Tufts - Great College Advice https://greatcollegeadvice.com College Admission Counseling Tue, 24 Mar 2026 06:59:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.2 https://greatcollegeadvice.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/758df36141c47d1f8f375b9cc39a9095.png Tufts - Great College Advice https://greatcollegeadvice.com 32 32 Best College Admission Video Essays–A Positive Trend? https://greatcollegeadvice.com/blog/best-college-admission-video-essays-a-positive-trend/ Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:19:02 +0000 https://greatcollegeadvice.com/?p=6383 More and more colleges allow students to submit YouTube videos as a part of the admissions process. While some are pretty creative, is this move to video a positive trend? Have a look at the videos themselves here, and weigh in with your opinion.

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]]> Newsweek Magazine online recently put up a video montage about video essays that some colleges and universities are now accepting as part of the admissions process.
The video  is fun to watch.  Some of the ideas are pretty funny.  And some of them are totally lame.
But my question is this:  do admissions folks really think that these videos are important in the admissions decision?  They may alleviate the boredom of reading yet another essay about some kid’s grandma or  how Marie Curie provides inspiration to a budding scientist.  But are they really necessary?  At what point does the admissions decision revolve around marketing and self-promotion–instead of academic excellence and performance?  What can you glean from these videos that you cannot get from teacher recommendations and the standard application?
Or is it that admissions counselors–mostly young people of the YouTube generation–just want to be entertained at work?
All these silly supplemental essay prompts add to the anxiety of the applications process.  I spend an inordinate amount of my time counseling students on their essays, brainstorming topics, reviewing outlines, and editing for concision.  If I’m to believe my colleagues at the Independent Educational Consultants Association, perhaps as many as 25% of students applying to selective universities use a consultant like me to help them figure out how to respond to these nutty prompts.  Some colleges like Tufts, Wake Forest, and the University of Chicago have multiple wacky essays to complete.  Is it any wonder that the college consulting profession is growing?  Soon I’ll be a videographic consultant, too!
Have a look at this video of videos.  And then think about whether this is a positive trend, or a negative one.  Leave me a comment and share your thoughts.

Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant

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]]> Early Decision Acceptances Rise at Tufts: A Harbinger? https://greatcollegeadvice.com/blog/early-decision-acceptances-rise-at-tufts-a-harbinger/ Sat, 24 Jan 2009 16:15:25 +0000 https://greatcollegeadvice.com/?p=1635 An article in the Tufts Daily indicates that the university has accepted quite a few more students from its Early Decision pool than last year: 12% more. It could be,...

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]]> An article in the Tufts Daily indicates that the university has accepted quite a few more students from its Early Decision pool than last year: 12% more.

It could be, as the Dean of Undergraduate Admissions says in the article, that the pool of ED applicants at Tufts was just outstanding this year. Or it could be that Tufts is hedging its bets in a tough economy and taking more from this pool of students guaranteed to matriculate.

While most admissions officers have a tough time admitting it, their desks are heaving with applications from qualified students. At the margins, the qualitative difference between the student who is denied and the student who is admitted is negligible. (See my article here about the randomness of college admission–as documented by admissions officers themselves).

I will be interested to see if Early Decision acceptances are up at other selective colleges. I will not be surprised if they are. Nor will I be surprised if deans of admissions swear on stacks of Bibles that the reason for this trend is the increased quality in their applicant pools. (Was the Tufts ED pool really 12% better–qualitatively?)

Colleges are businesses. They have budgets. And admissions offices are the sales and marketing arms of these big businesses.

So we’ll see how things continue to shake out in this admissions cycle.

Great College Advice

 

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