Speaking of things I look forward to reading, I read a lot of e-mails. A lot lot. Like, thousands a week. Which is great! I love hearing from you students with your questions, your interest in Tulane and your follow up e-mails. However, there are five kinds of e-mails I do not particularly enjoy getting. I thought it would be a great service to you, the applicant, and to me, the admission officers (and admission staff nationwide) to give you all a few tips on e-mails that you should not send, or at least be very wary on sending. So here is a list of 5 e-mails to not send to your admission officer. Hope this helps you all as you enter the application process. Selfishly, I know it will help me!
1) Take the time to communicate effectively with your admission counselor. I know it seems like a no brainier, but "i" is a lot different from "I". When e-mailing with your admission counselor, take the time to write thoughtful, error-free messages. I suggest sitting down at a computer to do these. Don't treat these like text messages. Also, here's a tip: always start your e-mail with an admission staff member with "Dear Mr. or Ms. so-n-so." Then, see how they reply. I'll reply with "Sincerely, Jeff" and that's your hint that it's cool to address me as Jeff. Always take the lead from the admission rep for how formally they want to be addressed. I like to keep it casual, others may be more formal.
2) This hasn't been as much of a problem in recent years, but please do create a professional e-mail address to communicate with colleges. Where this comes more into play is your social media presence. Be careful with your Tweets, Snaps and Instas. I honestly don't check them (we don't have the time to!) but if at some point, maybe I want to quickly refresh my memory as to what you look like (was she that student I met a few months ago in LA?) and if I search you and you come up in bikini with a Bud Light, well that doesn't look so good to admission staff. Remember, all it takes someone else pressing two buttons and a screenshot is sent to me of you doing something dumb. This happens every single year. It's pretty simple- be a good person on social media (and in life, too.) Just be smart, compassionate and good to each other. Think that this would never happen to you? I bet those Harvard students from last year thought the same thing.
3) I really do love replying to your e-mails. I mean it. But it gets hard when we get very vague or broad questions that become difficult to type out responses to. For questions that are not really easy to find out by reading our website, there's nothing wrong with picking up the phone and giving us a call to chat. Or logging on line and chatting live with our students, which we have every day! You can attend a regional reception, attend a high school visit if we are at your school, or visit campus. You should definitely have these kinds of questions, but since we do get such a high volume of e-mails, don't feel the need to e-mail an admission rep just for the sake of e-mailing us. We don't count the number of times you e-mail us; don't feel like you should feel pressured to reach out with a question unless you genuinely have one.
4) Oh man. Okay, great questions. Really! But again, see above on this one. For the most part, you can get the answer to every single one of these questions on our website. We want you to ask us questions, but we also expect that you do your own research as well. There is so much information out there on Tulane, and on school sites in general- use it! When you list out 24 questions on an e-mail to me, it just is not the best use of our time.
5) I get an e-mail like this every single week, without fail. Don't cut and paste! We can tell! Especially when just the name and school are different. Take the time to send individual e-mails to each school, even if they say the same thing. We want to know you have taken the time to contact us personally with your questions, especially if you are expressing your interest in our school.
All of the e-mails above are recreations of e-mails we get every week. So don't worry, all of the above are fabricated e-mails I made. But they represent real e-mail situations that happen all the time. I want to make sure you put your best foot forward when you apply, and I also want to make the very hectic and very busy lives of college admission staff members a little bit easier. I'm never one to only look on the negative side and tell you what not to do, so here are my tips for great questions to ask!
Hope this helps. E-mail me if you have any questions about it! (Seriously!)
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