<p>Dan, is the admissions process at Tufts holistic?</p>
<p>I agree with sunsetskies. I felt that my Tufts application represented me better than any of my other applications did.</p>
<p>@Rainbowrose: As did I. I felt the Tufts application really brought my character out to the school. Since I applied EDII and was still pondering the choice of going RD or not, this was one of the factors that came to me. This was the only school on my list that I was able to get myself across. Picking a “better” school isn’t an exact science, but Tufts, in my opinion, does an amazing job at distinguishing their applicants with these thoughtful essays.</p>
<p>I think if all schools had applications like Tufts’, it would also decrease the number of kids applying to 10, 12, 14, 64 schools (yes, someone in my school did apply to 64 schools and combined med programs). Thankfully, due to it’s Jan 3rd (or was it 5th?) due date, it was the only app I had left and I could devote my time to it fully. If every school required 4 completely random essays that could not be copied very easily from other apps, people would only apply to the schools they really wanted to go to, and not throw in so many reaches just for the heck of it.</p>
<p>My 11 yr-old D just wrote an essay tonight in which she had to describe a problem in her school, her community, the nation, or the world, and then come up with two possible solutions. She decided to write about the health hazards of heavy backpacks, a very pertinent concern for a sixth grader of slight build, and she quickly came up with two simple and creative solutions. </p>
<p>This got me thinking - with all the intelligent people talking and writing about concerns with the college application process there must also be solutions we could brainstorm and discuss. So here’s my first attempt, the first thing that comes to mind when I think about how to put the essay on a more even playing field: Have essay writing proctored, just as SATs and ACTs are proctored. Present the prompts to students when they arrive, and give them as much time as is deemed necessary (by the powers that be) to complete the essay without outside help. Not a perfect solution - there would still be the haves and the have-nots in preparing for the writing session and there would be a lot of logistics to figure out, but it seems to me it would be a start, and could still give adcoms that other piece they’re looking for in evaluating an applicant. Anyone know if this has ever been considered?</p>
<p>@ckofpng, no offense, but I feel like that’s a terrible idea lol. Some people are better at time writing than others, which puts those people who write well but slowly at a complete disadvantage. In college there will probably be LESS timed writing than there is in HS (term papers instead of SATs and AP tests) so I don’t feel that timed writing is a good solution. Also, these essays take HOURS to write well, even for the quickest writers. I spent weeks on some of mine.</p>
<p>I don’t think theres any problem with having essays, I just think there should be something else to be considered with them. As it’s been said before, 90+% of the applicants are qualified and very few are “sure admits.” What separates those who get in from the like 85% of the pool that’s left is their essays alone pretty much (along with outside factors that can’t be controlled like race and income). There needs to be something else besides the essay, or maybe college writing counselors should just be made illegal ^_^.</p>
<p>Only reason I ask is because I sent in a private YouTube video with my app to Tufts (albeit in late Jan/early Feb) but was told that it was received in time…Through the insight statistics, I can potentially see who may have viewed it, and while two other schools did, it looks as though Tufts hasn’t seen it…interpretations? I’m nervous, obviously…thanks guys/girls!</p>
<p>rainbowrose - I completely understand how much time is devoted to essay writing the way it is done now. Of course it would be a different kind of writing than what you just went through. And I’m not talking about the kind of timed writing that you do for SATs and ACTs or school exams. Again, just brainstorming here, it could be an all day thing with snack and lunch breaks, with students staying as long as they need or want to. My point is that adcoms say they need the essay to help them get to know the applicants in a deeper way than transcripts and test scores can provide them with. If that’s what they’re looking for, then an essay written in one day will give them that. No it wouldn’t be the polished essay that you spent weeks on, but it would be your own, and it would give you the opportunity to show the adcom who you really are. I would add that in the real world you don’t get to have weeks to impress a future employer, for example, with your amazing writing skills - you usually have to think on your feet in an interview, and be ready to submit any writing they request within a day or two.</p>
<p>I can see why you wouldn’t be in favor of overhauling the system. I was scanning the 2015 acceptance thread a few minutes ago, and your username caught my eye from reading this thread earlier - you’ve been accepted to some amazing schools. Congrats! The current system obviously worked well for you. But it is flawed, and if the numbers of applicants keep going up while the admissions percentages keep going down, somethings gotta give. It never hurts to brainstorm. (Which by the way, is all I’m doing here, as I’ve said. When I work with groups of MS and HS kids in creative problem solving, the ground rules for brainstorming are that we listen to, consider, and discuss ideas without jumping to judgement or being critical. I completely respect your opinion and the fact that you disasgree with me, but to call an idea terrible when it is just being put out there for consideration and discussion is the fastest way to shut down the kind of problem solving that we most need in our world).</p>
<p>Best of luck to you with the Tufts decision and any others coming your way. You have a bright future ahead of you.</p>
<p>It seems, to me, that this “proctored” essay idea is essentially what an interview is. An interview is done to get to know the candidate personally in a setting where they have to think on his/her own. That’s just my take, though.</p>
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Felt the same way about our son’s application to Tufts…</p>
<p>Interesting thing about all of these arguments is that I don’t think that anyone can truly know how well a student will fit into a specific school, and that the admissions process can only come up with best guesses. There are always going to be outliers – students with “strong qualifications” who are admitted and then don’t do well at all, and students who scrape by and end up doing very well.</p>
<p>And to anyone who complains about the admissions process because they think it’s arbitrary or unfair, it may be to some extent but it will be good preparation for when the kids go out into the professional workforce where the job selection process can be just as, if not more, arbitrary.</p>
<p>Just a few of my thoughts of the day…and best of luck to everyone with the Tufts decision.</p>
<p>You’re right, Penguin, it would be akin to an interview, sort of a hybrid of the essay and the interview. Most schools don’t require interviews right now, I assume because it is just too hard to schedule thousands and thousands of one-on-one meetings. So this idea would accomplish some of what both elements of the application attempt to do.</p>
<p>It doesn’t really matter what the merits or shortcomings of this idea are, however, as it is not likely that such a drastic change would be implemented. My aim here was to get some ideas going. Does anyone else who is frustrated by or concerned about the admissions process have any suggestions?</p>
<p>Dan, if you’re still reading, I would like to go back to my original questions about essays, what adcoms think about essays that are substantially edited (maybe even written, to some extent) by someone other than the applicant, and what you recommend for future applicants. The NPR Amherst story is just one of the things recently that has me really wondering about thisl.</p>
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Actually, we do. </p>
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<p>Actually, I do. Way more often than not, when I meet students in person (in April, post admittance), the qualities I believed I saw in their applications are exactly the ones I see when I meet them in person. I suppose it’s possible that I’m seeing what I want to see, but I hear the same feedback from counselors in high schools when I talk to them about our decisions. During my fall travel, I’ll get asked by counselors about decisions made the year before, occasionally with surprise - you took a student with slightly “weaker” academics over one with better numbers. When I explain what I saw (when I can remember, which isn’t always): one student seemed so excited to learn and teachers talked about how he would linger after class and he wrote about fascination with trees, the other was strong academically but seemed less excited about the world and I wondered about self-confidence. Almost every time, counselors will agree with what I saw, even if they still would have wished for a different result.</p>
<p>So, this is purely anecdotal, of course, but it’s also what a “holistic” process aspires to do: to recognize qualitative qualities and use them to better interpret the quantitative qualities. I take issue with the word Holistic, mostly because I think it’s used primarily as a shield to obfuscate the decision making process. “We can’t tell you what we do. It’s holistic.” But, when it’s done well, all these essays and recommendations allow us to better understand the way a mind works. </p>
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<p>But, this isn’t a job application, and I would argue that interviews would be more accurate reflection of the individuals in question if respondents had more time to consider their answer.</p>
<p>ALL - </p>
<p>CAN YOU PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO CREATE A NEW THREAD/DISCUSSION FORUM? I have been looking all over this site and cannot figure out how.</p>
<p>Not post to an existing - but instead create brand new like you did.</p>
<p>Thanks in advance for the info - sorry for barging in on your forum!</p>
<p>I’m tempted not to address the issue of falsified essays. It’s a rabbit hole, and isn’t ground for fertile discussion (IMO), so I’ll say a quick word on it and that will be all.</p>
<p>Many of you raise concerns about widespread potential use of falsified essays. I don’t believe that’s an issue for us in the way you describe, but I know I lack the evidence to verify that. What I can share in place of that evidence is the volume of material required for a Tufts application makes it difficult to obtain admittance based on intellectually dishonest material. In our process we have lengthy recommendations written from a number of sources within the school. If the recs don’t jive with the essays, that raises a red flag. If the supplement doesn’t feel like it was written by the same author as the common app, it raises a red flag. Part of what makes an application successful is the way it ought to organically gel together - the same qualities in the recs should be reflected in the essays.</p>
<p>“I felt that my Tufts application represented me better than any of my other applications did.”</p>
<p>Same here. Only in my Tufts application was I really able to show all of my passions, show who I am. My commonapp essay was about the problems I have identifying myself, saying where I’m from (I’m a Third Culture Kid. Just a fancy word for someone who moves to a foreign country as a child and spends a significant portion of his/her life there), and in the Tufts supplemental essays I was able to talk about my passion for music and concerts, baking and traveling, in a way that - in my eyes - didn’t come off as “ooh look at me I have so many passions, I’m such an interesting person”. I didn’t try to press everything into one essay, the different topics just worked out well with my different interests.</p>
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<p>This is - 100% - the right advice for your son. I think the overcoached essays are deadly. They’re stale, typically unhelpful, result in some trite or overarching moral, and read as formulaic. </p>
<p>I’m fortunate enough to be invited to do College Essay Workshops throughout the year, and I’ve worked with numerous friends’ siblings and a few of my own family members on their college app essays. When I was helping my cousin with her own essay on falling in love with chemistry, between her first draft and her second draft she inserted a new paragraph in the middle that neither sounded like her nor offered any new insight. When I asked why she decided to put in it, she told me her English teacher had insisted she add it. My cousin didn’t want it there in the first place, so her teacher basically wrote it for her and put it in. </p>
<p>What struck me most about this wasn’t how forcefully the adults around her edited her paper, but rather that my 17 year old cousin who knew nothing about the admissions process had better instincts about this than her teacher. This was a consistent theme for me and Bekky. I would tell her to follow her instincts, she would hesitate in deference to a teacher or another adult who believed they knew what she should write. </p>
<p>And I see this all the time.</p>
<p>I said it in an earlier post: this isn’t a job interview. We don’t ask for or require the same level of decorum or formality commonly dictated by a job search. We hope our applicants will be respectful, thoughtful, and considerate, but the over-editing mostly ends up being a whitewashing of the interesting aspects of a students’ thought process and writing in favor of a more conservative and conventional approach.</p>
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One thing I hope that you can do is weed out the obviously “coached” essays…while I admit that we helped our S with proofreading of the essays we did our best to make sure that the essays were representative of who he is. And in all honesty if his essays didn’t resonate with admissions at a school then no matter how good that school is we would not see it as a fit.</p>
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<p>Dan,</p>
<p>Once the 10% has been eliminated and the files have gone to committee, is there still a stat-hierarchy within the remaining 90%? In other words, is a kid with top stats more or less assured of admission unless his essay or recs really fall short in some way? Does the kid with more middling stats (but still well-qualified) need to come up with something extra that is compelling or distinctive beyond what the high-stat kid needs for admission? Or are all candidates on more or less on equal footing once they pass the stat hurdle and their files go to committee?</p>
<p>Thanks for your insights.</p>
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<p>I would never use the word “assured” to describe any applicant to Tufts. There is no academic tier at which someone is an admit unless proven otherwise.
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<p>Students are not on equal footing, either. There is a direct correlation between the academic numbers and the admit rate. Students with “top stats” get in at higher rates than those with weaker ones, and this is true even if you make fine distinctions within categories like “top stats.” There is still a large portion of applicants in even the most competitive portion of our pool who will not be admitted. But, generally speaking, you need more demonstrated intellectual and personal punch in essays and recs to be admitted the further down the academic ladder you go.</p>
<p>Dan;
Our D got in accepted last week to her dream school (and several others). Two questions 1) given virtually same stats/test scores/GPA a friend did not get into same school. For the sake of this question, let’s say the essays and recs were equal. Is it possible that an I.B. diploma carries enough weight to make the difference? so the real question is how much weight does an I.B. diploma (or dip-can as they say) carry with schools. Question number 2: D has a friend who got into an Ivy with relatively low stats…certainly stats that most of us agree would never get you into an Ivy. But the kid is an athlete in an “olympic” (non revenue) sport. So how does that work? Is that person the one that comes out of Ivy with a diploma and a 2.5 GPA, and in the end she still has the Ivy diploma and no one cares?</p>