A high school senior speaks to the camera in a fake British accent and describes his passions for video games and philosophy. Another displays her drawings and paintings. Another shows off original dance moves representing pie charts and scatter plots.
These are all YouTube videos, and they all exist because of Tufts University. Starting this year, each Tufts applicant has the option of including a link to a one-minute video that, according to the instructions on the admissions application, "says something about you."
In Tufts' supplement to the Common Application, on top of two mandatory essays, the video presentation is one of several possibilities for an optional submission. (The other possibilities are essay questions.) Out of around 15,000 applicants this year, 1,000 have chosen to send in videos.
When I first learned about Tufts' new policy, one of my concerns was that this new option would disproportionately benefit applicants who could afford fancy video cameras and editing software.
Apparently, though, around two-thirds of the applicants who chose to submit a video are also applying for financial aid. The Tufts Daily reported last year that 55 percent of students admitted to the class of 2013 qualified for financial aid. Therefore, it seems like less-well-off students are not disproportionately shying away from the video option.
Furthermore, when interviewed for a Feb. 21 Boston Globe article, the dean of undergraduate admissions at Tufts, Lee Coffin, insisted that the committee would not evaluate videos based on their production value.
Rather, the admissions officers would be looking for applicants to show the "spark" they would "bring to the class." Coffin explains that he values videos that "feature an appealing narrative or clever conceit that introduces us, more deeply, to an individual student."
Even if the videos do not disadvantage less-privileged students, the new option is still flawed. The school may be looking too deeply at a questionable source.
While it's valuable for colleges to look beyond grade point averages and standardized test scores, it's clear that they already do so. Schools can put that data in context by understanding students' general background and high school information. They can use extracurricular activities to find out applicants' interests and how avidly they pursue them. If colleges want more insight into a student's personal qualities and character, they can examine recommendation letters and conduct interviews with applicants.
Admissions essays can demonstrate students' skills in critical thinking and self-expression. While a YouTube video is a valid form of self-presentation, it is less substantive than an essay. Students can use the YouTube submissions to practice packaging themselves into virtual sound-bites. That is an important skill for a political campaign, but it is less suited to academic success.
The medium is limiting, but it is also too revealing. In a Feb. 22 New York Times article about the new Tufts policy, Coffin said he is excited that this aspect of the admissions process will be "completely transparent," even though he admits, "it didn't occur to me that these videos would be so public, and so followed." One of the video submissions that I mentioned at the beginning has attracted over 100,000 views on YouTube.
Admissions decisions are frequently frustrating because we can only guess at schools' reasoning, but the process does not need this kind of transparency. I went to a small, private high school in which it felt like everyone knew (and thought he or she had a right to know) everyone else's college-related business. I would never want to exacerbate that tension by posting my essays or extracurricular activities (with my full name next to them) on the Web for everyone to see.
Now that anyone with an Internet connection can view these videos, it will only increase stress. When applicants can see exactly how well their peers are doing, it increases the pressure on them to succeed. That stress already leads privileged students' families to pay small fortunes to private admissions counselors.
If more schools start accepting video submissions, a new industry of professional YouTube consultants will arise. These consultants can become experts in creating videos that will appear to be uniquely personal, no matter how many thousands of dollars were spent on them or how many dozens of staffers worked on the production. Admissions officers will have a harder time identifying an applicant's "spark" when it could be the product of a professional image consultant.
Adding a new video component to applications ultimately puts additional pressure on already-crazed students and parents, especially when the whole world can and will judge their creations, and it does not add substantively to the content of an application.
Tufts should end this practice when they start taking applications for the class of 2015, and other colleges should think twice before they implement it.
William Tomasko '13 is an undecided concentrator from Washington, D.C. He can be reached at william_tomasko [at] brown.edu.
