admissions officers don't even care?

Applying to College
1

<p>Yeah, so I've been reading this book that is always mentioned here, by Harry Bauld, On Writing the College Application Essay. And I'm referring to Chap 2, "Know Your Audience".</p>

<p>Well, the audience consists of a guy in a small house lying on his couch drinking 2 beers, chips and rug lint all over the floor, and a girl across from him as a newly appointed admissions officer, sipping some of the beer to keep "awake", with a basketball game on to keep them alert.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Incompetence occurs as frequently in admissions offices as it does elsewhere, which is to say, with discouraging semiregulaity. There's not much you can do about this, but it might soften the blow if you're rejected.

[/quote]
Also it said somewhere, although I can't find the exact quote, that some applications do "fall in the cracks". </p>

<p>....</p>

<p>so by reading this, I've basically gathered that they're not studying each case as dilligently as people here, such as at the "what are my chances" threads. </p>

<p>Why don't I just send them a single sheet with my statistics, attached teacher recs and an attached essay? The male admissions officer drinking the beer said that it was considered a FEAT if he could read and evaluate an application in 10 minutes or less, which is his GOAL. The girl got up for a break and said after poring over an app for about 30 minutes, couldn't remember anything about the applicant because she was "so tired".</p>

<p>I don't know, I kinda found this bothersome, that they spend such little time evaluating your case and not with much alertness, is this just me?</p>

2

<p>Well they do have lives...I think 10 minutes is enough time</p>

3

<p>But it's their job, we all have lives, but even I put more into my work than that . . . we're all like super stressing and they don't even really seem to notice the little things everyone is anxious about</p>

4

<p>well students cry about wanting stress-free admission process, if they spent hours on each app that would add stress, the less time they spend on an app = less stress and less need to have 1000s of ECs and fine tune everything</p>

5

<p>No one said that you had to stress on applications; that's your deal. Maybe you shouldn't put so much into an application if you know how they pick someone. </p>

<p>^ not meant to sound mean.</p>

6

<p>
[quote]
No one said that you had to stress on applications; that's you're deal. Maybe you shouldn't put so much into an application if you know how they pick someone.

[/quote]
I know, it just came to me as kind of shocking because some people here seem to worry how every detail appears to colleges, that's all.</p>

7

<p>This isn't the norm.
I read a blog about a month ago by Ben Jones, one of the admissions officers for MIT.
He detailed their process something like this:
He and a couple other admissions officers would take a stack of applications every couple days, hide away in a corner, and start reading. He'd decide on a couple favorites (couple is a relative term here...he said he liked 10 times as many applicants as he could accept), and he'd go to the admissions committee, where each officer would argue to have their applicant admitted.
In most places, I think it's not as shoddy as that book made it seem.</p>

8

<p>Not the norm at all. Read some of the books like the Jack Steinburg's "The Gatekeepers," which describes in depth the admissions process as Wesleyan.</p>

<p>If, the point is that one should take the time to revise essays so as to have compelling writing on a topic that's not cliched, then I agree with what the author said. Admissions officers work very hard and look at thousands of essays. They aren't going to be impressed by yet another one about "The big game" or "How traveling abroad taught me that people are people."</p>

9

<p>The post to which Quirkily refers is here:
<a href="http://ben.mitblogs.com/archives/2006/03/its_more_than_a.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://ben.mitblogs.com/archives/2006/03/its_more_than_a.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Sarorah, the admissions officers I know (and I know folks at many other schools, not just MIT) care very much about the reading and selection process and would be appalled at the scenario you've described up there.</p>

<p>When I'm reading, I can't have the TV on, even if it's my wife watching in another room; that's why I always read in a private corner of the library. Sometimes it takes me an hour to read an application. My only goal is to really connect with the applicant and then properly represent him/her to the committee.</p>

<p>In my experience, people who don't care in this field are gone in a few months - they either leave on their own or get pushed out by their colleagues. As so much of admissions is based on a team/committee environment, "weak links" simply don't last.</p>

<p>Sorry you had to read that, but please know that it's the exception, not the norm.</p>

10

<p>but no way you're the norm, either,..not to say you're abnormal, more extraordinormal.</p>

11

<p>I'm going to suggest that all applicants to MIT from my school mark their mailings att: Ben Jones!</p>

12

<p>thanks guys :-)</p>

<p>But seriously, the vast majority of people in this field really do care - you really need to love the work because, as my colleague puts it, "you ain't doin' this for the money!"</p>

13

<p>"not to say you're abnormal, more extraordinormal."</p>

<p>LOL!</p>

14

<p>Granted, I didn't work at a place with a heavy app volume, but you wouldn't believe how much we cared. The secretary who handled the deposits used to keep candy bars in her desk to give to the admissions counselors who got particulalrly bad news that day (favorite applicant choosing another school). Those applicants were like my babies, I'm not kidding; I thought about them a lot even when I wasn't at work.</p>

<p>Here at Michigan (apps over 25,000) I have heard admissions professionals talk about applicants they admired, essays they were still pondering days later. They couldn't reel off anecdotes like that if they didn't care about what they were reading or the students who put a lot of work into those applications.</p>

15

<p>
[quote]
thanks guys :-)</p>

<p>But seriously, the vast majority of people in this field really do care - you really need to love the work because, as my colleague puts it, "you ain't doin' this for the money!"

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I dont think theres any real doubt in that people care about what they are doing (else theyre wasting their time doing it), but we all know that there are times when we just cant meet our ideals 100% of the time.</p>

<p>I think admissions officers try their very best to see if people fit and when they find that I think they will 99% of the time pick up your app. I mean there are tons of great people, but if you arent what theyre looking for then you wont really stick out in their mind. (and standing out is more than GPA, SAT, and APs; it can be passions, desires, future plans too).</p>

<p>Is the system perfect? No, but its pretty good at sorting things out.</p>

<p>PS Ben seirously, MIT needs to get other schools to be as cool w/ admissions as you guys are. Makes things a lot less stressful :). Best admin office</p>