Make Personal Contact with Admissions Directors

In a recent post entitled "College Admissions Directors are People Too" admissions counselor Mark Truman makes the point that you should try to interact with admissions directors at high priority colleges as a way to enhance your chances. "And because of that desire (to see applicants succeed), reaching out to them is an extremely successful way to improve your application."

This rings true with what I've heard as we've toured various campuses. The admissions director at UVA spoke of how when it comes down to a close decision between two candidates she is the person who will be pitching you before the admissions committee. Obviously the more she knows you, about you and your strong interest in her school, the more effective she'll be arguing your case. I know I've heard from other admissions directors that they keep track of how many times candidates have contacted or interacted with the admissions office as a demonstraton of thier level of interest. Of course, don't over do it. Admissions directors are very busy people, especially starting in a month or so when they start reading all those applications. So don't stalk them and don't contact them for trivial reasons. If you're a pest this strategy could backfire. Instead, think of creative ways to establish personal contact so that they can put a voice with a name with an application.

In this vein, Greg plans to find and call 'his' admissions director at Duke to arrange a conversation with someone in the Computer Science department. When we visited there the engineering tour was largely devoid of information about Computer Science. So Greg has a real desire to learn more. By reaching out to his admissions director he can gather this information, demonstrate interest and can meet her/him in the process.