I’ve met students (or more often, their parents) who wanted to send extra materials along with their applications, like copies of press clippings, certificates, CDs of original piano compositions, art projects, etc. I once worked with a student whose mother wanted to send a copy of the poem he wrote for her when he was in third grade. I swear I am not making that up.
Please heed the advice posted on University of Virginia’s admissions blog today regarding these unsolicited additions to your applications.
“It would be a lot of fun to be able to consider extra little packages, but with 28,000 potential applications, we can’t encourage submission of supplements that aren’t for the art or architecture departments. Our staff is spending most of the day processing required documents. Sending all this nifty stuff slows the processing down. Which delays files from being ready to read. Which delays our reading. Which delays notification. There are places on the application to tell us about honors and accomplishments. You don’t need to spend extra money sending
all this stuff in special packages.”
If they don’t ask for it, don’t send it. For parents fighting that urge to send, here’s a past post on where to channel that energy.