MIT Admission Blog & Student Comments

As I continue to catch up on my admissions blogs this post from MIT demonstrates another benefit of following them.

It announces that MIT's online application is now live for freshmen, describes the steps to register and outlines the upcoming deadlines. By itself this would be very helpful for someone interested in applying to MIT. This information can probably be found on the MIT admissions web site, but it's here too, and it's concisely organized.

More interesting are the 146 comments to this post, largely from 'pre-frosh' -- high school students that are interested in applying to MIT. The MIT admissions blog is the most successful I've seen at building up an engaged 'community'. Many of these comments are trivial and unhelpful, but a subset enhance the original post. The blog also draws comments and answers to questions from current students. This conversation between the admissions department, pre-frosh and existing students add another resource to help better understand MIT, the school and its admissions process.

So, as you're reading admissions blogs for schools you're interested in, don't forget to look at the comments too.

While on the topic of this year's on-line applications, the UVA admissions blog announced the availability of the 2008/2009 Common Application and the UVA supplement a couple of weeks ago. If your Senior wants to get ahead, now's a good time to start filling out and applications for schools you know you're interested in (and/or the Common Application).