An Open Letter to Admission Offices: You’re Failing the Vibe Check

What college applicant wouldn’t want to record a Glimpse video? If you’re unfamiliar, the 60-90 second video lets students tell admission officers about themselves and is designed to help colleges get to know applicants better. It’s optional! And you only need 90 seconds! Would it surprise you to know that at least one student this year took the entire day off from school to prepare for and record this?  As a former admissions officer, I have no doubt that admissions teams at these colleges thought this would be a fun addition to their application process. I agree—it SHOULD be a fun addition, and as an admissions officer, I would have enjoyed watching these videos. Mostly. Though I can imagine that many will be somewhat meh. I worked with the team at University of Pennsylvania to craft “interesting” essay questions that often yielded…less than interesting responses. Are the students in the videos actually meh? Were those Penn applicants not capable of writing interesting essays?   Now that I’m supporting students going through the application process, I can see that it’s more likely applicants were overworked, overstressed, and terrified to simply be themselves in any element of this process.   My team of admissions consultants and I wish we had known when we were admissions officers how hard things are for students applying: how difficult to parse what the colleges—who think they’re being crystal clear—are looking for, how easy to miss yet another requirement, how torturous to try to answer a deep, philosophical question in 50 words or fewer. We offer our own glimpse from the other side of the desk in the hopes of inspiring some change. 

You Do You, But Really?

  To every school out there not requiring the Common App essay, but requiring your own essay, or, worse, not requiring either but offering the opportunity to do either, please stop. If you want an essay, accept the main essay. If you don’t want one, then don’t. Whatever you do, don’t make it optional (more on this later). If you want a specific question answered, then offer it as a supplemental question like everyone else. At the very least, please be clear.   Speaking of essays, the Common App has a Writing section. Why are required (or optional) essay prompts showing up elsewhere in the application, like the Academics section? It makes no sense, and it’s tripping up students who might miss an essay until they’re trying to submit and find their application is incomplete.   The Common App also has a Courses and Grades section. But for some reason, there are now colleges asking for the SRAR or their own version of a grade report, which needs to be completed and submitted separate from the Common App. I get that there could be IT issues and systems that don’t talk, but please be clearer about what is required and by when, ideally within the Common App itself.  

To Be Or Not To Be, That Is the Question

  Then there are the essay questions themselves.   While many of us love one-line response questions and other “quick takes,” it is amazing how many students agonize over these. Not sure what the solution is, but at least stress how much you’d like students to just write what first comes to mind, assuming that’s what you’re after.   Also, if you’re looking for something that is a line or two long, don’t allow for 150, 250, or even 500 words, which implies that you’re looking for a much deeper response.  In the same vein, please stop with questions with more words than students are allowed in their response. Could you describe a life event which you feel has prepared you to be successful in college in a few lines?   If you begin a prompt with “Have you ever” or “Have you had” or some version of this, what are students who have never experienced what you’re asking about supposed to do? Skip it? Make something up?   Finally, please don’t change the prompts after they have been posted for the coming application cycle. If you’re not ready, withhold the prompts until you are! It’s far better for students to wait on your supplement than to work on two sets of essays or on essays you will no longer require. 

Optional Reading

  Or is it? In the 20-plus years I’ve been doing this work, I’ve come to hate the word optional. What do colleges mean by optional? Is it optional but really not? Or is it actually optional? Why is this still a question?   I do understand that students sometimes like the opportunity to provide more information. When I traveled with Harvard during my Penn admissions days, their admissions officer shared that the Harvard supplement was truly optional (at that time in the mid-aughts) and that they provided prompts because their applicants really wanted to do more. In this case, optional began as a nod to student desire. But what I, and likely that Harvard rep, never fully appreciated was the incredible anxiety optional can provoke.   The only thing that should be optional are questions that don’t apply to everyone. For example, if one of your prompts asks students to explain a C grade or below, only students with C grades or below need respond. Otherwise, either require it or drop it entirely.  To admission officers: We hope sharing this perspective has helped you better understand the view from this side, and that maybe, just maybe, you’re rethinking one small element of your application this year. A girl can dream!