WHAT NOT TO DO WHEN APPLYING TO COLLEGE U.S. News and World Report magazine, September 2011 For the class of 2016, colleges and universities across the nation expect to see a record number of applications. Most students do a good job of putting their academic records in the best possible light, but there are always some who make basic mistakes that drive admissions counselors crazy and (if applicants only knew) doom their chances of being accepted. U.S. News talked to admissions officers around the country and asked them to share some of the common missteps by students during the application process. Robert McCullough Director of undergraduate admission, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Being rude to staff members: One of the things that I like to see are those little gestures that families, students, or parents send along the way: a thank-you card after they come for a visit, or expressing that they had a great day here. But I've seen it go really far to the other extreme. One of the cornerstones in the admissions office is the frontline support staff who have been in their roles for 20, 30, or more years. You can imagine all the things that they've seen. They are people who love this work, and they love the students. A few years ago, a student really just kind of laid into one of these staff members on the phone. He was so vitriolic—using foul language. What ended up happening was that we withdrew the application because that was just an outpouring of disrespect. Having unrealistic expectations: There's kind of this expectation among some students and parents that they will get something—whether that's a scholarship or a decision going their way that isn't necessarily in line with that student's credentials. We admitted a student from the wait list who was very enthusiastic, very excited to be here. But then a day or so later, the response was disappointment that she didn't get a scholarship from us after being admitted from the wait list. And it wasn't an issue of financing her education, because she had a nice need-based financial aid package. It was that she was not given this "honor" of being awarded a scholarship, which I thought was kind of bizarre for a student admitted off the wait list. Thomas Barry Assistant director of admission, Colorado College, Colorado Springs Feigning enthusiasm to score points: Sometimes, frankly, students talk about the thing that they think is supposed to be important rather than what is really important to them. There's a student that I interviewed like five years ago. We talked for probably the first 10 minutes about this Ecuador trip that she made, and it was a very lackluster interview to that point. She wasn't excited; she was saying what she thought she was supposed to say, and then we got onto surfing, and the eyes light up, and you're like, "Oh, you actually are a passionate person; you're just not passionate about going to Ecuador." And that was big. If we hadn't gotten to that point, she wouldn't have been accepted. You don't want people who are unenthused about everything because presumably they're going to be unenthused once they
get to your campus, too. But once you see that the light can turn on, then it makes a big difference. Robert Blust Dean of admissions and enrollment planning, Marquette University, Milwaukee Allowing your parent to apply for you: Parents are really inserting themselves much too much in this process. While parents can be helpful and should certainly be there to be support for the students, the students are the ones that are going to college. One story that illustrates how this has gone off-kilter is I talked to a mom who was pretty upset because her son had not been accepted to Marquette. When undergraduate students or freshmen apply for admission, they apply to one of our seven undergraduate colleges. So they must indicate that they're applying not only to Marquette but to a specific college. The mom was upset because she said, "I'm sure that my son did not apply to this college," and I pulled up his application and, sure enough, he had applied to that college. So I'm having a conversation with her, and she's getting more and more frustrated and saying, "No, no, I know that's not the case!" And, at one point in the conversation, she just blurted out, "Well, I know that's not the case because I filled out his application." And there was just this awkward silence on the phone. We ended the conversation at that point, but I guess it was illustrative about how this is not the way things should be.