Viewbook...Spaceship...William & Mary!

Ace! NewsFlash 

When the College of William & Mary admission staff decided to redesign the brochure it mails to prospective students, they wanted something different. Something eye-catching, memorable. Something high- schoolers wouldn’t throw away.

”We wanted people to open the mailbox and say, ‘Viewbook... viewbook... viewbook... spaceship!’” said Dean of Admission Henry R. Broaddus.

(Photos by Jenna Johnson (The Washington Post))Their final product: The Ampersandbox, a thin cardboard box filled with 15 heavy-weight cards. On the front of the cards, the school plays off its signature conjunction with bold two-word statements (like “Down & Dirty” or “Ebb & Flow”) on top of a photo. The back of the cards feature meaty information like lists of student clubs, study abroad options, research opportunities and academic majors. (There’s also an Ampersandbox online, where users can shift through the university’s collection of word pairs and create their own.)

As I talk with college admissions officials, I keep hearing about their attempts to move away from “three and tree” — brochures that prominently feature a photo of three diverse students studying under a tree on a gorgeous sunny day. The universal thinking seems to be that today’s college-bound teens want something that stands out in the mailbox, that speaks to them without using marketing-speak and that points them to an interactive online feature.

Many of the viewbooks that land in my mailbox look more like a coffee table book or magazine than a brochure. With their funky photos, edgy design, unusual color palates and one-word headlines, these viewbooks look like something you might find on a bookshelf at Urban Outfitters.

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, just published comic-book-style brochures and a Web site that features students dressed as superheroes. American University, which branded itself as being a home to “wonks,” hands out artsy seven-by-seven-inch square books. Flipping through the viewbook for Loyola University Maryland is like reading a well-designed teen magazine that plots dry statistics and facts on colorful graphics.

In William and Mary’s deck of cards, the language is casual, inside-ish and a little nerdy. For example, a card labeled “Home & Away” features a photo from move-in day and reads, in part: “At some point during your second week at William & Mary, you’re going to be at the IHOP with some hall-mates... and you’re going to say it. ‘Let’s go home.’ You won’t be referring to your parents’ split-level ranch in Bethesda. You’ll be talking about Barrett, where you and a stranger from Idaho (now your second-best friend) share 345 square feet of barely contained chaos.”

“The voice on those cards is very strong. It’s authentic,” Broaddus said. As staffers edited some of the cards, they wondered, “Is it too inside? I don’t think so. I think we pulled that off.”

The most talked-about card in the pack (at least in our office) is labeled “Naked & Friendly” and features a photo of the school’s mascot, The Griffin, who appears to be giggling. The Griffin was once criticized by W&M alum Jon Stewart on the Daily Show for not wearing any pants. While some schools might be offended by such a slam, William and Mary promises students that at August move-in they will be “greeted by a pants-less Griffin.”

“Jon Stewart, being an alum. We can’t claim that often enough,” Broaddus said.

Posted at 02:25 PM ET, 02/27/2012, wp.com


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Video Essays Gain Acceptance for College Admissions

Ace! NewsFlash


To complete a half-dozen college applications, Morgan Malone lined up letters of recommendation, penned essays and - for George Mason University - carried around a video camera for several days.
The result was a nearly two-minute video essay that opens with Malone introducing herself from atop the sign outside Mountain View High School in Stafford County. There are clips of her walking the school's hallways, participating in a quiz bowl and volunteering. At the end, her assistant principal jumps on a desk and shouts, "I approve this message."
"Instead of having an application and words in an essay, they get to see me," said Malone, 17. "Hopefully, when they are watching the video, they will get a picture of what I am like. The way I talk in the video is the same way I talk every day."
This is the second year that GMU has formally given students the option to submit a video about themselves before the Jan. 15 application deadline.

Videos have been a small part of the admissions process for years, especially for students applying to arts programs. But as cameras and editing software get cheaper and easier to use, the videos have become more technically sophisticated and feature clips spliced from a number of scenes, voice-overs, music and simple special effects.
And increasingly, it's not just arts students participating - prospective English majors and engineers are using their cellphones, webcams and point-and-shoots to make their cases for admission.
A few colleges are hoping to harness that love for video and have created channels for students to submit video essays, although most schools do not accept them in place of a written one. Typically, applicants post their videos on YouTube and send colleges a link, although some send schools a DVD.
This is the second year that Tufts University in Massachusetts has given applicants the option of submitting a video along with the required written essays. St. Mary's College of Maryland has long accepted all sorts of artistic expression, and this year officials encouraged students to submit an "audition tape" instead of an essay.
In most cases, the videos do not make or break a student's chance of getting into a college. Last year, GMU received about 100 videos, and there were less than a handful of cases in which the video factored into the process and helped a student get in, said Andrew Flagel, GMU's dean of admissions.
"Some of them are awful, and some of them are phenomenal," he said. Awful, a few admissions officers said, means boring or having extremely poor sound quality or a script that was obviously written by a parent. Last year, one of the admissions office's favorite videos featured a student sitting in front of a camera talking about why he wanted to attend GMU - except for when he spliced in clips of himself playing a variety of musical instruments and even demonstrating his unicycle-riding skills. Although the antics were amusing, the staff was most focused on what the student said.
GMU used to conduct face-to-face interviews with many of the few thousand students who applied each year. But as the number of applications multiplied - this year it's expected to reach nearly 20,000 for a class of 2,600 - the college had to phase out the program. Flagel hopes the videos will help his office put faces with names.
But the increasing popularity of video essays worries some admissions officials, including Henry Broaddus, dean of admission at William and Mary. College applications are "absolutely confidential records," and allowing students to post part of an application on an outside site such as You Tube "punches a peek hole" into the process and allows the general public to judge a 17-year-old applicant, he said.
This year at GMU, the admissions office has posted dozens of videos on a university Web site. (The video is removed if a student is rejected.)
In one, a student travels around campus and the District with posters listing the alphabet of reasons why she wants to attend GMU - such as Q for quidditch, a club that "can translate my love of books into a sport." Another student filmed an episode of "GMUpardy" that featured contestants representing all of his activities and questions about campus. And an applicant from Colorado danced to a song she wrote that includes this line: "G-M-U, G-M-U is a place where I want to be. It's the greatest university."
David Dorsey took his viewers behind the scenes of his New Jersey high school's morning announcements, which he reads with another student "every single morning." It's one of the many tasks he performs as student council president.
He said the video gives admission officials a better idea of who he is.
"I'm applying to seven schools, and I feel like I've written the same essay seven times," said Dorsey, 18, who plans to study history and political science. "I thought this was a way to be different. I think my personality - well, anyone's personality - is better expressed on video."
Years ago, St. Mary's College received a long, unedited underwater video from a student who wanted to study marine biology. The admissions staff waited in suspense as they watched minute after minute of murky water until finally a blurry fish scooted by.
Video quality has increased substantially since then, and this year, one student video spoofed an Old Spice commercial and included an outtakes reel.
Although the staff would be impressed by a student with a perfect GPA and SAT score, "essays make a student memorable," said Richard Edgar, director of admissions at St. Mary's.
In addition, producing a video can be a lot more work than writing an essay; students have to develop a script and film and edit their productions. Flagel said he encourages students to use technology they already have and to have fun.
"This is just a piece of the process," he said. "This is not worth dropping your grade in physics."
WP 3 Jan 2011

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Surviving the college search with family intact

Ace! NewsFlash

I once interviewed Alyson Barker, a former student at Annandale High School in Fairfax County, about her attempt to use the college admission process to drive her relationship with her parents into a ditch.

Barker’s parents wanted her to attend the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, a fine state school with lower tuition for Virginia residents. Barker told them, with a 17-year-old’s irritating certitude, that instead she would attend a small, expensive private school in Ohio.

Because so many area families are starting their college searches, I am going to write a few columns on the hidden pitfalls of the process. I started last week warning against overlooking the quality of campus extracurricular activities. That was important but, I realize now, not the right place to begin.

Picking a college is like juggling plastic explosives. The generation gap between parent and child is large. Other family issues intrude. Popular culture insists it is the most important decision parents and children will make together. But students often do not share the parental sense of urgency. Much can go wrong.

When my wife and I began this perilous enterprise with our first child, we wondered why so many parents at his fine high school were spending thousands of dollars on private consultants. “We want our family to come out of this intact, and this way I know I can count on someone else yelling at my son when he hasn’t finished his applications,” one mother explained to my wife.

That is a sensible goal, but not many of us can afford her method. After a couple of decades reporting on and living this subject, I have found that creative thinking and careful phrasing by us tuition payers can win the day for sanity and peace at the dinner table.

Take Barker, for instance. Her parents pretended to accept her decision to spend their retirement fund in the Buckeye State. But after she announced her choice, they mentioned that if she wanted to study abroad, as they knew she did, perhaps an in-state school might work a little better. They would have more money to finance her dreams of an overseas adventure.

It was an offhand, unthreatening remark. Barker thought about it and eventually agreed to go to William and Mary, with five months in Australia her junior year.
“I just wanted to be rebellious and not do what my parents wanted,” she said. “So perhaps they were manipulative, but whatever works, right?”

Right. There are ways to move even the most stubborn teenagers to where they see no alternative but cooperation on this college stuff.

One parent said she broke the tension-filled application-writing process into manageable chunks. She negotiated a schedule: Work on the easy parts one night, do an essay another night and discuss whom to get for recommendations a third night.
Another parent, whose daughter refused to trim her list of 18 schools, wrote each college’s name on an index card, shuffled the deck and put them in front of her, two at a time.

“If there was a gun to your head right now and you had to decide,” she asked her daughter, “which of these two schools ..... would you rather go to?” That helped narrow the list.

In the end, the smartest parents know their child’s choice might not be their favorite, but a change is possible if the first one doesn’t work out. Lots of people start at one college and finish at another, including John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama and me.

Jay Mathews is the author of "Harvard Schmarvard: Getting Beyond the Ivy League to the College that is Best for You."

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

Griffin for Tribe @ William & Mary

Ace! NewsFlash

Meet William & Mary's mascot

The nation's second-oldest college chose a mascot Tuesday. Meet the William & Mary Griffin.

The mascot search netted 800 submissions, winnowed to five finalists in December: a griffin, a king and queen, a phoenix, a pug and a wren. The charge was to select a mascot that would unify the campus -- preferably not in opposition. And look good on T-shirts.

The history of William & Mary's mascot is predictably checkered, considering that we are talking here about a college whose athletic identity is the Tribe.

Wikipedia informs us that the college's previous mascot was a green and gold frog called Colonel Ebirt, which is Tribe spelled backwards, although students evidently thought it lame, and not particularly frog-like, and dubbed it the "amorphous green blob." The frog was euthanized in 2005.

The school's previous practice, through the 1980s, was to have two students dress in buckskins, one as "Pocohontas," the other as "tribe guy."

(Wikipedia does not trace the mascot all the way to the school's 1693 founding.)

All of which is to say that the school was in dire need of a new mascot.

The college provided some talking points on its new brand:

William & Mary's Griffin is a mythical creature with the body of a lion and the head of an eagle. The coat of arms of King William and Queen Mary was adorned with lions, and the lion's body of our mascot evokes our historic royal founding and early history. The eagle's head of the Griffin suggests the national symbol of the United States and represents the presidents, leaders, and productive citizens whom William & Mary has trained for centuries.

The College of William & Mary in Virginia is one of only two U.S. colleges or universities granted a coat of arms by the College of Heralds in London. Our mascot, the Griffin, is often depicted in British heraldry.

The Griffin aptly symbolizes our Tribe athletes. The lion's strength and the eagle's vision suggest the union of strength with intelligence that characterizes more than 500 Tribe athletes, who compete on 23 Division I teams, while simultaneously thriving in a rigorous academic program that has no place to hide.

Throughout history, the Griffin has been known as a guardian of treasure. Our mascot, the Griffin, stands watch over The College of William & Mary -- the alma mater of a nation, cherished by generations of her sons and daughters.

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***

College of William & Mary's Class of 2009 on BBC World News

Ace! NewsFlash

College of William & Mary's Class of 2009 featured in BBC World News report!
Watch it here http://tr.im/mo6N

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, IELTS etc ***