Semmes and Towers weekend 2018

bogeyorpar
Tue, 06 Mar 2018 07:44:29 +0000

I couldn’t find much info about Semmes and Towers process in previous posts, so I’d like to shed some light on them to help future applicants.

The Semmes interview was a surprise – five professors from different departments sit on a panel and drill one applicant for half an hour. The questions were technical – they do ask you about specific scientific knowledge. It’s quite intimidating. If you have never seen that panel format, it can throw you off balance.

The Towers, student chooses up to five classes, and Trinity pick one for the student to attend. Not sure how the assignment is made. My STEM son was assigned a history class. The professor said each professor pick one winner from his class. It makes sense, since there were about 20 different classes. After an hour of lecture, students were assigned two essays in 45 minutes. One is to answer a prompt, pretty much like the ACT essay (the pros and cons of something.) The other one is creative, create an art and say how it is related to the topic of the class. There’s not a lot of time. If you think the 45 minutes in ACT essay writing is ridiculous, then 45 minutes to write two essays are even more so. And I think humanities and arts students definitely have the upper hand here. (Not sure if humanities and arts students were assigned to science classes or not.)

The rest of the day was enjoyable – lunch and tours and faculty fair. We even got time to watch some baseball – MIT was in town and actually beat Trinity.