Major: Transfer
During the fall semester of his senior year at Glenbard North High School, Rob Jannusch decided to apply to his dream college, Duke University.
He visited his guidance counselor and explained that his friends were applying to Northwestern, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and that he wanted to go to Duke.
“She chuckled, as we had not spoken at all since my freshman year, and turned around to check my transcripts on her computer,” she said. “Upon looking at my grades, she wheeled around and asked, ‘Where have you been?’ I replied that I had been at school every day and was trying to win a state championship with our soccer team. Upon telling me that I had already missed Duke’s application deadline, she suggested I apply to Wheaton College and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, two other notable schools I was also interested in.”
When Jannusch approached his mom for the $25 application fee for UIUC, she initially refused because of the high cost of tuition. Eventually his parents consented, and Jannusch was accepted at both UIUC and Wheaton College.
However, he was worried that he would not transfer to Duke after settling into campus life at a different four-year school. Then he attended a summer information session about College of DuPage’s Honors Scholar program led by Alice Snelgrove.
“During the session, she laid out all the benefits of the program and highlighted the accomplishments and transfer acceptances of prior graduates. In addition to sending students to Wheaton and UIUC, she mentioned University of Chicago, Northwestern, Georgetown and Cornell as recent destinations for Honors Scholar program graduates,” he said. “She also showcased a number of honors that members had recently won, and I immediately began jotting down a checklist on the back of the carbon-form Honors application. In addition to Honors Scholar program graduate, the Carter D. Carroll Excellence in History Award, USA Today Academic All-American team and COD outstanding graduate, I added ‘Transfer to Duke University’ as the last bullet point on my list. I had no idea that just three years later, I would be so fortunate to check off every item on the list, and I included this carbon form in my application to Duke with the lone remaining item unchecked.”
COD provided me with a path to a highly selective university like Duke because of the Honors Scholar program and the extraordinary professors who poured out their knowledge into their students.
Rob Jannusch
Jannusch visited Duke several times while at COD, and it more than lived up to his expectations.
“I first became interested in Duke because of their men’s basketball team led my Coach Mike Krzyzewski and star players Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley and Grant Hill, who won back-to-back NCAA titles in 1991 and 1992,” he said. “Over time, I learned about Duke’s reputation as one of the top 10 colleges in America. Everything about it seemed to fit, from its beautiful Gothic campus and location in North Carolina to its school colors being my favorite shade of blue to its highly-ranked Division I athletic teams to its prestigious undergraduate liberal arts programs.”
After earning three degrees at COD—an Associate in Arts, Associate in Science and Associate in General Studies—Jannusch checked off the last bullet point on his list and transferred to Duke, where he completed a double-major in economics and philosophy with a history minor and a certificate in markets and management studies. His graduation coincided with the dot-com bubble bursting in the early 2000s, which meant many investment banks and consulting firms were deferring new hires or withdrawing offers to new graduates.
Jannusch instead found work with a middle-market law firm in Chicago in its corporate practice group. He then transitioned to Winston & Strawn as a corporate paralegal, but after the 2009 financial crisis, he returned to school at UIUC and completed a master’s degree in finance. He is now a senior corporate paralegal with the Private Equity/M&A group at Kirkland & Ellis, one of Chicago’s largest law firms.
As for COD, he is grateful for all that it provided and started a scholarship that will help others, something he always remembered from his time as a student.
“After achieving a 4.0 GPA during my first year on campus, I applied for and received the COD Achiever’s Scholarship from the COD Foundation, which provided full tuition as well as books,” he said. “It’s exciting to see there are now hundreds of scholarships available, with some of them being named after professors I had when I attended COD. It’s also a great source of pride for me that my family, friends and I were able to endow the Shirley M. Jannusch Memorial Scholarship in honor of my late mother, who passed away unexpectedly in 2022.”
In 2023, Jannusch was honored as one of the College’s Distinguished Alumni. He strongly encourages prospective students to take advantage of the affordable tuition, wide array of classes and opportunities like the Honors program.
“Take as many courses in as many different subject areas as you can, as this exposure will not only help you to discern where your primary career interests lie, but it will also potentially unlock talents you didn’t know you had,” he said. “COD provided me with a path to a highly selective university like Duke because of the Honors Scholar program and the extraordinary professors who poured out their knowledge into their students. In several ways, my dream of attending Duke became their own, and their extraordinary belief in me led me to push myself beyond what I previously thought I was capable of during my high school years.”
Learn more about transfer opportunities at College of DuPage