Teach for America expands to allow junior applicants

With the implementation of a new spring deadline for juniors, Teach for America is widening the breadth of its applicant pool.

Because Penn has “consistently been a strong contributor of seniors to the corps,” TFA spokesperson Kaitlin Gastrock said, it was included in a group of about 60 colleges nationwide used to raise preliminary awareness of TFA’s pilot program. Penn has consistently been one of the top feeder schools in the nation for applicants to TFA — TFA came in second only to Goldman Sachs as the top employers of the Class of 2012.

According to Gastrock, the decision to extend the application to juniors was implemented because TFA “wanted to make sure we were reaching as many people who are passionate about our mission and who were qualified to apply to our corps as possible.”

In the past, there had been timing issues during the normal application season for seniors, particularly in the months of August and September.

“A few [seniors] perhaps already have job offers on the table and need to make a decision earlier on,” Gastrock said. “Some may be studying abroad and are not able to participate in the traditional application process.”

This was just one motivation for the introduction of the spring deadline for juniors. According to Gastrock, TFA’s mission has always been “to make sure we are reaching the breadth of candidates out there.” The opportunity for juniors to apply creates a way to reach a previously unavailable source of applicants.

Kelly Cleary, a senior associate director at Career Services, mentioned that most of the people who express interest in TFA are seniors who apply at the end of the summer and in the fall, but younger students come in for information, too.

However, even seniors at Penn who have been accepted to TFA and will be joining the corps in the fall are unsure whether they would have applied as a junior had they been given the chance.

College senior Jacqueline Baron said that although she has known about TFA since her freshman year, she didn’t decide that she wanted to apply until the beginning of this school year and submitted her application by the third of five deadlines in November.

Although she thinks the junior deadline is a “great idea that provides more stability going into senior year,” the new program is most relevant to those students who are absolutely certain that TFA is what they want to do upon graduation.

For Baron, as for others, this wasn’t necessarily the case when she was a junior. College senior Ruthie Gold also applied to TFA at the November deadline because she was still unsure about her post-graduation plans at the beginning of senior year.

Though she personally would not have taken advantage of the new junior deadline had she been given the chance, Gold said in an email that the junior application program is a “win-win situation for TFA and the juniors.”

“TFA will be able to accept corps members who are extraordinarily committed to TFA’s mission,” Gold said. “Juniors who know 100 [percent] that they want to be a part of TFA will apply.”

This notion of passion for TFA’s mission is one of the driving factors of the junior application program. Gastrock mentioned that TFA saw a record number of applicants this year — 57,000 — which is a “real testament to the number of people who are passionate about the issue of giving every child a shot at a great education.”

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