<p>I am considering submitting a video as a supplement to my RD application. I'm a member of my high school's marching band, but over the years I have discovered the sad truth that a large majority of the populace has absolutely no idea of the scope of a marching band's work. I was thinking it might be helpful to the adcoms for me to submit a video of this year's halftime show, as it was particularly complex, and perhaps include a few paragraphs about my experiences with marching band.</p>
<p>In this note, shall we call it, I was hoping to perhaps explain the extremely high standards, the technical aspects of being a marching band leader, and the other unique facets of marching band that I won't be able to well explain in this blurb.</p>
<p>Thoughts? I would love any advice at all :)</p>
<p>I’ll repeat myself a bit from the thread in October…</p>
<p>My opinion is that it’s great to send supplemental material if it shows something about you that you want the admissions officers to recognize, so I think sending material about your band would be great. I would probably send a quick highlight reel of the halftime show in addition to/instead of the full show, in case your readers don’t have time to see the whole thing.</p>
<p>Still, it’s not uncommon for MIT applicants, especially those from the midwest and other yay-football regions of the country, to be seriously devoted to outstanding marching bands – the admissions officers will not be surprised to learn that marching band is a very serious, time-consuming activity for you, so there’s no need to send material to convince them. </p>
<p>Recording the amount of time you spend on band in the EC section of the application would be adequate, and having your director write a supplemental letter is a great idea. I’m not sure that sending a video necessarily adds much.</p>
<p>^^^
I agree with mollie and, IMO, it may work against you slightly, in that you may possibly be trying to overcompensate for a deficiency in your application somewhere. Good luck.</p>
<p>^Yea, I gotta agree with k4r3n2. Schools are only interested in our favorite activities, and MIT in particular only wants our top 5. If you want to emphasize one that is particularly important/demanding, I say why not.</p>
<p>Still though, I’m with Mollie, make sure its actually worthy of their time (not to sound too blunt). Adcoms have to read a lot of essays and look over a lot of supplemental material. If you can watch a clip of your halftime performance and find any significant chunk of time in it that isn’t impressive, go with the highlights reel suggestion.</p>
<p>1) I do not actually have a highlights reel. If I were to decide to send this supplement, should I spend a great deal of time making a highlights reel (oh, the perfectionism!) or just send the full show? The entire performance is about thirteen minutes long.</p>
<p>2) I haven’t heard any opinions on the supplemental notes idea–thoughts?</p>
<p>I think you should make the highlights reel - as cool as marching band may be, the adcoms have a lot of applications to review, and I think it’s a little unrealistic to expect them to watch a 13-minute video. 2-3 minutes (you could even put it on YouTube and link to it on all of your apps) would be better.</p>
<p>Not to sound just like everyone else- but what Mollie said. </p>
<p>Definitely talk about marching band and all of the difficult work you did for it, but I promise they will understand what you are talking about without sending in a video.</p>
<p>If you want to send in a video, that’s absolutely fine, just know that they’re not likely to take 13 minutes to watch the whole thing. A highlight reel is a good idea.</p>
<p>I don’t at all see how it would work against you and make you seem like you’re “overcompensating.” But again, don’t stress about explaining what marching band entails. They’ll get it.</p>
<p>honestly none of us have the time to watch all 13 minutes. but you can feel free to send it, and we might skip around to get a sense of the scale since that’s what you want to demonstrate.</p>
It’s been really helpful.</p>