YouTube, TheyDecide

3 of the top 12 All Time Most Viewed videos on YouTube are by Billy Ray's daughter. Come on, America!

For anyone who has seen the  rather epic battle of videos between Shoreline and Shorewood High Schools in Washington, it’s no surprise that this generation of high school students knows their way around technology pretty well.  (FWIW, my vote goes to Shorewood doing Hall and Oates’ “You Make My Dreams Come True.”  Shot entirely backward with even lips completed synced. See it to believe it.)  So, it was also no surprise when I recently came across this article about how Tufts has incorporated YouTube videos made by applicants directly into their decision-making.

I applaud any attempts to evaluate students on factors that don’t boil down to crude numbers like SAT scores.  At the same time,  I get nervous about this particular approach on account of two groups of kids out there.  First, there are many kids out there w/o the resources to do this.  And by resources, I don’t mean just computers and audio-video equipment.  I also mean TIME.  I watched more than a handful of these videos and several of them were flat-out terrific.  Props to those kids.  However, many of them also would have required dozens of hours of planning and production.  How many kids applying to an ultra-selective school like Tufts have that kind of time in fall of their senior year?  I certainly can’t think of too many from my own experience.  And while shooting just one might be a fun way to break up some of the drudgery of the process, I can’t imagine if a kid needed to do several of these, personalizing them for various schools.

And secondly, video does no favors to kids who aren’t quite as outgoing or confident. I recently read that Thomas Jefferson found public speaking so terrifying that he delivered his State of the Union speeches to Congress via a written letter.  Imagine him as a kid feeling the need to create a video to impress admissions officers.  And there are countless smart, creative and motivated kids out there who sometimes are just better on paper and there’s nothing wrong with that.  Some people just are the quiet types and it makes them no less compelling.

But overall, I liked this–especially b/c Tufts left it as purely optional.  Concerns aside, I hope creative options like this are considered by more schools. Maybe Zinch will eventually start getting used by some admissions offices in the decision-making process rather than to simply gather names for mailing lists.  Vassar’s “Your Space” is an even simpler solution.  As they say, “In the past, applicants have sent poetry, cartoons, art projects, photography, collages, short stories, videos, short films, and CDs.” Key is the fact that all are options that don’t require kids to produce entirely new pieces just for the admissions process; they can merely use things they’ve already produced in their high school years.  It’s also empowers kids more in the process by sharing their best of themselves.

I’d also like to see more overt encouragement for the kid who builds robots to send in a blueprint of his latest creation, or the kid who works at Starbucks to send in a rec from his boss.  Too many selective schools in their anxiety to read larger and larger application pools are heading in the other direction by limiting supplemental information.  That’s the exact wrong approach when trying to make better decisions.  They’re the schools who need more information, not less. As GPAs and SATs from more and more students push up toward finite limits (talking about grade inflation and test prep is a whole ‘nother post!), and even factors like course loads and teacher recommendations flatten out, it seems pretty obvious, the push should be toward reinventing the process in ways that allowed for more nuanced reads, not the opposite.