actually I just got off the "T" at Central Square. And so went through down Mass Avenue and somehow found my dorm. And that was it. Yeah, I hadn't been here beforehand.

INTERVIEWER: So what were your impressions? Was there culture shock?

SCHMILL: Well I had no idea what to expect, really no idea what to expect. And so yeah, it was a bit of culture shock. Not so much in the size of it, but really I was intimidated by just the notion of being here at MIT. A lot of students have that sense that MIT seems a little bit more exalted in people's minds, certainly before you get here.

And it took me a little bit of a while to actually feel comfortable, like okay, maybe I actually belong here. And I think it was after meeting a lot of people who felt the same way that I did. My two roommates freshman year felt similarly like, what are we doing here at MIT? And you just you meet a lot of people.

And then ultimately you realize that well, people around here really aren't all that different. I mean we're all from very different places. And that was certainly true for my roommates and a lot of people that I knew here as a student. But in reality, we all were just good, regular, normal people who were just trying to do the best we could here.

INTERVIEWER: Tell me a bit more about that first semester, settling in, learning your way around. It must have been a challenge.

SCHMILL: Yeah. Well I remember the first class I ever took, the first class I went to, I don't remember if it was a 9 AM or 10 AM class. But it was Spanish class. And I had taken Spanish as my language all the way through school, middle school and high school. So I was in Spanish 3 my freshman year, Professor Morgenstern.

And I remember going to that first class. And I remember just really being unprepared. We had a pre-assignment for the class. And I didn't do it, which wasn't all that uncommon. Because in high school, often I could show up to the class, and on the fly, figure out what I needed to figure out. And it would be fine. So I figured, okay, first class, how important was this pre-assignment anyway?

So I remember walking into the class and looking at the classroom. And there were a lot of other people in there already. I noticed in the back there were a couple of guys sitting back there with Greek letters. They were in some fraternity. And they had baseball hats on backwards. And I figured, okay I'd go sit near them, probably be safe. Nobody would call on me and it would be fine.

And as the class went on, it became pretty clear that everybody else in the room had done their homework. I was the only one unprepared. And Professor Morgenstern, what he used to do people when they were unprepared, was he brought a water pistol to class. And he would shoot you with a water pistol if you were unprepared. So I was the one who got doused that day. I will never forget it.

And it really taught me that at MIT, everybody really is engaged in their academics and therefore really prepares and does everything they can. And I think I'm glad I learned that on the first day, because it really motivated me to say, okay I'm going to have to put my head down and do my work here. Because that's what everybody does. It was a different experience. It was nothing like high school.

High school was a much broader arrangement of people who were engaged or not. So that was a real eye-opening experience. And it really was true here at MIT. Everybody, you look around, it's really a densely packed with people who are really focused on doing as well as they can academically.

INTERVIEWER: Gives you some great material to draw on when you give advice to prospective students and incoming students.

SCHMILL: Yeah, it's certainly true. And it's funny because MIT, I found it to be an intense academic experience. That's a pretty universal thing. Students here think it is a really intense academic experience.

So now in my role in the admissions office, I go out and talk with students all the time and really want to portray it accurately. We don't want students coming here if they don't want that kind of an intense academic experience. So we try to let them know.

Every year in the fall, I'll go off and talk to as many freshman as I can. And I'll ask them, so what do you think? Did we accurately portray MIT? Did you know what you were getting into? And invariably students will say, it all seemed accurate except it's a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.

And I think it's because you really cannot appreciate it until you go through it. There's certain experiences like that in life that you really can't experience, you can't have somebody explain it to you and understand it. You have to really experience it. And the academics here at MIT are like that. You have to go through it.

And so no matter what anybody would have told me, I'm sure there were people during orientation week telling me it's not going to be like high school. It's going to be more intense. You have to learn it on your own. And I did.

INTERVIEWER: So to tell me how your interests evolved, both your economic interests and also whatever extracurricular interests you developed.

SCHMILL: Yup. So interestingly, I came here wanting to be a computer science major. I had done programming in high school. I had learned it initially at one of the summer programs I did. But then I did science fairs. I did a whole bunch of other things, really liked programming.

And so I came here. And my freshman year, I took a computer science class, a seminar, not 6001, which was an introductory computer science class. I just took a random seminar. But at the same time, I really liked my physics class, took 8012.

And so I decided just to take a mechanical engineering class in the spring of my freshman year and just compare the two. Because I figured, all right, just to take a sense for what maybe I'd like to do. And I wound up really liking mechanical engineering, that 2001 class, a lot. So I just decided to major in mechanical engineering and wound up really loving that.

The biggest surprise though for me was not about the academics. But it was what happened outside the classroom. And again, during orientation week, so much happened during that first week and a half that I was here. But during orientation week, I remember being in New House, which is where I lived. And there was a pool table in House 6. And I was playing pool with a couple of other guys.

And one of them was on the crew team. He was a senior and he was on the rowing team. And he said to me, hey, you're kind of little. You're from New York. You get a big mouth. You'd make a good coxswain.

And I had no idea what that was. I had never really heard of crew. I vaguely had some notion of rowing in a boat. But I didn't really know what it was. I never heard of what a coxswain was. So I asked him to explain

it. And he explained it to me. And said, why don't you come down to the boathouse on registration day, which was the first meeting, and give it a try. I said, all right. Why not? I did. Went down to the first meeting, met the coach and the team. And that was it.

I don't think I missed a day from there till I graduated and really loved it. And that was a total surprise. Had no plan on playing a sport. I had done a few sports in high school, but I had no plan on doing it here, certainly not rowing, if anything. And it turned out to be one of the most intense and transformational experiences that I had here at MIT, was being on the crew.

INTERVIEWER: What was it that you loved so much about crew?

SCHMILL: Well first of all, the team. It's very much a team sport. And I really liked my teammates. And I liked the notion that we all were working really, really hard to do something really, really hard. And you have to work very hard. And my freshman year, none of us had ever rowed before coming to school here. And we were in a very competitive league.

And I would say, we didn't do that well generally, at least my freshman year. And that didn't seem to matter. What really was the essence of the experience was the fact, that here we had a chance to do something as well as we possibly could. And it was in an environment where we didn't have any preconceived notions of how good we were supposed to be.

So it was very different from the academic side. Coming here, I had all these preconceived notions about how good was I in math, in science, in writing, all my other subjects. I had some notion of how good I was supposed to be. And I was either supposed to be good at something or not. But I had these preconceived notions about it or expectations around how I was supposed to do.

And down at the boathouse, there were no expectations, no preconceived notions, and there were no limits on how good we could be. And we could really see ourselves improving simply by working hard. So it was a really clear relationship between how much effort you put in and how good you got. It was just really clear, unlike anything I'd really had seen or done before.

And so the combination of that and the fact that it was a really solid group of guys that I became very close friends with and still am. And it was just a great experience. I learned an awful lot about life in general, about trying something and failing it, and keeping going. And now I learned as much being on the crew that helped me in my future life as I did in the classroom.

INTERVIEWER: So tell me a little bit about being a coxswain. You mentioned you got identified as one because you were from New York and you had a big mouth. What--

SCHMILL: Well, so what being a coxswain is, it's like being a jockey on a horse, if the horse were eight people or four people. And you really have to motivate. Really what the coxswain does is some technical things, like steering and helping with the technique of the boat. But the essence of what a really good coxswain does is motivate the crew to push themselves as hard as they possibly can. In essence, that's what the coxswain really needs to do.

And so in order to do that, you have to build up trust. It's really all about trust. So you have to build up a really deep, trusting relationship with your crew. Because in a race, you're going to ask them to pull a little bit harder, to work a little harder than they even think they can. And if they're going to actually do it when you ask them to, they've got to trust that you know what you're doing. And that when you ask them to do this, that it's all going to come out okay.

So a couple things about that. One is this trust you have to build up, it's becomes a really powerful relationship that you have with your teammates. And number two, you realize that you have to really use it well. You have to be thoughtful about when you're asking your crew to push themselves and when you're not. And so there's a lot to it. So yes you have to use a strong, powerful voice. But the end of the day, it really you live and die, or you're a good or a great coxswain by how much trust you can build up with your crew.

INTERVIEWER: So you mentioned that in your freshman year at least, you and your crew weren't that good. But it didn't matter. You were just doing your best. As your career developed and progressed, were there memorable races, achievements, competitions that you participated in that you'd like to talk about?

SCHMILL: So yeah. So as my undergraduate days moved on-- Freshman year we really weren't all that good. But as I said, we had a great experience for all these other reasons. As my time went on, by the time I was a junior, we started winning races. And as senior, also we won some races. And my junior year, we went the national championships in a four person boat and won a silver medal, which was a neat thing.

After graduating, I wound up coaching back here at MIT. And maybe at some point I'll relate how all that happened. None of my career has been step, step, step, step. There's been some amount of waywardness to it, in a good way. But probably the result that I can point to the most happened when I was a coach. So maybe it's worth talking a little bit about how I ultimately became a coach and then I'll--

INTERVIEWER: Sure. Yeah.

SCHMILL: So when I graduated from MIT, degree in mechanical engineering, I went to work for General Motors at the Chevrolet headquarters north of Detroit in Warren. And enjoyed it. It was a really interesting thing to do. I was living in Detroit for about a year, little over year working there.

While I was there, I didn't know anybody. I decided to volunteer my time at the Detroit Boat Club, which at the time was a very prominent boat club. There were a number of athletes there who were on the US national team. And I decided I'd just go down and help out, see if they needed a coxswain. And got involved, got to know everybody.

Few months after I got there, the person who was coaching their high school junior program left, asked me if I wanted to coach. And I said, okay sure. I'll try it. Never done it before. But I'll give it a shot. Didn't really know what I was doing. But learned a lot. I wound up having a crew that turned out to be pretty good. We went to the national championships.

I happened to see my old coach there, my coach from MIT, who saw that I was coaching. And he though, oh interesting. OK. Great. So we talked a little bit about that. A few months after that, he wound up leaving, my old coach left MIT. So there was an opening for a position to coach here at MIT.

Person who became the head coach called me up and said, hey would you like to coach the freshman crew here at MIT? So at first I laughed. I thought, yeah I would love to. But I have a job already. And I live 1,000 miles away, can't really do it. But he said, well, think about it.

And I had already been thinking that I didn't love living in Detroit, didn't know anybody there. Enjoyed the job, but didn't love the job. And was thinking it might be fun to come back to MIT, or at least to the Boston area to work and live, because I had a lot of friends here.

So I decided, well, I would take the job and see if I could find an engineering job that I could do. And I could coach on the side. And so I decided, okay.

I took the job. I came back here to coach and started looking for an engineering job at the same time. Turns out that I loved coaching enough that I forgot about the engineering and became a full time coach and wound up becoming the head coach here after a couple of years. And I wound up coaching at MIT for 13 years and really loved it.

So now, the experience that I wanted to talk about was with a team-- so when I first started coaching, I coached the freshman heavyweight men. That was great fun. And about in the fall of 1996, the coach of the lightweight men's crew had retired. And I became the varsity lightweight coach.

And the lightweight crew at that time was a crew that hadn't done very well the last few years. In fact, they had finished last in the league, both at the varsity, the second varsity, the freshman. And so I came in, started coaching the team, some very good athletes on the team. And we worked hard.

The beginning of the year, I remember setting a goal for ourselves to make the final, which would be the top six at the Eastern Sprints, which is our big championships. And I remember walking into practice that first day, setting that as a goal for ourselves, and everybody looking at me like, okay, that's a good goal to have. Probably not going to happen, but that's fine.

And we ere working at it, working at it, working at it. We worked all year. And in the spring, which was our main racing season, we started racing. And we actually were pretty fast.

But the first couple of races, we would get a lead. And then, I think the guys would get in their head. Like, oh, wait a minute. We're not supposed to be winning this race. So they would back off a little bit and let the other crews win. And this was a pattern. We would get a lead the first half of the race, and then the other crews would row through us. And then, we'd lose the race. And this happened a number of times in the beginning of year.

And I remember racing-- we went down to Yale one weekend. And Yale was one of the top ranked crews in the country. So we had no expectations of beating them. And it was-- I remember we gathered together, the crew. And we said, okay, look, we're not going to beat Yale, and that's fine. So what I want to do is make sure when we race the first half of the race, let's just not slow down the second half. And the guys, we started the line.

We actually had a pretty good start. Yale was ahead of us. But we actually followed them all the way through. We didn't slow down that day. So the guys actually learned, okay, well, maybe we can row a race without slowing down.

So the next week, we raced against Rutgers. It was here on the Charles River. And Rutgers had a fast crew. But it was one we thought we might be able to beat. So we had the same pattern happen as the prior week's in that we had gotten a lead. And right at the moment when in the past we used to just let the other crews walk on through us, the guys remembered their race the weekend before against Yale and saying, we don't actually have to slow down, and they didn't.

So they sped up. And they kept going. And they actually wound up winning that race, which was the first race we'd won all year. And it was a really mind-shifting thing for the crew.

So two weeks later, it was our Eastern Sprints championship. And we were lined up in the morning heats. And we had to finish in the top three in order to make it to the final. And so similar pattern as to all these other weeks, in fact, against the same crews that we had lost to through most of the year. We wound up getting a lead on all these other crews. And the guys had actually learned that they didn't have to back off. And they wound up coming through. And they made the final, which was just an incredible experience.

It's, I think for me, the most memorable experience that I've ever had. And I've had a whole bunch of really great races in my life. I've won a lot of things. I've raced internationally. But that particular race was particularly meaningful. It was a time when these guys, just a few weeks earlier, had thought one thing about themselves and about their place in the universe, right? They're not supposed to beat a lot of these crews.

And with just a little bit of a click in the mind, they were able to perform just a whole step function better. And it really points out how important your self-image and all of what happens in your mind is to allow you to achieve things. Forget about whether it's just a sport. Because the reality, whether you win or lose in a sport, doesn't affect the universe or the world. Doesn't make the world a better place, doesn't make you a better person whether you win or lose.

But it's the lesson that you learn around what your potential is, what the possibilities are, and how just your attitude about things can really make all the difference. And it was just an unbelievable learning experience for me, for the guys. It was really a pretty remarkable thing. And it's something I'll never forget.

INTERVIEWER: That must be something that's pretty good for you to draw on as someone who spends a lot of time now advising young people in things that are actually pretty significant and pretty serious for them.

SCHMILL: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: In their life.

SCHMILL: Well, it's certainly true. And a while ago, I talked about how when I first came here, number one, I thought I was admitted by mistake. Number two, I felt like I didn't deserve to be here. And it's all just in your mind-set and your attitude.

And it took me a little while to warm up to the fact that, okay, maybe MIT is a place where I do belong, and I'm comfortable. But for a lot of kids, it's not true. And it's certainly true of high school students who are thinking about applying to colleges. There are many who are just intimidated by the thought of applying to a place like MIT. Oh, I'm not that good. I'm not that smart.

In fact, many of them are. But they don't realize it. And so it's really just in your attitude and how you think about things. And a lot of that can be pretty powerful because how you think about things is built up from a whole set of experiences that you've had.

For us on the crew, the reason the guys never felt they could win races is because they never had. So that's pretty powerful. So for a lot of these high school students, particularly those who haven't had the teacher, or the mentor, or the counselor that has really helped instill in them some confidence of who they are and what their potential is, it can be a really daunting thing.

And so it's something that I like to do. And I think our staff really likes to go out and talk with students who are really, really talented and to try to break down this notion of MIT as this inaccessible place that is just too intimidating. We really try to break that down for students.

INTERVIEWER: So what kind of place do you think MIT is for students of-- and we'll talk about diversity and how the student body has changed in a bit-- but what kind of place is MIT for students of varying backgrounds? And I don't just mean ethnic. But I also mean economic class, social experiences, education. You mentioned that your parents hadn't gone to college. You certainly weren't born and bred to go to an elite institution. What is MIT like for students like that? And is there a way of distinguishing MIT from other top schools? Is there something different here?

SCHMILL: Well, I think yeah. I think MIT is a little bit different in that the pace is really high pretty much right away. So I think many students come in with this notion that they don't belong here yet. They feel like they're at MIT, but maybe they're not a part of MIT. Sort of a different-- almost like it's a privilege for them to be here at MIT. And of course, many of us feel that it is a privilege.

But the sense of belonging-- I think it can be harder for students who come from places where many of their peers don't go to places like MIT. Because they think, ooh, this is not my world. And I think that is certainly true. So it's harder for some students to adapt and become comfortable.

The thing that becomes hard about MIT in particular is that the pace is really hard. So the academics are tough. And there are some things in place that MIT has done to try to help ease the transition. The pass/no record system, I think, is critical and really important for students. The fact that there's actually a credit limit so that you can't take more than a certain number of classes your first semester, or even your second semester here, as well. So I think those are helpful.

And I think the classes are hard. But it's also the fact that the students, the culture of the students, is one where everybody is revved up and working hard. And I think that's different than at many other places where there's more of a balance between the academics and other activities.

But MIT, the academic side, it's like a really-- the treadmill is on high. And there's no way, really, to step off the treadmill for a little bit. You just have to stay on it. So I think that is one of the things that really makes it a little bit more challenging for some students.

Now, we do have a decent number of students here from different backgrounds, right? From backgrounds-- lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and also students geographically from other places, so kids off of farms, and in inner cities, from all over the place. So there's a large enough percentage of students that I think that helps people to feel a little bit more at home. So it's not as though-- while students on their way in here may feel like they are going to be different from everybody else, they may feel a little bit isolated. Once they get here, they do find that there are other people like them, from similar backgrounds to them. And I think that helps.

INTERVIEWER: So to return to your undergraduate experience here just briefly because we follow the crew thread for a bit-- and that was totally fascinating-- talk a bit more about your academic experience. So you ended up studying mechanical engineering. A lot of students in my experience who study mechanical engineering grew up building things, tinkering. Were you one of those kids? And if not, what was it like getting into mechanical engineering? What were some memorable experiences that you had?

SCHMILL: Yeah. So I grew up not really tinkering with things. I grew up liking science. I was good in math. And I was somewhat advanced. And I had done things like math team, and I had done science fair, math fair type projects. That included computer programming and math theory. That was more of my thread growing up.

And so when I got here, that's when I had said I had thought about computer science as a possible major, but liked mechanical engineering better. So there were a couple of threads, or a couple of different paths, you can take through mechanical engineering.

And the one that I-- well, actually, I pursued two of them, really. One was control systems, which is a little bit more of a theoretical type of path, a little bit more heavy on mathematical modeling, and basically control systems, and robots, and those kinds of things. But I also did enjoy design. A big eye-opening class for me was the 270 contest. Woodie Flowers was my professor.

And that class, I will say I did not do very well in that class. But I learned an enormous amount. And I actually think that shifted paths for me towards thinking about going into design. That class for me was-- I didn't have a lot of experience in actually machining things and building things.

And so the project that year, or the contest that year, there were ping pong balls in the middle of the table. And we had to harvest them and get them behind us, more than our opponent. And the machine I built, number one, I was the only one in the entire class that actually came up with the strategy that I came up with-- which should have been a red flag to say, don't do that. But I was a little bit stubborn, and I persisted.

And also, I wasn't that good at machining. And so when you looked at, you kind of-- it was like, what is that? A good friend of mine built this really simple little robot that could go in. It was like a little vehicle. And he really cared about how it looked. So he painted it. He lined up although the screw grooves so that they were in line with the actual member that it was up against. So everything was really immaculate on that.

Whereas you looked at my machine. And there was epoxy everywhere, and screws, and scrap pieces of metal in the wrong places. It was just awful.

But I actually really liked my machine. And when it came time for the contest, it actually worked. Unfortunately, I came up against the eventual winner in the first round. So I got knocked out. And also, the one thing I had missed was not testing early enough because my machine would have worked. But there was one thing that didn't work quite. And it took me all of that last weekend to try to actually get it to work. And in fact, I was still building it when I was on line getting ready to actually compete. So if I had another 20 seconds, I feel like I could have done it better.

But I wound up but actually getting the thing to work a little bit. And if I had actually gotten it started earlier or gotten it to work, I actually think I could have won the whole thing. But anyway, it didn't work. But it got me excited about the possibilities of this.

In other words, you could actually design something to do something. And when it worked, it was just a really amazing feeling. And so that class, I took my junior year. And after that, my senior year, I was still taking a control systems class, and in fact did my thesis on a control systems project.

But I also took a mechanical engineering design class my senior year. And then, wound up when I got a job, looked for jobs in design. So it was really that class that sparked my interest in going to work for General Motors designing cars. And just this thought that you can actually create something from nothing. And there are whole different ways of coming up with solutions to problems. It was just really interesting to me. I just really enjoyed it.

INTERVIEWER: So you mentioned Woodie Flowers and the 2.007 contest. Obviously, Woodie's an MIT legend. Were there other professors-- or maybe you could talk about Woodie a little bit-- just who were very memorable, larger than life characters, who either you learned important things or are worth talking about?

SCHMILL: Yeah. I think, Well, Woodie certainly. And I think in terms of if I think of my trajectory at MIT, the two people that really stand out, one is Woodie. And he actually steered my academic career. But my coach, my crew coach was someone who I think I learned more from here as an advisor and as a mentor than anyone. And ultimately, if I look at the big arc of my life, I think really bent that arc.

INTERVIEWER: Who was your crew coach?

SCHMILL: Pete Holland was my crew coach for most of my-- I had a separate freshman coach. And I had another coach my senior year, as well. But Pete Holland really was the guy who I think really gave me confidence and just taught me a lot about the way the world actually operates and really bent the arc of my education here, and ultimately my life, as well.

INTERVIEWER: Not long after leaving MIT, you returned to MIT as a coach, and then ultimately went on to fulfill a lot of other positions at the Institute. Talk a little bit about how that happened.

SCHMILL: So I came back to MIT to coach and did that full time for 13 years. And I was getting to the point where I loved it and was thinking, okay, well, maybe I'm just going to be a coach for my entire career. And that would've been great. That would've really been great, I think.

But a couple of things also rattled around in my head. Number one, in 1999, my first daughter was born. And coaching is a tough profession from a time commitment point of view. I know it sounds odd for an admissions officer to be saying that some other job is a big time commitment. But it is true. Coaching, early mornings, late nights, weekends, and then most of your summers are gone, as well. So you can be gone a lot. So I was thinking about that.

And the other, I was just curious of whether I could actually do something else besides work a stopwatch and use a megaphone. And it wasn't clear whether that was true or not. So I started thinking about it and had some really informal-- I wasn't really planning on doing anything or making a change.

But I just started having some informal chats with various folks that I had known around MIT. One of the folks I talked with was Bill Hecht, who ran the alumni association at the time. And coaching crew, it's an expensive sport. And it's one where we really rely on the support of our alumni. So I'd gotten to know a number of alumni over the years and really enjoyed interacting with them.

And as it happened, as I was having these conversations and thoughts, a job opened up in the alumni office. And somebody that I had known let me know about it. It was working for her. And she let me know about it. And said, hey, is this something you might be interested in?

So we start talking about it. And I decided, well, I would do it. I would make a change. I would retire from coaching and go to work for the alumni office. And did that for about 2 and 1/2, three years. I really enjoyed it quite a bit.

I had a whole range of responsibilities there. One of the things I did was I organized, coordinated family weekend for MIT, which is a big Institute-wide event that pretty much everybody on campus gets involved with, which I thought was a really interesting thing. It's also interesting for me because I had gone from coaching a sport to-- I was doing fundraising as well.

But this planning family weekend, I would never have thought of myself as an event planner. It wouldn't have been a thing that I would have thought would have been something I would have enjoyed or got into. But I wound up really enjoying it. And it really struck me that the thing that I really enjoy about that is very similar to the things that I enjoyed about coaching. And that is that the opportunity to lead a team of people to do something really, really hard.

And given those kinds of conditions, in some ways, it doesn't matter what the thing is. I got a lot of satisfaction out of that. And so it really helped clarify for me what kinds of steps would be good to take next.

And in fact now, when I'm in the Admissions Office, I find the same thing. I've got a really, really terrific group of people that I work with. And we do something really, really hard every year. And so I really like helping to organize, and motivate, and coordinate really good people together to do something really, really hard. So I learned a lot in my job in the Alumni Office, really enjoyed it. Did a combination of this event planning, fundraising, tried to connect current students with our alumni, a whole range of things.

And I think the MIT Alumni Association really does a terrific job at getting alumni connected back here. In many ways, we're really lucky to be at a place like MIT where everybody acknowledges the level of excellence that really occurs here with the educational program, the research enterprise. And there's a really large amount of pride that people have to be associated with the place. So I really, really appreciated my time with the alumni office. I was also very, very happy doing what I was doing. And a couple of years into that, the guy who had been running the alumni interview program, the Educational Council for MIT, was leaving MIT. And he had a conversation with me. He told me he was leaving. He asked me if it would be something I'd be interested in applying for.

And I decided, well, sure, why not? The thing that really intrigued me about this job in the Admissions Office was the chance to work with students that much more. I mean, I really enjoyed working with alumni. And in fact, this role leading the Educational Council, our volunteer alumni interviewing program, was almost a perfect sort of bridge, because I'd still have an opportunity to work with alumni, but also get to work with students a little bit more, which was something I had missed a little bit from my days coaching.

So it was a really good sort of neat fit. And so I applied for the position and wound up getting it. And I really love doing that role as well. And I thought, really, it was a really great fit for things that I like to do. And so I wound up leading the Educational Council for some number of years, and then became the dean.

INTERVIEWER: So tell me a little about the admissions process. I mean, you're the person to ask about this. I mean, clearly it's a huge challenge logistically, and in terms of just managing everything that has to happen. But how has that grown over the years? How has that changed?

SCHMILL: So the admissions process in some ways has changed a lot over the last just 10 years. And in some ways, it hasn't changed at all probably over the last 50 years. So the ways that it's changed has been largely in volume.

So we now have over 18,000 applicants from all over the world. And that's a big increase. So you double the number of applicants that we had maybe 12 or 13 years ago. And we don't have double the number of staff, so logistically there's a lot to try to allow us to actually get through reading all those applications, making the decisions that we have to make.

Technology has entered into it, so there are some things that have changed. Certainly, students have changed a little bit. Maybe we'll talk about that a little bit more in a little bit. But I want to talk about what really the core and the essence of what hasn't changed, because I think that's really important, because I think often you hear about all the changes in college admissions, how, oh, it's impossible to get into college these days, and everything has changed. There are some important changes.

But the core of what has not changed for us here at MIT is that we are still trying to bring the best students that we can who are a good fit for MIT, those who are interested in math, science, technology, engineering, those core interests. We're trying to bring the best students that we can to MIT, students that have demonstrated potential, who have a real interest in being creative and free-thinking, who aren't constrained by what's come before but really are willing to break boundaries and create new things, students that have shown some kind of initiative, so students that are motivated because they are interested in what they're doing, not motivated because they're doing something that they feel like they have to.