MIT’s Dr. Dawn Wendell: When Makers Apply to College from Maker Faire on FORA.tv
When you ask most people about what’s important in an college application, many will tell you grades. The underlying belief is that colleges look at you as a number, and that as long as you have high GPA and SAT/ACT scores, you have a very good chance of getting accepted. Dr. Dawn Wendell, the Director of Admissions at MIT, says otherwise.
In a seminar at the Makers Faire in New York, Wendell emphasized while grades are important (as they want to make sure you’re going to do well), colleges are more interested in you as an individual. Colleges want to see that you have a passion for what you’re learning and, more specifically, whether you love to make things. They want to know who you are and what makes you unique. She then goes on to say that since colleges only have 15 minutes to look at an application, so you need to keep your answers short and focused and to avoid repeating yourself.
Now this can be applied to anyone, not just engineers and people with technical know-how’s. If you love art, then draw something. If music is your forte, then compose something. Colleges like to see what you do in your free time. For instance, I spend much of my free time writing stories and working on this blog. These are things that you can add to your portfolio, so not only with it help you with admissions, but it can help you get a job as well.
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