College Admissions

Say you receive an email from an admissions officer inviting you to an interview. Or you grabbed someone's business card at a school forum and want to email that admissions officer with a question. What's the appropriate way to address that person?

Here are some guidelines to help you communicate with admissions officers in a professional way:

• If the person's recent email or recent business card clearly identifies him (in the email signature, for example) as having a Dean title, you can address him as Dean So-and-So.

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It is interview season and I'm hearing from applicants across the land that interviews scare them.  The subject line of a recent email is fairly typical -- "Emergency!  How Do I Get Ready for an Interview?" It is isn't all that surprising that admissions interviews scare you because you probably don't have all that much experience interviewing.  We all fear the unknown.  But I promise that you can have a great college admissions interview if you follow these 5 essential strategies.  

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Because many students and parents are "newcomers" to college admissions, they are often unable to distinguish good information from bad information and they get confused by what information they should heed.  Unfortunately for them, bad information abounds.  Just last week I was dismayed to read an opinion column in USA Today that had all sorts of bad information in it about what college admissions officers look for when evaluating applications.

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You have six choices of topics for the personal statement on the Common Application, including “topic of your choice.”  So what do you choose as the topic?  Having read thousands of personal statements over the years, I want to offer some dos and don’ts about topic selection based on my experience as an admissions officer:

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“Missed opportunity to tell me something that would persuade me to admit.”  That was often my evaluation when I was an admissions officer reading applicants’ answers to questions, which invited them to discuss one of their extracurricular activities or work experiences.  Why?  Well, because applicants often simply provided a narrative description of what they did and I could get that from their activity lists.  E.g. “As student council president, I was responsible for organizing our meetings, leading school assemblies, and representing the school at community events.”  Blah, blah, blah.  I knew (and know) what student council presidents do.  What I wanted was a mini-essay that conveyed something more about you and your experience as student council president.  And that is what all admissions officers want.  So how you give admissions officers what they want?

Use the three I's -- interest, initiative, and impact -- that’s how to get the most from these type of short answer questions.  

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As the application season gets into full swing, I field lots of questions about whether a student should apply early.  This question really isn’t a timeline question; it is a strategic question.  Strategy should be decided only after you have done a proper analysis.  In this case, the analysis involves 4 steps. In order to help you understand how to do the analysis, I am going to walk you through it here using Kim, a rising senior at All-American High School in a western suburb of Boston as an example. 

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I know a lot about U.S. colleges because, well, it is my job to know.  But I'm always learning more, because there is always more to learn. Recently, I've been delving into the nitty gritty of theater programs at colleges in the U.S.  And wow -- there are some amazing programs out there.  But admission to many of these programs is by audition only and that makes them "out of reach" for many students who have a serious interest in theater, both as an academic area of inquiry and as a possible career path, but who haven't had access to the kind of training and experiences that would prepare them for the "admissions audition."  So are there any programs out there for them -- the ones who aren't precocious child stars and who aren't going to make the cut at Juilliard just yet?  Yes, in fact there are.  And many of these programs are also amazing.  Really.  

Take these 5 colleges (presented in alphabetical order) -- each has a dynamic theater program with an enviable track record of graduates who go on to success in theater and NONE of them require an admissions audition!  

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