Tufts Blogs

You’ve pressed submit, congratulations! If you’re anything like I was when I applied, the process is nowhere near over yet. In case it hasn’t been clear from my earlier post on fun facts, I love knowing things. More importantly, I hate not knowing things. So for those of you who are like me, this is the blog for you, here is what’s happening to your college application!

First, we have to receive your application. Believe it or not this can be trickier than it sounds. The number of organizations we receive information from, Common Application, SAT, ACT, thousands of high schools and even more recommendation writers, means that it takes time for everything to get checked off on the Application Status Page. If we haven’t checked off that we’ve received your testing and you know you sent it to us yesterday, give us a few days to catch up. If we don’t have anything from you that we need to evaluate your application, you’ll get an email from us prompting you to send it along.

Next, we read it! In January, your application is likely in the process of being academically read . This is where we jot down your transcript, testing, extracurricular involvement, and family information. This process is fairly quick since we’re only documenting as opposed to evaluating, but it makes the next step much quicker. The next step revolves around reading your essays, recommendations, and optional interview reports. Most of our officers read by region so that the question “where are you today” is rarely about physical location but instead about what part of the world the reader is tackling that day. One day I may read all of our applicants from Eastern Oregon, while another day I may only be able to get through a single high school in suburban New Jersey. This step alone will takes us easily from mid-January to early March.

Once we finish all of the applicants for whom we are their regional reader, we branch out to other parts of the world. Every application at Tufts is read in its entirety twice with the second reader often being a random member of the admissions office.  The minute that we finish reading launches us into committee where we discuss and debate the membership of the Class of 2019, but that’s for another post.

I distinctly remember when I applied feeling like I had just run into a stop sign come January 1^st. You’ve spent all of this time writing and editing and finalizing your lists only to have all come to a crashing halt the second you pressed submit.  This is a good thing. You have done your part, and now it’s time for us to do ours.