For many colleges and universities, admissions office space seems almost an afterthought. Too often, the office entrances are difficult to find and once found, the admissions area is hardly one of the highlights of the college tour. I’ve seen admissions officers attempt to prevent parents and students from seeing their offices by arranging meetings in open spaces on campus, or at a library or student center.

Your admissions area is your first impression, and as the old saying goes, you only have one opportunity to make a good first impression.

Let me address this question from my perspective as a student and a recent college-admissions-office-visitor. First and foremost, the admissions office is not the first impression someone has of a school when visiting. Not precisely, at least. Parents don't blindfold their kids, drive them in erratic randomized patterns, and then lead them up to the admissions office only to then 'unveil' the first impression of the entire school. There is the journey to the admissions office first, and even that little step can have a significant impact. How so?

Although I knew that there were realistic constraints for space, sometimes the positioning of an admissions office alone would seem to send a message to me. Take, for example, the University of Pennsylvania admissions office: it is very convenient and easy to find because of how central it is to campus (1 College Hall, ground floor). To get there we walked through especially nice portions of the campus and a vibrant part of Philadelphia; that was the first impression of the school. My memories of the admissions office itself are not especially great because my preoccupation at the time was coping with the 105+ degree heat wave.

The real distinction between admissions offices first and foremost is SERVICE. Yes, it was a painful heat wave at Penn and that wasn't their fault. The day before, though, the temperatures were almost as bad and I had visited both Yale and Wesleyan with my family. The biggest difference, where tour and admissions office experience was concerned (schools aside)? Wesleyan offered free bottles of water. It was also, hands down, the nicest, most accommodating, and most convincing of anywhere I visited, but that's another story. The water was part of that. I know it's not in the budgets for Penn and Yale to offer water to all the people who come and visit--they had rather bigger crowds--but those are some of the differences that we take away from tours. The little details that count.

Wesleyan-Yale isn't a very fair comparison, as I've said. So let me use another situation with slightly more even odds: Harvard vs. MIT.

I visited MIT on March 14th, 2006--it was the first school I visited. I remember the date because it was Pi Day! Anyway, I visited MIT with my friend Greta and we got slightly lost in the infinite corridor and on campus looking around for the admissions office because MIT buildings are all designated by numbers are we weren't paying that much attention since it was our spring break. Something like that. We found the office in the end and it was a messy place inhospitable to visitors--we were sent elsewhere for our tour and info talk. It felt like the reception / office ratio was off. All the same, we had a good time at MIT (read the visit report).

Compare with Harvard: we wandered over to Radcliffe yard and found the admissions office after some searching, but given Harvard's visitor volume what happened next was unfortunate. We were sent from a messy office environment to what looked like a semi-dilapidated basement auditorium where we were told about how selective Harvard was before being sent out on the worst college tour in my complete touring experience.

There were many similarities in presentation and aesthetic experience, but when I ask Greta or think myself about the MIT visit we don't think about how the office was messy. We just think about how exciting the UROP program sounded and how friendly everyone was. The aesthetic details only come into play over at Harvard when we start trying to look for something to redeem the experience.

Are aesthetics important? Sure. But they're not the most important part of the experience or 'first impression,' at least not in my mind, and it's important to remember that. I didn't see any places that were installing gold leaf in the admissions offices while cutting back on staff, but I just thought I'd share my thoughts on this all the same.

For the record, Johns Hopkins gave out free water bottles a few days later when it was equally hot.

My unasked question?

"How do students deal with the confluence of preprofessionals--engineering, nursing, Wharton--and plain 'ol liberal arts undergraduates?"

When I was at UPenn, I was blown away by the zeal which the school seemed to have for interdisciplinary work, so I was really enticed. After talking to Ms. Dolan, I realized that there could be some stratification or at least unpleasantries in being surrounded by people heading all off in specific directions, rather than going towards the broader-based education I would be looking to have. Obviously I would still have a perfectly great education--that's not the issue. It's always an issue of people, and in this case, whether I would want to surround myself with so many preprofessionals.

There were some very encouraging words about public transportation in West Philadelphia--buses, trains and such. I had wanted to ask how the new big extension Penn is working on would affect me if I were to apply and matriculate.

I'm still interested in the very selective, very rigorous, very neat Huntsman, Jerome Fisher dual degree programs; I also heard for the first time about the Vagelos program which is Life Sciences + Management but one degree. You choose to have either a Wharton stamp or College stamp depending on where you focus more of your time. That sounded pretty neat and I know my Dad would love for me to do that... it did sound intriguing.

The talk of tech transfer was interesting in light of recent studies (or at least Chronicle articles) suggesting it might not be all that great for most schools.

Hello everyone! I'm new to College Confidential, so I'd just like to introduce myself. I live in California and I'm currently a junior in one of the top private schools in the nation. Here are my stats.

SAT I: 1580
SAT II: 780/800/770
GPA: 4.67
Rank: 1/432

ECs: Concertmistress of two youth symphonies, Varsity cheer (captain), Varsity basketball (captain), Varsity softball (co-captain), featured in the prestigious "Who's Who in American High School Students," recipient of Principal's Award for Best Math Student, Best Science Student and Best English Student, recipient of school's AllStar Athlete award, AIME qualifier, editor of my school newspaper, editor of my school yearbook, ASB Class President (3 years), tutor (voted "top tutor" by peers).

I am also president of the following clubs at my school: Amnesty International, Speech and Debate (Recipient of the prestigious Lincoln Award), Young Republicans and Helping Hands. I also volunteer at the soup kitchen, library and hospital.

I'm currently looking into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, Penn, and my safety, Cornell. What do y'all think? Thanks in advance!!!

Full thread here. Some decent trollage.
yes I know it's not quite real but it's still TOP SHELF SATIRE.