<p>so.. I had never thought about putting a picture of myself in the application, but I've been reading a few forums and have seen that people do this. Is this appropriate? Is anyone here doing this? The main colleges I'm thinking about are Brown, Penn, and Rice at the moment, if that makes any difference.</p>
<p>I find the picture idea quite odd. I remember perusing the Georgetown transfer app and noticing they had a space for a passport-size photo. Check this out: <a href=“http://uadmissions.georgetown.edu/documents/appforms/transfer/TransferPart2.pdf[/url]”>http://uadmissions.georgetown.edu/documents/appforms/transfer/TransferPart2.pdf</a></p>
<p>Honestly, though, if a head shot is not required nor considered on freshman apps, why would it make a difference for a transfer applicant?</p>
<p>So is it rare to do this? A majority of the people do not?</p>
<p>I thought Georgetown asks for photos for freshmen applicants? Or at least that’s what some of my friends had said anyways (didn’t apply, so not sure if it was required or not).</p>
<p>That would be weird. The vast majority of schools don’t ask for a picture in an application file, and neither should they. Admission to an academic program is not a beauty pageant.</p>
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<p>Asking for a picture doesn’t imply that an admissions decision would be based on it…</p>
<p>When I did admissions for a school that asked for pictures, we never considered the “attractiveness” of the candidate. It didn’t even enter our minds.</p>
<p>You miss the point. Photos are irrelevant for admission purposes. And the school can always request them later from the matriculated students, if the school needs photos for a facebook.</p>
<p>I hardly missed the point. Your claim was:
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<p>My conclusion is that merely because we asked for photos does not imply that we considered them in making our decisions. It’s as simple as that.</p>
<p>Just to be a little clearer, so you don’t miss the point, I’m stating that asking for photos is perfectly compatible with maintaining that they are irrelevant (or should be irrelevant) in the admissions process.</p>
<p>Your understanding seems to be limited to the literal meaning of the words written. So, since your inability to see implications seems to have caused you miss the point, let me spell the point out for you:</p>
<p>In an admission process, adcoms should collect relevant information and should abstain from collecting irrelevant information, since collection of irrelevant information taxes limited resources available to schools and possibly invades privacy of the applicants. Since admission process to academic program is not based on looks, photographs of the applicants are irrelevant for purposes of admission and should not be requested at that stage.</p>
<p>You are welcome to argue to the contrary. But, fortunately, this normative statement is validated and supported by the admission practices, as most schools do not request applicants’ photographs, which implies that most adcoms neither consider photographs to be relevant for admission purposes nor deem it appropriate to collect applicants photographs in the admissions process.</p>
<p>Here are some notes for you, in case you still manage to misunderstand: relevant is used in its common meaning of having sufficient relevance, not in the meaning of absolute relevance, as everything is relevant to anything in some philosophical sense; when the word implication is used, it refers to the most likely or probable implication(s), not to one(s) that are highly contrived. Also, feel free to consult a dictionary for anything else that poses a challenge.</p>
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<p>This attitude is cute; but it has no bearing in reality.</p>
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<p>And you know this how? Because you have admissions experience? That’s right. You don’t. You’re relying on hyperbole the moment you think that asking for a photo “taxes limited resources.”</p>
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<p>Yes! Because people have a right to have their portrait concealed. This makes sense.</p>
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<p>And this is where I repeat myself: Asking for a photo is compatible with arguing that photographs are irrelevant.</p>
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<p>Eh. It was a mixture of normative and descriptive statements. </p>
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<p>So what? This doesn’t mean that photos shouldn’t be asked for. You’re just repeating that they’re irrelevant, a claim that I did not dispute.</p>
<p>I like your condescension and attempt to sound high minded and witty, but it’s contrived, useless, and won’t win you arguments.</p>
<p>“Your understanding seems to be limited to the literal meaning of the words written”</p>
<p>LOL. That’s some pretentious nonsense.</p>
<p>So… back to the issue at hand. Columbia School of GS asks for a picture. I’m including one even though it is optional. I am curious as to why they ask for it at all though.</p>
<p>flowerhead, a question – if you were one to review applications with photos, what did you and fellow admissions officers look for in the student picture?</p>
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<p>I don’t need to have admission experience to know that processing those photos costs time and money. Of course, schools may simply shift the financial burden onto applicants, but it sounds like a waste of resources to me.</p>
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<p>I have no idea who hired you to the adcom. Schools already ask for a slew of very personal and private information from the applicants. And I am not giving anything more than necessary for adcoms to render a decision. Requesting photographs from the applicants is like asking people you meet at a bar for their social security numbers - unneccessary and inappropriate.</p>
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<p>And I repeat: admission process is not a beauty contest. You have no business asking for a photo, except when it matters (and it doesn’t matter for admission to academic programs).</p>
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<p>Since you couldn’t tell a normative statement from a descriptive one, here is a lesson for you: a normative statement is a statement of what SHOULD be; a descriptive statement is a statement of what IS. In this case, my normative statement is supported by the admission practices, as most adcoms understand that photos do not matter, and thus, do not request them.</p>
<p>Just going to ignore drek’thar.</p>
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<p>Absolutely nothing. We saw the photos, obviously, as they were with the applications. But they never factored into our discussions. Sometimes, applicants would submit a photo of themselves, with the background of it showing something about which they are passionate (and usually the essay would elaborate on it). I think the application instructions clearly request a passport-sized photo, but I thought the attempts were cute nonetheless. </p>
<p>I don’t think we asked for photos to judge applicants based on their looks (and more often than not, applicants simply did not submit photos; we didn’t hold it against them (I’d say about 45% submitted photos)). I do think that we, as a committee, were striving to maintain a close-knit campus community; photos make the application process a little more personal, in that they help us establish a closer connection with the person who will represent the university both as a student and, later, as an alum. As a person who found the notion of standardized tests and GPA bizarrely impersonal, I welcomed the person who could communicate a more personal side of him- or herself more effectively.</p>
<p>Applicants are invited to do this via the application essay, but people tend to underestimate the effectiveness of visual aids in enhancing communication between parties. In the same vein, we didn’t conduct our interviews with blinds in front of the parties’ faces; the people meet up. I’d say that, in an interview, more is communicated through body language and attitude and inflection and emphasis than through explicit words; interviewers get a “feel” for the interviewee. A picture accomplishes the same thing for an admissions committee, in my opinion.</p>
<p>Wow, thank you for that elaborate response, I appreciate it! :-)</p>
<p>Man this thread did nothing for me.</p>
<p>If they don’t have a space for it, I say don’t include it.</p>
<p>i don’t think there’s anything wrong with putting pictures in, even if they didn’t ask for it. i know a fellow cornellian who sent pictures of her visit to cornell along with her app and she was accepted. i know a few other people who sent them to other schools, too, because they thought it would give their app a more personal feel. maybe they think it works in place of going and meeting with someone at the school? i don’t know, i think it could be cute.</p>
<p>I don’t like the practice. I believe the poster saying it was not considered in the process.
However, if one is human, one cannot guarantee that a picture will not at least unconsciously “put in a good word” for that applicant. Secondly, the applicants have no way of knowing how it will be considered with absolute certainty. </p>
<p>It’s kind of like need blind (well, remotely). Instead of looking at need and then making sure it doesn’t matter, they just don’t look at it.</p>
<p>And lastly, it’s one more thing for students to worry about.</p>