College Admission Applications Dos and Donts For Students
When college applications approach their deadline and decisions are about to made it would be in a students best interest to head some professional advice. Do not try to impress your favorite college by bombarding them with tons of emails and phone calls inquiring about status of your application. You will look desperate. Overnight FedEx inquiries to the admissions office will only serve to alienate them, they call this “tactic” stalking and react very negatively to it. It will not make up for so-so academic record or mediocre test score.
Do not post anything on social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace that may reflect negatively on you. Colleges check these sites routinely. Save those photos of the motel party on prom night for the scrapbook. If I find objectionable material on a potential client, I ask they remove it immediately. If they do not remove it I will not work with them.
Do not try to act overly cute or clever during the college alumni interview. Jokes and hyperbole are dangerous admixtures in n interview. You run the risk of being seen as a lightweight or worse–as offensive an obnoxious. Belive me, this happens more often than it is written about.
Students should try to impress interviewers with intelligent conversation and a few pointed questions. Ask them what they majored in college and how it has helped them in their profession. These are examples of good questions. But a smart-alecky political jibe or cynical joke about their chances of getting admitted because of their race or gender could cause irreparable damage. These comments are seen as signs of immaturity and are socially unacceptable.
Do not load up your application with as many activities you can think of. Listing gym to improve your six-pack abs will make you look dense, alright–but in the wrong place. college want to see activities to which you have applied energy and passion. They don’t want to see a lot of fill and fluff.
On the other hand, be honest if you have made a mistake somewhere along your high school career. Suppressing embarrassing or disturbing information can get you rejected even after you are admitted. If you got caught plagiarizing a term paper, live up to it. Write about it. I f you don’t tell the truth about a serious infraction and it comes out later, they may revoke your acceptance letter. It happens more than is often talked about. Do not bore the admission committee. One unstated benefit of having so many essays to write is that it gives colleges the opportunity to weed out the insufferable bores. Take each essay seriously. Use it as an opportunity to write about some facet of your personality that you feel makes you an interesting person.
Do not leave your cell phone on during the alumni interview. Nothing is more insulting to the interviewer then having a students phone go of in the middle of an important question. I’ve had this happen when I was an alumni interviewer. It irritated me that a student was ignorant or neglectful of the fact that I was taking my valuable time to interview them. The least they can do is have “turn of the phone” at the top of the prep list.
Do not let you “helicopter” parents get overly involved in the application process. A famous story goes around that dean of Admissions at Harvard, when he inspected the little box of an application that certifies everything the applicant has written is truth, found that the student’s mother signed it.
Dont fail to proofread your application. The best evidence of genuine interest in a college is to send an application that has been checked for errors, including spelling, and has all the requested material in good order and on time. Copy-editing and proffreading are indispensable.
