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Currently viewing the tag: "Application"
This year, the Fletcher admissions process will include a revised testing policy for MALD and MA applicants. While the new policy is sure to make a few people unhappy (and we have held off on making the change for just that reason), it actually affects a fairly small subset of our applicant pool. So here it is.
Starting with the October 15 deadline for applications for January admission, all applicants to the MALD and MA programs, whether they’re from the U.S. or another country, will need to submit results of the GRE or GMAT exam. Non-native English speakers, unless their university education was in English, will also need to submit results of an English language assessment exam (TOEFL, IELTS, or PTE). This has been the policy of the PhD and MIB programs for many years, so we’re bringing the MALD and MA expectations in line with these other programs.
You may be wondering why we have decided on this change. Often, the Admissions Committee finds itself in a complete muddle over an applicant who submits a transcript with minimal grades, or with strangely cryptic course names, or with an overall grade of 46 that recommenders tell us is a good result. We don’t expect the GRE or GMAT results to clarify everything for us, but we think they’ll help in a good number of cases. Finally, professors on the Admissions Committee have asked us to change the policy for several years.
The irony is that we require test scores from applicants who have graduated from the universities we know the best. If we ask for scores from a student with a 4.0 average in international relations at Tufts, why wouldn’t we also want that piece of information from someone who studied at a university we don’t know well in another country? As it happens, many of the applicants in the affected group tend to submit scores anyway, and even when they don’t send test results to Fletcher, they’re sending scores to our peers that require them. That is, they’ve taken the test and simply need to direct the score reports to Fletcher. So the policy change is significant, but the ultimate impact will be less so.
Here’s why we didn’t make the change earlier: We know that GREs and GMATs are expensive. But the cost is minimal compared with the expense of studying in the U.S. for two years. We know that, in some countries, the exams are not offered as often as they are in the U.S. Well…this will be a challenge, but we expect our applicants to plan carefully.
So, in the end, we decided that the values of fairness and clarity win out over the inconvenience that we know a small group will experience. Fortunately, I expect that the new policy will be a subject of conversation for only one year. After this, anyone doing careful homework on the admissions process will have at least twelve months’ notice and can plan accordingly.
I’ll close with the answer to one question that will surely come up. Yes — we will adjust our expectations, particularly on the verbal and analytical sections, for the non-native speakers. We’re already accustomed to making that mental adjustment, and now we’ll simply be doing it more frequently. If you have other questions about the change, please feel free to ask them as a comment to the blog, or email the office.
We’ve been offering feedback to our applicants for quite a few years now, and we’ve moved from an informal call-me-and-I’ll-see-what-I-can-figure-out arrangement to more of a system. And as the system has developed, so has the expectation on the part of the Admissions Committee that someone intending to apply a second time should ask what went wrong the first time. If you weren’t admitted this year and you hope to reapply (and if you haven’t, in frustration, given up on the blog), I want to encourage you to ask us for feedback on your application.
Here are the rules. After May 1, send us a feedback request by email with this information:
♦The semester/year for which you originally applied (for example, September 2011);
♦Any specific questions you have about your application or the process;
♦Your plans for the coming year;
♦The term for which you intend to reapply.
One of us will review your application. We’ll read through everything in the file, but much of what we write will reflect the comments of the reviewers, not our own opinions. We only offer opinions if we think there’s a key point that the reviewers didn’t note.
Regardless of when you intend to reapply, I encourage you to request feedback this year. We received some requests last December for January applications. Unless the problem with an applicant’s first application was in the personal statement, what exactly can he do to improve his profile in only one month? So contact us this spring, and you’ll have some ideas to work with until you reapply. Until then, I’m sorry you didn’t receive admission this year, but experience tells us that many applicants will be successful in a future round. I hope we’ll see another application from you in the future.
Blog readers may be wondering how the application processing is going. And the answer is FANTASTIC! I’ve already noted that having Kartik, Lauren, and Caitlin in the office during the break was a gift, and we were in unbelievably good shape when the paper started to attack. Since Tuesday, we’ve been closing the office in the morning to minimize disruptions, and we’ve all alternated application processing with the other stuff for which we’re responsible.
At this point, broadly speaking, applications can be found in several different places:
1. Stuck in “the system” waiting for recommendations to be submitted.
2. On a table, waiting to be put in a file folder.
3. In a folder, waiting to be paired with transcripts and other materials we have already received by mail.
4. In a box, waiting for transcripts (or whatever) to arrive by mail.
5. In a different box, waiting for a student to read them.
6. In yet another box, waiting for a member of the Admissions Staff to read them.
7. On someone’s desk, waiting for final Committee discussion or processing.
We start reviewing applications as soon as they’re complete. The student members of the Committee on Admissions are all back in town now, and they have reading targets to meet. After they do their work, the Admissions staff can get started on serious reading — no more grabbing the occasional handful.
There are a few hundred files that we just formed today, and we’ll be updating each applicant’s information in the Graduate Application Management System. Until that batch was printed, we were up-to-date on all the updating. In other words, applicants whose materials have all arrived will be seeing reassuring information in a timely way on the Graduate Application Management System. Applicants whose recommendations or transcripts (or whatever) are lagging behind the application should continue to be patient.
Lots of snow all around, but we’re more-or-less back in business. Even without having missed a day of work yesterday, we are SOOOOO LUCKY this week to have our super student interns, Caitlin, Kartik, and Lauren, sacrificing their vacation time to help us out. They’ve been keeping the mail mountains to molehills, updating applications in the online system, and generally serving as the barricade separating us from nuttiness. But, with the application deadline coming on Saturday, we’re getting ready for chaos (of the controlled variety, we hope) next week.
Meanwhile, it seems that, for some applicants, completing the application is the easy part. The real stress comes during the post-submit information void — that stretch of time between hitting the submit button and learning that the application is complete. (It’s worth noting that the chaos and the duration of the void are intricately linked.) To try to ease some concerns, here is the blog’s annual rundown of what’s happening after you submit the application. Note that many of these steps are (thanks to the wonders of technology and human effort) taking place simultaneously:
1. You hit the online “submit” button. Your application will be “stamped” with the date and time, and will wait within the Embark system for your registered online recommenders to submit their letters. If all your recommenders have already submitted their letters, or if you haven’t registered any online recommenders, the application will be ready for us immediately, and we’ll upload it into our internal program.
2. When your application (with online recommendations) is uploaded, you’ll receive an automatically generated email stating that we have received your application, and that you should wait ten business days before contacting the Admissions Office about any missing materials. The email also provides you with a username and password to access the Tufts Graduate Application Management System (GAMS). GAMS is the best way to track your application throughout the process. We’ll also be posting decision letters to your GAMS account, so hang on to your username and password!
3. Uploaded applications are printed in batches. Once we have the paper copy, we’ll create a file folder for you. (A big moment in the life of your application!)
4. Meanwhile, Admissions Office staffers will risk paper cuts and worse while they open an endless stream of envelopes holding test scores, transcripts, letters of recommendation from recommenders who weren’t registered online, etc. We sort and file the mail. If the application hasn’t yet been uploaded, the paper materials will “wait” for it to emerge from the system.
5. Once we have your application in a file folder, we dig out the mail that has already been received for you and include it. Then we update your record in the admissions system to show what materials have come in by mail. You should track your application through GAMS, but we’ll also email you if there’s a document missing. Emailing a member of the Admissions staff will, at this point in the process, give you only the information you can access yourself through GAMS.
6. Your completed application is then given to Committee members to review, and you’ll receive your admission decision in late March.
The bottom line: Pressing submit is the easy part for you, and receiving online materials is the easy part for us. The challenge is that most applicants will submit their applications within 48 hours of the deadline, and it will take us a couple of weeks of mad scrambling to clear the instant backlog and create a thousand-plus application files.
Be sure to stay on top of the status of your application, but try to give us a little time to pull everything together. By early February (only two weeks away, though we know it can feel like forever), everyone who has submitted all the materials needed for an application should find accurate and reassuring information on GAMS.
A good proportion of the callers and emailers we’ll hear from this week will be asking some variation of the question, “What will happen if my recommendation/test score/transcript arrives after January 15?” Ideally, all the bits and pieces of your application, including those that someone else needs to send on your behalf, will be here before January 15. But life is often less than ideal, and we’re used to that.
If you haven’t already submitted your application (note that there’s still time to adopt the Personal Deadline approach), just be sure that you submit all the components of the online application by January 15. (That is: the form, the essays, the scholarship application, and anything you need to upload, such as your résumé.) For the other materials, while we prefer that they also arrive by January 15, you can take advantage of a grace period until February 1.
I want to be sure that, in the process of answering one question, I don’t create ten others. What I’m saying is that if (for example) you took the GREs on January 10, and scores won’t arrive for another two weeks, you don’t need to worry — we’ll still consider your application to have arrived by the January 15 deadline, so long as you have submitted your part on time. Please don’t assume that I’m saying that everyone is free to submit all materials by February 1 just because it’s more relaxing.
The obvious reality is that we can’t process, let alone review, 1800 applications on the day they arrive. Pulling everything together takes time. So we’ll review applications in order, as they become complete, with the expectation that all materials will arrive by February 1.
And here’s one more answer to a question we’ll be hearing: January 15 means that the online application should be time-stamped January 15 by 11:59 p.m. U.S. Eastern Standard Time. But do yourself a favor, don’t wait until that almost-midnight hour.
We’re well aware that no one wishes to be in that winter middle ground of having an Early Notification application deferred for review in the spring. Nonetheless, you needn’t feel helpless. Instead, you should take the opportunity to update us. Since November, when you submitted your application, have you: completed a class (or classes); retaken a standardized exam; started a new job or internship; had your writing published; received an honor of any kind; or generally experienced a change in your profile that we should know about? Then please tell us. Send us your official transcript or test score reports, or mail a description of your new job or any of those other changes. We’ll add the new information to your application file, and it will be there for readers to see when your application is re-reviewed in the coming months.
Excuse my nosiness, but I’m wondering why you haven’t submitted your application yet.
Is it because you only recently decided to apply, and you’re still putting everything together? In that case, take your time — you have until January 15 at 11:59 p.m.
Is it because you’re waiting for some hidden voice to tell you that the time has come to hit “submit”? In that case, let me be the hidden voice: SUBMIT NOW!
Are you somewhere between the two? Then I want to suggest that you assign yourself a Personal Deadline before January 15, when (if past patterns hold) a thousand of your prospective future classmates will all finally decide to let their applications come through. We’re prepared for the paper. And for the constant hum of the printer (more of a “mmmmmswosh, mmmmmswosh”) as each page is printed and shoots out. And for the bags and bags of mail. Yes, we’re geared up and ready for the January 15 crush, so I’m not suggesting the Personal Deadline for our benefit. No, dear applicant, it’s for you.
Why? Well…first, because teeny little troubles turn into mega-hassles when you wait until the last minute. A half hour without internet access on January 3 is no big deal. A half hour without internet access on January 15 is reason to PANIC!
Also, if you submit your application on January 15, it will take a week to ten days before you can confidently check the Graduate Application Management System and expect to find useful information. Those 1,000 applications and all the transcripts, test scores, etc. that go with them need to be linked up, and that just takes time. Organization, and time. Organization, and time, and file folders.
If you adopt the Personal Deadline approach and submit your application on, say, January 5, we’ll have all your materials in a tidy folder within a couple of days. We make every effort to keep up with the paper flow, and we’re going to jump on the opportunity to put your file together.
So, please. Open up your calendar, be it electronic or paper. Turn to a convenient pre-January 15 page, and assign yourself a Personal Deadline. While your prospective future classmates FREAK OUT on the 15th, you can sip a frothy cappuccino and relax.
Maybe you have a few days off this week and you’re going to dedicate some time to completing your grad school applications. Here’s a little input on what you should keep in mind as you put those final flourishes on your application to Fletcher.
• The form: Answer (completely and thoroughly) the questions we ask. Please don’t refer us to your essay or résumé for information that belongs (in our opinion) in the form. If you have lived in too many countries, or speak too many languages, to fit all the information in the form, then list the most important information and include the rest in your résumé. Make sure that your abbreviations are easily understood. Shortening University to Univ, in the interest of space, will be clear to application readers. Abbreviating the name of your workplace to XLVPR will not.
• The essays: Again, follow the directions. Make sure you have answered the questions. Keep to the word limits — we’re not going to count them, but we’ll know if you give us 1200 words instead of 800. Editing is a life-skill.
• Your résumé: No matter how many pages of activities and awards an applicant submits, it’s rare that anyone needs more than three pages to share information that is relevant to the admissions process. Think it through carefully — if you overload us with information, we may not be able to pick out the truly important stuff.
• General: Do provide the materials/information we request, but don’t provide materials/information we don’t request. No high school transcripts or diplomas. No videos. Please.
Most important of all: Please remember that if you go by more than one name, tell us clearly! Don’t make us try to figure it out, because the result may be that your application appears incomplete, when everything is actually in the Office, distributed among different files.
Those are the big points that come to mind right now. Take a look through the Admissions Tips category for other ideas that I haven’t included here.
Applications to the PhD program are, without a doubt, the most complex each year — both for the applicants, and for the Admissions Office and PhD Committee on Admissions. In addition to the usual stuff (form, essays, transcripts, etc.), PhD applicants need to submit a dissertation proposal and master’s thesis or extended writing sample.
Because so much material needs to be compiled, we’ve adjusted the application deadline twice in recent years. First we went from January 15 to January 1. This year, we moved it up again — to December 20. Having the extra time to collect and review all necessary materials helps assure us that we’re giving every application the consideration it deserves.
