Reply to UMD EA Today?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "UMD EA Today?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m hearing from my DC that many of the high stats kids they know who were rejected gave one or two word answers for the MD “complete the sentences” when were allowed 250 characters for each. That would explain it in my mind. If you can’t be bothered to put in effort on the application, why should they take you. [/quote]

250 characters is very short. Probably about the length of what you wrote. [/quote]

Since UMD doesn't do interview - the 250 character responses are a way to get to see a kid beyond the EC's, the personal statements, the AP's etc. Not everything is academic - they want to find a balanced class of students. They realize the short response questions in August - but they stay generally the same over the last few years- slight modifications but you certainly can think about how you might answer. 250 is short - but that is also part of the challenge - what you say and how you say it with those boundaries can say a lot about a student. [/quote]

Yes.  And it says even more about a student when they use less than 20 characters to answer the questions. [/quote]

When the instruction is to "complete the following sentences" it is confusing to put a 250 word limit on each response. Is it best to craft a short, pithy, revealing completion to the sentence? Or is it to use 200 words (and multiple sentences) to springboard off the prompt?[/quote]
DP
I think it said 250 characters,  not words.[/quote]

Yes.  It is only a couple of sentences.  The questions are kind of dumb too. If they are rejecting high stats kids based on this they have their priorities wrong. I mean if you are accepting students with lower grades/scores/recs over students who didn’t write two great sentences that is ridiculous.  [/quote]

No worries. The kids are NOT judged on that unless they leave them blank. UMD just wants kids to answer, be creative, not over think too much.

Seriously. You guys are going own a rabbit hole! Relax.[/quote]

DP.  And you know this because....

Unless you are in admissions for umd, your opinion seems dubious.  If they took the time to craft the questions,  the natural inference is that they count for something.  Maybe not the level of some PPs' scrutiny,  but, I would think that minimal answers would not be a great look.[/quote]

Because my kid gave minimal answers and he got in, PP. He has excellent stats and wrote a great essay. THOSE matter. The short answers are just to weed out those who don't respond. All your kid needs to do it answer truthfully, and try not to sound too generic, hence the humor suggested upthread. But don't stress about it. It was the one fun thing about the UMD application, for my kid. No other college had little questions like this where he could be goofy.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics