hi I’m Imogen I’m married and it’s two freshmen we know exactly what you’re going through right now we know you guys been working really hard on your application. we thought we would take you inside the admissions office follow us. this is where we’re going to have you guys meet some admissions officers and hopefully get some tips on your applications Meghan Trevor who graduated in 2010 and Eddie are all assistant directors of admissions the we for a wide variety of countries and states emily is an associate director of admissions who works with engineering applications along with dan who is also an associate director of admissions who graduated in 2006 and works with international applications justin is an admissions counselor with the website along with Meredith graduated from Tufts in 2011 and this editor of jumbo magazine this is a long process for everybody involved I know when I was in high school I was very worried about where the application was going in particular like whether somebody was actually physically touching it whether it’s on the screen the entire time how many people read it what physically happens to it after I press submit. we wanted to ask the admissions office to give you a little bit insight into that to hopefully persuade some of this fierce I’m a lot of us read from home and. we’ll sit at home in my desk in my pajama pants and my hoodie sweatshirt which are awesome and pull up your file online a lot of summarizing of everything we see everything in your essays and sometimes how we feel about them but in the context of how we feel about them being a part of Tufts every few files when you get one that you’re like this was like I am going to go to committee and I’m going to fight like tooth and nail for this kid because I love them and that sort of makes it all really worth it. I know when I was writing my application I’m sure you agree um it was really easy to kind of obsess over what the app of the breeders were actually looking for in our applications and kind of thinking how do I come off in this application. we really wanted to ask them just what are they looking for what is your goal when reading my main goal is to unpack the story that’s inside that’s the goal is implicit admit absolutely that’s the goal and which is like a weird and very counterintuitive thing to talk about because the emigrated toughs is one that a five now it we’re denying fortify which is four times as many kids as where it been and. that I think is really counterintuitive for a lot of our applicants to hear that like my goal when I’m opening up I mean I read Baltimore and I read Bangkok and like if I’m opening up an applicant from either of those places the goal is the same build the best possible case I can to admit a student who are you and. being reflective about your life about your experiences about what you’re doing I always tell students is not the what you’re doing but the how and why you’re doing them because I can clearly see what you’re doing but how and why I can’t see that I can’t jump into your mind. when I put down your application I want to feel like I just stepped out of your life um is okay here’s what’s. awesome about the student yeah this is great like here’s four different sides of this person oh my I have a good grasp of what’s happening um the students don’t do. well the students who think there’s something we want to read there’s nothing we want to read I just want to know who you are is this the kind of kid that’s really excited about ideas right to be able to take a stand and express something because I mean I think that’s what part of what makes a community like this dynamic and interesting to be a part of is that you’re surrounded by people that are pushing you just a little bit to think about things differently we’re not asking for answers that are like the campus is pretty the tour was awesome and the academics are hard we want you to be specific and that can be anything from you know Tufts makes me smile to specifically mention classes and professors we just want to know that you’ve done your homework and then the other essays are meant to draw you out a little bit you can’t create new knowledge by saying well how do I not make a mistake and. the group of students you’re looking to enroll in to bring to a place like this that can further than academic mission are the kind of students who are capable of making mistakes and at the same time capable of not making mistakes right and but if you it looked to admit the kid instead of looking to deny a kid you end up with the students that will expand the sphere instead of the students that will turn in their homework and get A’s without ever actually forcing their professors to consider their ideas. you don’t just want perfect grade a get cigarettes you want someone who’s a figure who will challenge ideas yeah I mean you know the kids in your high school who got the best grades some of them were probably the ones that you would be the most excited to sit in a class with and some of them were also probably horrific ly boring people does the word count matter. the word count the worker only matters if I notice that you’ve really gone over you know I never ever ever count but if we say you know write a 250 word supplement and I’m reading five paragraph that’s obviously that 250 words and. it’s more of a guiding the guiding principle but not like a here’s the law do the admissions offices actually check Facebook when reading applications do you check facebook after reading thousands of applications in the season from people all over the world with different backgrounds we wanted to know whether they actually learn anything from what they’re reading I have learned that pogo-sticking is a sport it’s just doing sounds like an extreme sport books that students will reference or talk about movies that I don’t necessarily know and I can get what I need to know about them from the essay. it’s not as if I need to go find them immediately but um there are often times where it’s like that’s where my summer book list comes from is things that students have talked about learn. many words one like synesthesia the last year I had maybe 10 students who talked about um seeing things as colors and the numbers colors or words as colors I was like that’s really different oh that’s interesting and no idea what a 4-h club was until about three hours ago when I googled it even a year out of high school I know there’s. much advice I would still give myself and do give a lot of my senior friends but we wanted to Aussie emission services if they’d have any advice they want to give themselves this is an incredibly personal process and you’ll see that even their answers differ I would have given myself. much advice to be empowered to think of the things I was doing we’re cool because it seems like when you’re not doing the most unique thing you’ve ever heard of it seems less important but I think that couldn’t be farther from the truth what makes it interesting is what you do what you pair it with and the attitude you take to it. they are interesting and what’s interesting about is what you bring to it as opposed to how it defines is my colleague justin has a really good piece of advice he always says I love your list and he told me that after I started working here and all of a sudden it was like click like of course I knew that anywhere I got him from safety school to a reach school and anywhere in between would be somewhere I’d be happy and that made all the difference. that’s sort of like when I get asked about advice if that’s the best human-to-human advice I can give. we hope that that gave you guys some things to think about while you’re writing applications good luck with everything and we really hope to see you next 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