<p>LOL! And I'll bet the tourists all took pictures of the hack, too! (<em>I</em> would have! :) )</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
There is nothing illegal in applicant checking as many times as they wish their application website.
[/QUOTE]
Exactly. We encourage students to check their application accounts to make sure all supporting credentials are in. There's no instruction saying the applicants shouldn't check their accounts at any point. I wish MORE students checked their accounts more frequently to verify that their applications were complete.</p>
<p>I never heard about Duke having a bug in their system, but I can't believe they'd deny a student they wanted simply because the student checked their online status.</p>
<p>Sometimes prospective students would stop by on weekends when the admissions office was closed, and we had one security guard who LOVED to give tours if she ran across them on campus. And she was awesome! I'd hear from the students later about it.</p>
<p>On the flip side: occasionally students are forced by their parents to apply to MIT, and I've gotten some wonderful laughs out of watching them intentionally sabotage their applications. :-) In response to our "tell us about a time when you faced difficult or trying circumstances" essay, one applicant responded: "A time when I faced difficult or trying circumstances was right now, when I was forced to apply to your f***ing school." The 500-word essay was incredibly well written, actually.</p>
<p>Not everyone in the office shared my sentiments, but personally I thought it was hysterical.</p>
<p>"A time when I faced difficult or trying circumstances was right now, when I was forced to apply to your f***ing school." The 500-word essay was incredibly well written, actually."</p>
<p>I sincerely hope you admitted this student.</p>
<p>lol benjones, that is hilarious. you do reject everyone who says things like that, correct?</p>
<p>Well, when you have 11,500 applicants for a class size of 1000, and 99.9999999% of your applicant pool would be psyched to come to MIT, you don't tend to admit the handful of applicants who essentially beg you to not admit them. :-)</p>
<p>[edit] okay, make that 99.9% up there; otherwise we're talking about one applicant's toe. Sorry, got carried away. ;-)</p>
<p>well since you're here benjones, just wanted to ask a quick question. is every MIT applicant required to submit math + science SAT2s? Even if you're interested in non-math-science-y departments? do kids like us just not belong? lol :)</p>
<p>The short answer is yes, but let's not derail this thread - please post in the MIT forum for extended answer! :-)</p>
<p>hehe of course. sorry</p>
<p>It was mid-April, and I was in the middle of a last-minute trip to Wheaton College (IL) to finally decide whether I wanted to attend. In case you don't know, Wheaton College is a quite conservative evangelical college, with a community covenant which governs moral standards and required chapel three times a week. Anyway, we had just finished an hour long service emphasizing reaching the world with the gospel and the prospective students were being led to our respective halls for our overnight stay. As we neared Fischer Hall, however, something didn't seem quite right. A whole clump of students were standing in front of the building looking up at the completely dark top floor. Suddenly, lights went on, techno music blared, and dozens of prospective students got to watch unidentifiable freshmen men dancing in their underwear. Luckily, the parents weren't along, or many Wheaton dreams could have been shattered. :) I'm not sure if it was the "Whitey-Tightey Dance" that sold me, but I chose to go there in the fall.</p>
<p>Went to go on a tour at Amherst College. Tour guide shows up 30 minutes late wearing pajamas, eating ice cream out of a cup and smoking. Says "hi", takes a drag, then puts out the cigarette.
At student commons, someone asks, "Is Amherst politically active?"
Tour guide: "Yeah...remember, during the election for the president? The Democrats and the liberals and the people who like Bush were sooo debating about that."
Later on: "What did you like best about Amherst?" (IMO, the most revealing question to ask on a tour.)
Her answer: "Um, I guess...the fried chicken! It's so good."</p>
<p>These stories are hilarious.. I sorta have one, although it's weird more than funny.</p>
<p>I remember going with my brother on campus tours a couple of years ago when we was applying to colleges (nothing spectacular, just some no name state places). On the campus tour, the tour guide was doing a pretty good job of explaning all of the buildings and so forth, our little group was happily walking along.. and then we ran into a graveyard. Apparently some architectural genius cleverly placed a graveyard in the middle of the quad.. who made this place? (just goes to show how, uh, prestigious this school is). The tour guide made a catty comment about the school's infirmary being conveniently located right next to it (it was), and also clarified that the grave site made for some "sweet" Halloween parties (kudos for that).</p>
<p>Here's one more. I didn't know him then, but H went to grad school over 1000 miles from home and heard about a future classmate that lived in his area who would be making the long car trip to the campus. He agreed to take H's possessions with him in his car, while H made the trip by plane. When the classmate was nearly there, he called home, only to find out that he had just gotten in to his first choice school! So, the guy turns around then and there and drives another 1000 miles straight to NY, taking all of hubby's possessions along with him! H didn't see his things again for a very LONG time, and had to replace everything. Moral of the story is don't depend on future classmates on wait lists!</p>
<p>my "adventure" to fairleigh dickinson university in madison, new jersey almost did not happen, which would have been heartbreaking because i could not share this college tour story with all of you. i am glad my dad dragged me to this open house. it really gave me something to talk about on monday morning with my friends.</p>
<p>i arrived at fdu, begrudingly, yet it was a beautiful fall day. maybe this would be good. maybe this could be my potential safety school. </p>
<p>wrong. </p>
<p>after registering for the open house the second time (i was already registered but i wasn't "on the list"), we were ushered into the gym. there is a stand up comic on stage, spewing horrible college jokes about how college is a waste of money, blah blah blah. i looked around the room. the teenagers had their heads down, their parents were sipping the watered down orange juice. this would be a fun day, i thought to myself. the stand up comic ends... after over a half hour on stage. maybe, it will get better from here. </p>
<p>wrong, again. </p>
<p>just as the stand up comic guy finally leaves the stage, thudding techno music blares through the gym. you know what time this is? no, not a spontaneous party of fdu pride, no. it was the introduction to the deans of the school. after their boring speeches of how you will be "so impressed" by fdu, their mascot, the devil, dances around the room.</p>
<p>oh yes, satan came to torture us some more. i thought the stand up comic was bad. </p>
<p>it got a little worse. i was looking into their creative writing program, their main dept head could not answer any questions about the program. ugh. i never knew college could look so unappealing until that tour.</p>
<p>Glad you brought up this thread, Lasercat. I haven't laughed so hard in weeks!!</p>
<p>At Wheaton (MA), my guide told me she came there because she did not get into Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>At Bard, my guide told me she came there because she did not get into Vassar. Little did I know, that's about 50% of Bard.</p>
<p>My best story is about Hampshire, actually.</p>
<p>So we drove up for a tour and interview. The first part was the tour. It was a Saturday, and we couldn't get into over half the buildings. The guide struggled with the keys, but most of the doors wouldn't open. It was a bad start.</p>
<p>Another mom asked about substance-free dorms. After a short answer, my mom asks: "But...aren't drugs illegal in the first place? Why do you need drug-free dorms, when all the dorms should technically be drug-free?". There was a bit of awkwardness for the rest of the tour.</p>
<p>Worst of all, when my mom told another mom that I was already accepted to Bard, the woman went on about how Bard is so much better than Hampshire the entire second half of the tour. It made our guide kind of uncomfortable, and my mom kept telling me that I wasted her time coming to see the school.</p>
<p>The information session at Syracuse was absolutely horrible. I ended up liking the school anyway, but there were so many things that made me want to get up and walk out. They started with a nice video presentation, but then they had some woman with the most monotonous voice ever come up and repeat everything the video already said. Then they split up the groups based on separate colleges, and the same woman talked for about 15 minutes on each one. The worst part was that the people who were actually interested in each college were leaving to join their group, so everyone stuck listening could not care less. </p>
<p>The worst part, though, was the parent info session when they split up students and parents. One of the professors answering questions was the head of the honors program, so one of the parents asked him about it. He knew you had to be chosen (you couldn't apply) and that they had seven things they looked for, but beyond that he had no idea. He and the dean of the school were actually arguing about what the criteria were for being chosen. The only came up with communication, depth, and breadth, and even those they weren't sure of. It was sad.</p>
<p>A Fordham story: My D applied EA and got her acceptance letter mid December. Stuck inside her envelope was ANOTHER girl's acceptance letter. So, my D figured this girl was anxious to get the good news, so she tracked down her phone number from the address on the letter. Got the girl on the phone who replied "I didn't even apply there" (And she was a high school senior who had looked at the school, unique name- didn't seem to be the wrong person) My D replied, oh well- you got in anyway.</p>