I read somewhere that schools rarely take a look at kid’s performances uploaded as part of an application. Both my kids are strong actors and decided to record a short performance. With boy number 2, I decided to upload a link to youtube rather than the performance itself. This allowed us to use youtube’s analytics to analyze how many times the performance was watched, the average viewing duration and where the video was viewed (by state).
My son’s applied to 7 schools ea and one school ed. The 2 minute and 37 second video was watched once, by one school, for 36 seconds.
To be fair, most of the schools state that there’s no guarantee they’ll watch anything you upload. But it’s given me pause to think about when a school will watch a video. Given that admissions depts have limited time and resources, I’m guessing they take a triage approach: no reason to look at the kids that are definitely going to be admitted or the kids that are well below academic standards. That leaves the layer of kids in the middle where it might be useful to have a little more information.
I’m not sure about admissions offices, but many colleges have scholarships targeted for theater and other performing arts students. Those scholarships can range from full tuition to just an extra $1,000 or $2,000 in merit aid. And while most are for students planning to major in theater, some just require that students participate in theatrical productions while they are in college. The scholarship applications usually require either an in person audition or a brief audition tape, uploaded to YouTube or on DVD. I suspect that when it is the theater department faculty reviewing the video, it actually gets watched. I know that this is a different issue than using the tape as evidence of EC talents for admission, but if your kids have theatrical talent it is worth looking to see if the schools they are applying to have targeted scholarships. (Many of the schools my son applied to did).
I really think it depends on what the college says. For a while Tufts had an optional video for one of their optional essays. They watched every single one of them. Sometimes musical performances will only be watched if there’s an official arts supplement process. Other schools (I’m talking to you Stanford) say up front they will not look at anything extra. Ever.
If they have a supplement that’s one thing (and I don’t think they did when my oldest applied), but they were adament they didn’t want extra recommendations. My son’s boss where he programmed computers knew more about his talents in that area than anyone at his high school - oh well.
I found it interesting that Harvard charged a $10 fee for uploading a supplement. That’s the only school D looked at that had a charge. It was waived for economic hardship.
I am curious OP, how did you know who viewed the video and for how long ? Two of the schools my daughter applied to require video supplements, once specifically stated that unless the applicant was a performing arts applicant , they wouldn’t look at videos ( I get it, they have over 50,000 applicants a year )
Only one school’s admissions commented about her video ( with great enthusiasm )
Three schools may or may not have looked at it.
Rather than uploading the video to the school’s web portal, he uploaded a doc with a link to a youtube video. He checked with the schools to make sure they were ok with that approach and everyone said yes. I thought it was a good approach as it provided him with an extra touchpoint with his admission’s officer and let the admissions officer know that it would be part of his app.
youtube provides viewing analytics for all videos, so we are able to see metrics like total views, views by state and average viewing duration. I thought it was a pretty good hack, it was fun to check into the metrics each day but in the end, no one really saw it.