<p>:)
greetings everyone.... I was at the common app site and filling in the
supplement when I realized --------------:eek:-----------------</p>
<p>**** NO BOX QUESTION ****</p>
<p>Whats going on ...revenge of the gods ???? ...</p>
<p>I Have been waiting 2 years almost to do the Box Question
for Caltech.....someone tell me it is not gone.......</p>
<p>The box is definitely gone.</p>
<p>As interesting as it was, they were incredibly time consuming to evaluate and very-rarely had any concrete effect on the final outcome. Or so I hear.</p>
<p>That's too bad - I liked the box. It made the application stand out.</p>
<p>every caltech student i've talked to are VERY disappointed that is box is gone =(
i was gonna put such cool pictures of robotics and other stuff!!</p>
<p>NOOOOO! DO NOT WANT! </p>
<p>The box was awesome! It made my life! Excuse me while I go off to mourn the loss of the box.</p>
<p>!!!!!!!!</p>
<p>Wahh!! I had a really fun time when I was doing the apps and thinking of what to put in the Box!!</p>
<p>The Photoshop-ed result that I sent to Caltech took me about an hour but was one of the finer stuff I ever did in Photoshop...noooooo~</p>
<p>I strongly disagree with that decision.</p>
<p>The box was not only a fun and and different spark in a myriad of box cutter, common app (which we've also moved to :) applications, it was an opportunity for the applicant to express himself on a level beyond numbers and words. Interviews are incredibly time/staff consuming to do, and how do you evaluate them? I think the box is a reasonable analogy. It's something not concrete, but it gives you the kind of personal, genuine (or not) insight that can't be topped short of actual personal contact with each applicant. And Caltech doesn't do an interview.</p>
<p>What's going on with admissions? First common app, then "more holistic!", and now "no box, we must be the same as every other school in the country"? </p>
<p>Besides, the box made me apply to Caltech. >_></p>
<p>Future applicants: be rebellious, and send a box in anyways! :P</p>
<p>well, as far as we can see, the "more holistic" stuff is in the idea phase. I sincerely doubt it's going to get past the students as a whole.</p>
<p>As cghen, the box was too time consuming to evaluate, and didn't add value to the admissions process. The reason it was dropped now is because admissions anticipates an increase in applicants this year, due to the cancellation of Harvard and Princeton's EA programs, but wasn't able to increase their size of their staff.</p>
<p>Ahh, the box.</p>
<p>I'll tell you the truth. I like the box. I think it's a pretty neat idea.</p>
<p>That said, I'm on the admissions committee that decided to get rid of the box for a year.</p>
<p>The problem with the box is that all of the box submissions come in separately from the rest of the application. On top of this, not everyone submits something in the box that abides by all the rules (correct file type, correct file size, correct image size, etc). What this means is that the admissions staff (all three and a half full time employees, or something close to that number) have to go through several thousand emails, convert files to the right formats/sizes/etc, and then attach the submissions to the right applications.</p>
<p>It turns out that this takes an absurdly long time. In addition, the contents of the box rarely end up making a difference in admissions decisions (and by rarely, I'm talking maybe one or two cases a year).</p>
<p>All of that, combined with the expected surge in applications for this year, led us to the decision to eliminate the box for a year and see what happens. If we think it's a good idea to bring it back (and even possible, given our manpower), then it'll come back.</p>