There's a good blog post today on The Choice Blog at the New York Times website here. It's all about the etiquette of adding college admissions representatives as your friends on Facebook. The short answer is, DON'T DO IT, but this question bears a longer answer--namely, what is the best way to present yourself in the context of college admissions?
As many of you know, I'm an avid Facebook user. It's a great way to keep in touch with friends from high school and college and past jobs, and it's a nice way to be able to wish my friends a happy birthday or keep up with the latest milestones in their lives. What I like best, though, is how highly customizable Facebook's privacy features are. You can control who can search for you, how people interact with you online, and even the way that different friends can see your profile.
These highly customizable privacy settings help me control the information that I share with my Facebook friends, and they help protect my privacy from people who I don't want to interact with online, for whatever reason. If you were to search me right now on Facebook, you won't find me; I have my privacy settings set to make me unsearchable by people who are not currently my Facebook friends. This makes me feel protected from unsavory strangers, and it's also a nice policy to have professionally. No offense, but I won't be your Facebook friend while you're in high school: I'm your college counselor and I like all of you, but I'm not comfortable mixing my personal Facebook page with my professional life.
This last point is the one that most admissions officers are speaking to when they institute a "no friending" policy. Keep in mind that your college application process is like applying for a job: you're trying to make a good impression and represent yourself well so that you can move on to the next step in your academic life. If you visit a college campus and have a great conversation with an admissions representative or professor, the right choice is to send a thoughtful thank-you note via snail mail or email. Such communication preserves the tone that you're trying to project when you apply to college: you want to look thoughtful, diligent, and thorough. At best, this nice note might end up in your admission file to attest to the high quality of your character and your sincere interest in attending the school.
It's also okay to use email as a way to ask a question of an admissions representative, as long as you keep the email as professional as a written letter. For example, your email shouldn't look like this:
Subject: [no subject]
Hey,
I really liked visiting your school last weekend but i have another question can u let me know what kind of SAT scores i need to get in because i really want to go to your school
Sarah
I'm exaggerating a bit, of course, but make sure you have a coherent subject line, a proper salutation (like "Dear" or "Hi" rather than "Hey"), complete sentences, correct orthography, and a pleasant sign-off (like "Sincerely", "Regards", "Gratefully", "Thanks", or--my personal favorite--"Cheers"). So the preceding email should look more like this:
Subject: Visit to Campus on 9/18/09
Dear Mr. Smith,
It was a pleasure meeting you on your campus last week! I learned a lot and had a great time. I did have one more question when I got home that I was hoping you could answer. What kind of SAT scores do successful applicants to your school usually have? Thank you for your help and for a great visit!
Sincerely,
Sarah
Again, this kind of communication is professional, and it's always the right way to correspond with and communicate with admissions reps. If you're not comfortable writing such emails, never fear--just come to my office and I'll help you draft one of these. If you need to call an admissions office for any reason, come on by, too: I'm glad to help you make a script for your phone call.
The right choice isn't to friend an admissions representative on Facebook because, frankly, they're not your new friend: they're a person you met in a professional environment. Friending them on Facebook will not help your admission decision; at worst, it might negatively impact your admission decision, since you might come off as less than savvy, unserious, and a little childish. Plus, if the admission officer views your profile and there's anything less than sterling on it, that too could damage the impression you're trying to project.
This isn't to say that you shouldn't friend a student you meet on an overnight visit or students you meet when visiting a college. Rather, these students could be a great asset to you as you try to get a sense of the place you plan to attend. However, tread lightly here, too: you don't want to seem like the over-eager high school student who just friends everyone she's ever met.
In general, then, I think it's a really good policy to keep your Facebook life and your college application life as separate as possible. It's smart from a privacy perspective, and it's a safer way to protect the professional, put-together image you're trying to convey as an applicant.Continue Reading...
As you know, there are more than 60 colleges and universities in the Boston area, and few make as good a use of--and as great a contribution to--the city as BU does. BU occupies a narrow strip of land south of the Charles River and just west of downtown Boston, and its heart is Commonwealth Avenue--Comm Ave--where the Green Line T rattles by and shuttles people in and out of the city. BU is all about movement: there's the T, there's the river, there's Comm Ave, there's the risk of fly balls soaring over the walls at Fenway Park during a Red Sox game (the Citgo sign in the photo is a hallmark of Fenway Park). Even BU's most interesting student organizations seem to be about getting out and about in innovative ways: the school has a Quidditch Team, a People Watching Society, and a Medieval Reenactor Society. The BU life is a deeply urban lifestyle: students live and work in historic brownstone-style buildings; what might constitute a residential neighborhood elsewhere in Boston is a series of professors' offices, sorority and fraternity houses, and department headquarters in the streets of BU.
One thing that was a little weird was that the BU info session did have a lot of references to the "other Boston schools" and "the other schools you're looking at". This seemed unnecessary, because BU has a lot to distinguish itself without such comparisons. BU has always admitted both women and men of all races (a little dig at that Ivy-covered school across the river, perhaps?), and the university has long been a leader in the arts, humanities, and the sciences. The most pointed dig was about undergraduate education in the Boston area was the following: "Like other Boston schools, we have big-name professors. But here, you'll actually see them in class." Two of the biggest names here are historian Howard Zinn and Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel, and both teach undergraduates every year. BU is part of a consortium of local universities that allows students to take courses on other campuses; the admissions officer didn't mention the schools involved, but I know from experience that the schools central to this partnership are BU, Tufts, Harvard, and MIT. The admissions officer noted that "Other schools' students tend to take more advantage of this option than BU students do, simply because BU has so many resources on its own." I'm not sure about the truth in that remark, but BU really does have a lot going for it on its own campus: strong engineering programs, a conservatory-style fine arts program, exceptional communication programs, strong humanities programs, a great ed school, and close partnerships with the Longwood Medical Area just south of the campus, one of Boston's two medical centers. BU even has its own beach on the Charles River (see picture). In a lot of ways, BU felt like a big state university: it has tons of resources because of its size and status.
BU is very proud of one of its most famous alums: Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. The photo at left honors him on campus: it's a sculpture of fifty doves (representing the fifty US states) the form a single larger dove, and it represents the triumph of peace in the American civil rights movement. I think the centrality of this monument on campus speaks to what I like best about BU. This is a place that is all about the drive to get out and do things. With Boston on its doorstep, BU students run an NPR-afilliate radio station. They teach in local schools. They intern in law firms and non-profits. They volunteer in underserved communities. There are some schools out there that are more concerned with saving the world than saving their own neighborhood, and BU is emphatically not that school. BU students see themselves as citizens of Boston, not guests removed from its problems and challenges, and they do what they can to give back.
The cornerstone of the Northeastern experience is its signature "experiential learning" program, a required component of the undergraduate degree. The experiential learning component can be fulfilled through any one of four areas: cooperative education, student research, service learning, and global experience (AKA study abroad). Most students choose the cooperative education--or "co-op"--option, which involves spending entire semesters and summers working in industry. The co-op opportunities are remarkable: Northeastern has a long-standing partnership with NASA in addition to tons of connections to publishing, the financial industry, marketing firms, and non-profits here and abroad. Since experiential learning is a core requirement here, there are unlimited possibilities for how you can fulfill this requirement. I was really impressed by the anecdote my tour guide told me about a fellow student working on her second six-month co-op experience. She is a current junior working a six-month stint with a major marketing firm in Boston, and because of the on-the-job experience and classroom-based education she's received at Northeastern, she is a managerial position. As a college junior, two of the people who report directly to her are '08 graduates of Boston University. This program is really remarkable, and I highly encourage you to visit the experiential learning website here: 
Even though Dartmouth is small, it's a leader in engineering, medicine, and business. The Tuck School of Business and the Thayer School of Engineering are world-renowned, and the medical school is top-notch as well. One of the most exciting programs right now at Dartmouth is its emerging program in Linguistics and Cognitive Science that is becoming world-renowned. This program has close partnerships with Harvard and MIT and allows its students to do impressive independent research in these areas. At Dartmouth, programs like this are the rule rather than the exception: this is a place all about a highly personalized undergraduate education with the "intellectual character" of a university experience.
I think the most interesting insight our rep offered me was his profile of a successful Dartmouth applicant. Every Dartmouth applicant is assessed based on four points--two tangible points balanced by two intangible points. Each student's grades and test scores (tangible) are balanced by an assessment of their intellectual quality (intangible); each applicant's extracurricular achievements (tangible) are balanced by an assessment of their character (intangible). Dartmouth is one of few institutions that requires a peer recommendation. The admissions staff here is really invested in finding students who will be as bright and engaging in person as they are on paper. They want people who not only have the academic chops to perform well here; they also want people who will contribute to life on campus and who won't have peaked academically or socially in high school.
I once advised a student who was academically very strong and who was interested in a career in the arts. She initially looked at a lot of arts-specific schools but was surprised that some of the places she researched were less than academically rigorous. "I don't want to go somewhere where I won't read books," she said. "I'm a good student-- I want to go somewhere that cares about that."
When you step onto the RISD campus, the first thing you notice is the art. Public art is everywhere: you walk around and over and through artwork. When you enter a building, there are galleries to the left and right, and a constantly rotating collection of student and faculty artwork graces the walls of each campus building. When I walked up the long creaky stairway to the admissions office, I was struck by the sheer number of pieces of art I encountered along the way; I saw bronze sculptures, human figures, impressionistic oil paintings, and mixed-media canvases. The back wall of the office's reception area was especially striking: from floor to ceiling, there were about 60 insects constructed from gold wire. These, the receptionist explained, were created by students from their work in RISD's nature lab 
Speaking of resources, this place has some remarkable things on campus. There's an electronic jacquard loom on campus. RISD has the largest collection of wood block letters in US, and it has a printmaking shop that allows printmaking students to add to their digital printmaking expertise the experience of working closely with papermaking and old-school printing techniques. They have their own foundry. They have a 30-acre farm campus on Narragansett Bay. They have over 80,000 works of art in the on-campus art museum. They have the Fleet Library, one of the oldest art college libraries in the world. The faculty is about half professors and half working artists, giving students a foot in theory and a foot in practice. There are lots of opportunities for on-campus collaboration and participation in others' works; 
When I go to Boston, I often fly in through Providence's airport, a mere twenty minutes from my aunt and uncle's place south of Boston. It's smaller, less busy, and you can get there on Southwest, for you fans of Hobby Airport.
I had a brief but informative talk with the representative for Texas, who emphasized a lot of the same points I've mentioned about admission to highly selective schools: great grades are key, and the essays should be all about what, in particular, you're all about. As you might expect, she placed a special emphasis on the self-awareness aspect of the application. If your plan is to come here and choose your own adventure, the admissions office wants to make sure that such an adventure is really the right fit for you. They're obviously looking for bright, high-achieving students, but they're also looking for people who are willing to participate in their continuing adventure in collaborative education.
ograms that speak to this sense that no one here is limited to just one thing. True, the core of MIT is the celebration and exploration of math and science, but the university is committed to enriching those pursuits with strong programs in literature, history, foreign languages, and public policy. One of the strongest and most popular programs at MIT is the program in Science, Technology, and Society, an interdisciplinary area of study that combines cutting-edge lab research in technology with coursework that contextualizes that work. MIT students don't just study how their work will impact their discipline; they study why their work is important and what it means in the greater context of the history of science and the culture where their work will be used. There's an exciting attention to intention here--MIT students are known for following their why's as far as they possibly can.
MIT's undergraduate admissions office has long been a leader in how to do things right: their admission website has remarkable tips for every applicant, no matter where you apply, and I highly recommend that you check it out: 
I have seen few schools that so embody what a fine liberal arts education is supposed to be--that is, an opportunity to delve deeply into all subjects, from the experimental sciences to the fine arts. In fact, Middlebury students are highly successful applicants to medical schools and graduate programs in the sciences because of the rigor of their training. Middlebury recently built a new science facility so that the entire math, biology, chemistry, and physics faculties could share a collaborative space. This building project was not without controversy; the building is eight stories high, dwarfing most of the charming historic buildings on campus and in the adjacent town, and it is the largest public building in the state of Vermont. The building really represents the College's priorities: its goal is to foster collaborative, interdisciplinary education on the cutting edge of current research and technology. 
When I was at UT, one of my lines in the Plan II info session was that there are more professors in the UT English department than there are at some small colleges. Now I know that one of those small colleges is charming little Bennington: located in the beautiful Green Mountains of southern Vermont. 
The hallmark of a Bennington education is the Bennington Plan, the four-year process by which students construct their course of study on campus. My tour guide Emily described this process as an ongoing conversation between her and her adviser, who she was matched with at the beginning of her freshman year. This adviser helped Emily refine her initial interest in painting and creative writing into a program of study that focuses on sculpture and cultures of communication. As Emily described this process--a four year "conversation" that demanded tons of writing, self-examination, and hard work--she emphasized that the Bennington experience is not for the faint of heart. "We work really, really hard here," she said. "We're always being told to ask why, why, why." An education at Bennington may be one of the most thoughtful and intentional around: every student has to take on the responsibility to construct--and then justify--their own education choices and come out with a coherent final product that pulls it all together. It sounds like hard work--but it also sounds like a ton of fun. Strikingly, Sarah McAbee noted that though a majority of Bennington students continue on to graduate work (e.g. law school, medical school, etc.), most don't take that plunge right away. Instead, most Bennington alums will wait a year or two to apply, giving themselves the chance to make a thoughtful decision about what they want to study and exactly why they want to choose that path.
What impressed me most about Bennington was the level of personal attention you can get at a place like this. When I walked into the admissions office, my tour guide Emily and two other students were stuffing big envelopes with green and white baseball tee shirts--Bennington in script on the front, the number 13 on the back--to send to all students in the incoming class. As we walked around campus, Emily greeted every person we met by first name, and each smiled back. When I asked her to identify these people, it turned out they were the provost of the university, the university president, an English professor, a Biology professor, the head librarian, and a member of the admissions staff. I was bowled over by the arts facilities: a 120,000-square-foot facility including two black box theatres, studio spaces for all students, a sculpture workshop, drawing workshops, dance studios, and digital media labs fully equipped with computers and sound equipment. If you're interested in getting a serious undergraduate degree while working with some of the best fine arts facilities available, Bennington could be the place for you. 
Bennington is pretty isolated: it's a three-and-a-half hour drive from Boston, and it's a long way to the nearest airport. It's a peaceful, quiet place; tellingly, my tour guide apologized for how "crazy" it was on campus the day I visited as we walked by a lone groundskeeper on a riding mower. Again, this is a place you choose because of its location, not in spite of it, but Bennington does a lot to connect students to the world beyond its bucolic environs. Bennington has a close relationship with Williams College, just a short drive across the border in Massachusetts, and students from both institutions can take classes at the other. Each spring, Bennington students participate in the Field Work Term, a seven-week period during the winter when students go off-site to work as interns, study abroad, or volunteer. Many of the internships are abroad and more still are available in New York City; indeed, my tour guide has spent two summers working as an intern in Manhattan museums. You can read about the Field Work term 
