College admissions are getting more and more competitive by the year. No longer do high SAT scores, athletic achievements, good grades or winning personalities guarantee admission to prestigious universities. This year, the admissions office at Tufts is allowing applicants to submit one-minute videos that “says something about you.”
The New York Times today reports that “For their videos, some students sat in their bedroom and talked earnestly into the camera, while others made day-in-the-life montages, featuring buddies, burgers and lacrosse practice. A budding D.J. sent clips from one of his raves, with a suggestion that such parties might be welcome at Tufts.”
One applicant, Amelia Downs from North Carolina, has 6,000 views on YouTube for her video which combines “two of my favorite things: being a nerd and dancing,” in which she performs a bar graph, a scatter plot, a pie chart, and a sine and cosine graph.
The videos are optional but admissions officials at Tufts see it as a great way to get to know prospective students.




