<p>I am a faculty member who regularly checks the forum for my university to see if there are any new posts I can respond to to. In doing this, I see that there are some things that you as prospective students of ANY college or university should be doing when you post to these forums. If you really want to get a good answer from a faculty or staff member at the school you are interested in, here are some things you should consider:</p>
<p>1) Write well! The #1 thing is to write in grammatical, complete sentences and paragraphs with no misspellings and a minimum of abbreviations. This is not text messaging! If I see an entry in all lower-case letters with incomplete sentences and awful spelling I am not inclined to respond--because frankly I am not really interested in having you as a student. Even my own kids tell me "nobody cares about grammar or spelling anymore" but there are two places that is NOT true: in college and in jobs that require a college degree. So just suck it up and start making a bit of an effort to communicate like someone who really wants to be in college.</p>
<p>**2) Read the bulletin/catalog<img src="Or%20as%20we%20say%20in%20the%20world%20of%20computing,%20%5Bb%5DRTFM%5B/b%5D!" alt="/b"> I am also not inclined to answer questions that are clearly spelled out in the university's bulletin. This is the document that actually is the university or college's contract with students and the information in there is is going to be definitive and as complete as possible. If you've done your homework and have dug through the bulletin, and you still have questions, hey, ask away!</p>
<p>3) If you've done your homework (see 2 above) then ask the TOUGH questions! In my case, I can't always give you an answer immediately but I care enough about my school to go to the right person to get you a real answer, and there are a lot for folks like me on here who will do the same. And we're always happy to give you our opinion; academics always have LOTS of opinions. </p>
<p>4) Can you get in? Hey, if you want to know what your chances are of getting admitted, give us enough details about how you look on your application to allow us to give you an informed opinion. And REMEMBER: it's just an opinion. Nobody is going to tell you that you've been admitted on a message board!</p>
<p>5) Be honest! The straighter you are with us, the better we can advise you.</p>