Editorial: Videos with college apps new way to broadcast character

Tufts University has been no stranger to eccentric essay questions for applicants. While it… Tufts University has been no stranger to eccentric essay questions for applicants. While it usually sticks to standard questions, one of this year’s optional essays featured the question, “Are we alone?” But in effort to get to know prospective students even better, Tufts now offers an even quirkier application supplement: a YouTube video.

The guidelines for the video are minimal. It’s to be 1 minute long and say something about the candidate, whether it highlights an interest or hobby or just shares some of the student’s thoughts with administrators.

At first, this seems more like some sort of odd project for a high school AV class than an earnest means of college application. But high school students, especially those applying to bigger schools, inevitably face feeling like little more than a number lost in the swarms of applicants that administrators must sift through each year. Tufts has an undergraduate student body of around 5,000 students — not huge by today’s standards, but hardly just a large high school.

Sure, this method of applying is — as of now — unorthodox, but it should serve as an appropriate means to do just what it intends: help candidates distinguish themselves from the sea of other students. Amid the range of submitted videos, the clips have featured everything from card tricks, to sports performances, to rap songs to one student showing off his underwater video camera, according to The New York Times. Day-in-the-life videos have also been popular. For particularly tech-savvy students, it’s a chance for them to highlight their multimedia skills. Yet as has been shown, students can demonstrate almost any skill that can be filmed.

It seems students are only limited to the confines of either their creativity or their ideas when it comes to making such videos. Some will be stumped for ideas while others will embrace the chance to appear — gasp! — unique to an admissions board that has looked at 15,000 applicants this year, 1,000 of which submitted videos.

Tufts stresses that the videos are optional, and that not having one can’t hurt a candidate’s chances. Similarly, submitting a vapid or otherwise disinteresting video won’t hurt candidates either. The school also says it still considers an applicant’s essays in full and doesn’t want to place any less stress on the importance of writing ability.

Tufts has found that candidates with possibly less money are still making videos. Two-thirds of the submitted videos came from those also applying for financial aid.

It’s impossible to project with real accuracy, but Tufts could be setting a new trend. In the visual, new-media age, the university is offering students a chance to use technology that’s becoming increasingly ubiquitous and even everyday. Video cameras and now YouTube aren’t really cutting-edge technology, so maybe it’s time to use these decidedly familiar tools in an unfamiliar way.