papercuts

Children across America - or rather the parents of - spend over $135,000 in postage each year mailing letters to Santa with dreams of action figures, dolls, ponies and wiis. Young adults spend much more money this time of year mailing application materials to colleges and universities with aspirations of obtaining a quality education, earning an illustrious degree, and making the best memories of their lives that they won't be able to remember the next morning.

Highly skilled professionals in admission offices across the nation spend much of the holiday season opening envelopes, sorting documents, alphabetizing, and dreading interfiling. The process is laborious, it's long, and it best not be done before buying a fresh box of band aids. By the way, if you think papercuts are bad just wait til you get a file-folder-cut. Tears will be shed my friends; tears will be shed! But through all their work, applications will be completed, read, reviewed, discussed and debated, and more tears will be shed - many tears of joy and, sadly, many more tears of sorrow.

I'm one of those who does a little of the sorting and filing, but a lot of the reading, reviewing, discussing and debating. Applying to college can appear as an impersonal process: you click a "submit" button on an online application, turn in a school report form to your guidance office, and continuously check the the mail months later looking for a decision letter that may drastically affect (or effect?) the next 4 (or more) years of your life, and then are left to ponder how exactly that decision was made. Trust me when I say that the process is nothing but personal. The time and effort you put into your application means a lot. As someone who works in college admission, I'll share a little secret with you: the entire application review process can be broken down to 2 questions. 1) Are you a student who will be a good academic fit for the school? 2) Are you a young adult who will be a good fit for the campus? The essay you write, the activities you've participated in, who you are and where you come from - these qualities all help us answer questions #2. We strive to get to know you as best as possible from a stack of paper. We're well aware that the process can be heartbreaking for you, because it can be heartbreaking for us too. After all, we spend an obscene amount of time familiarizing ourselves with thousands of outstanding young adults each year, many of whom we'll never have the pleasure of meeting.

As the beginning of the new year approaches, I'll be spending most of my time reading applications to the College of William & Mary - since that is my job - and I cannot promise that I'll be able to keep up with this blog very well. But I promise to do my best and I encourage you to push me along the way. Please share comments with me and if you have a topic you'd like me to blog on, especially if it's admission-related, share that as well.