<p>Happy News from Tufts! Many of us from Admissions spent New Years celebrating Isabel Casariego’s wedding, which was super awesome and took place on New Years Eve! If you live in Africa, California (Orange County, Riverside, San Bernadino, Sacramento and places north), Central/South America, Guam, Nevada, New Jersey (Hunterdon, Middlesex and Somerset Counties), New Mexico, or Texas (Austin, Corpus Christi, El Paso, San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley), then congratulations! Your admissions rep has a new name: Isabel Casariego Bober. </p>
<p>Many of us returned to the office after a great New Years Holiday to find some gifts. 28 gigantic buckets of gifts. Each gift contained an application, or a teacher recommendation, or a transcript, or something else. Today alone, we had 28 buckets of mail delivered to us. Tomorrow, we’ll have again that many, and last week we had that much on Thursday and Friday, too. It’s terrifying and exciting all at once. Also, yours truly has spent the last three work days with the rest of Bendetson Hall opening mail as a family in one big room. Fellowship abound!</p>
<p>What this means for you: if your stuff is arriving by mail within a week or today (either forward or backwards in time), it may take a bit of time to find its way into your folder. Be patient, be understanding. We have a lot of stuff to sort through.</p>
<p>I hope you are enjoying or will enjoy my gift! I spent quite a bit of time putting it together, but don’t worry, my essays will surely keep your attention! </p>
<p>Considering this mass influx of mail, if the TAMS website has not registered the supplement I submitted a few days ago (12/29 to be precise), does this mean I should not be worried? </p>
<p>I am so glad you post on this website, Dan!</p>
<p>Most correct, Anna Molly! No need to be concerned. To help contextualize why TAMS won’t instantaneously reflecting if we’ve received your parcels, imagine what a stack of 15 thousand envelopes all containing transcripts looks like. Then imagine what a stack of 30 thousand envelopes all containing recommendations looks like. Now think of time it takes to open all those envelopes and remove their contents - and that just opening the envelopes! Then we have to sort those stacks, put everything in the right folder, and only then do we enter that we have your stuff in TAMS. Since most of that mail comes all at once, that process takes time, and you’ll need to wait a little before you can trust what TAMS says. </p>
<p>That crunch ends up affecting online submissions, too. As you can imagine, we receive a huge number of online submissions at the same time as well, and it takes time to download them from their server into our system. TAMS doesn’t update until we’ve downloaded your supplement. Depending on where you are in the queue, that can take a couple of days.</p>
<p>I checked today and TAMS has received my supplement/payment! Woo hoo! What a relief!</p>
<p>What is worse: a student’s anticipation for a letter (particularly a letter that begins with, “Congratulations!”) over a period of time that seems endless, or the office of admissions’ lengthy yet time-restricted decision-making process about which students are worthy or unworthy of their institution? </p>
<p>I guess neither of them are great, but I hope you enjoy at least some of the process as I wait on the receiving end! =)</p>
<p>I’m really, really, really interested in Tufts, and I started looking around CollegeConfidential to answer the many questions I’ve got about the whole admissions shebang. I found out that the optional essay is purely optional. Although the prompts were very interesting, I had a difficult time narrowing down which prompt I wanted, what to write about, what idea to use, etc. I started writing two of the prompts but scrapped them both. I guess you could say I came down with a stubborn case of writer’s block. =]</p>
<p>I was wondering then, even though it’s past the deadline, whether or not I could I still send in a supplemental essay considering that I did not send an optional. It’s on a topic that I wrote for the Commonapp but decided not to use—and I think it gives a different perspective of me, and it certainly brings out my more creative side! (And it’s also not a long read by any means)</p>
<p>I was also wondering…how much does Tufts weigh SAT scores? A person with a 1340 ish math-and-verbal SAT score, but with a disadvantaged background—low income, first generation, rural area (though not minority, but Asian, rather)… how would you view this SAT score? Does being “Asian” and having “lackluster” SAT scores mean terrible, ominous things? Haha, that’s certainly the impression that reading this forum gives me, and it’s slightly nerve-wracking, truth be told!</p>
<p>Sorry, I know this is a lot at once, but I just can’t help but to wonder! </p>
<p>But really, thanks for any answers, Dan—and good luck with the process!</p>
<p>Dan, I sent in my Common App and Supplement together (snail mail)… but only the supplement appears checked on TAMS. I should not worry just yet, right?</p>
<p>To Ragged: I am doing well. Thank you very much for asking! You can send in supplemental anything, but that doesn’t always mean you should. It’s important to be extremely deliberate with what you send in. If you believe that what you have represents a significant addition to my understanding of who you are, and that I can read it quickly, then send it in. </p>
<p>But you must be DELIBERATE and take the time to weight both those considerations carefully. On the list of supplemental materials usually misses those goals: issues of the school paper, a 4th teacher recommendation, your 40 page research report. A supplemental has the potential to be useful, it all depends on what you send. </p>
<p>As to your second major question - though my answer will spark some discussion, I’ve decided to answer in a new thread to give the larger community on the Tufts forums a better chance to understand.</p>
<p>Here’s the answer to your question about being of Asian decent with ‘lackluster’ scores:</p>
<p>There is no way I would do this job if it meant excluding people based on ethnicity. Being Asian does not somehow make your SAT scores worse. I’ve read what others on the boards have written on this, and - to be frank - they are fools who have no idea of what they speak. None. More fundamental still is the misunderstanding in the way many people use the term '“Asian” on the larger CC boards. Most people of Asian decent know that there are some big differences between various Asian cultures. The are meaningful differences between Thai and Cambodian identities, for instance, and they border one another. Map [url=<a href=“Updates (Maps / Infographics) | ReliefWeb”>Updates (Maps / Infographics) | ReliefWeb]here[/url</a>], if you need it. We are aware of these distinctions, and aware of how (generally speaking) these distinctions impact the circumstances of recent immigrants.</p>
<p>My question is twofold. I applied ED2 (yay!) but all of the deadlines I can find seem to be geared towards regular decision applicants. For example, under my TAAP contact info, it says that I should contact my regional alumni chairperson if I haven’t been called/emailed within 4 weeks… but at that point, I’m assuming most/all ED decisions will have been made?</p>
<p>Similarly, by what point should I begin to get concerned if not all of those pretty little boxes on TAMS are checked off? I submitted the supplement and application fee at the same time (12/28), but Tufts still doesn’t recognize my having paid the app. fee. Is there some point by which I should… do something about it?</p>
<p>Thanks for answering all of our questions – it’s amazingly helpful and reassuring! I hope you’re having boatloads of fun reading applications…</p>
<p>Dan, would a really eye-opening peer evaluation be acceptable?</p>
<p>I am having the worst time possible writing the optional essay, and I feel that the peer rec would add a lot more perspective than anything I could write. However, it is 1200 words.</p>
<p>Hi Hikari - I described how you can self evaluate the prudence of sending in supplemental materials above. </p>
<p>DarthEvil - 1200 words is long. Really long. I’m going to send you to the same post (in this thread) on supplemental materials. Though I’m going to highlight that I can’t really read a 1200 word rec quickly, nor is 1200 words usually necessary (though I suppose there are exceptions). </p>
<p>Triggy - EDII (yay!). With regards to your application fee… you’re probably ok, but before you do anything else, send an e-mail to <a href=“mailto:admissions@tufts.edu”>admissions@tufts.edu</a> to double check. With regards to the interview, 4 weeks is a long time to wait to hear back. Give it until Jan 15th (or so, that isn’t a hard date), and follow up then if you are still concerned. </p>
<p>Thank you, Dan. I suppose it didn’t really hurt my application if I didn’t submit an optional essay if it wouldn’t have added anything anyway, right?</p>
<p>Thank you so much, Dan! I actually got a call from an alumni today, so that worked out well… just wanted to make sure I wasn’t losing an opportunity to show you guys how much I like Tufts!</p>
Good luck</p>