I am FINALLY done with the initial processing of this year's pool of intern applicants - HOORAY. Well, that is, I was, before I sent out notifications to all of the interns who were missing pieces of their application. Now I am receiving all of those pieces and I have to search out their packets and get these items processed and added in, so that I can then deliver the whole shebang to to the selection committee. So, if any intern applicants are reading this, you can thank the 35+% of you that didn't have complete packages for the hold up. And yes, you read that right - more than 35% of the applicants had one or more required components missing from their application packages. Tsk tsk. Though in a majority of cases, the missing item was a first semester report card, which is a typical mistake. Many schools don't include mid-year grades on official transcripts, and many students don't realize this. However, that is why we put "including first semester of junior year" in bold underline on the transcript part of the application checklist.
If I were really strict, I would just throw out the incomplete applications - heck, doing so would pare down the pool nicely and leave us with total numbers that would be less overwhelming and more consistent with past years; and besides, it is the student's responsibility to make sure their application is complete, and you could consider this the first hurdle to being eligible. However, since I can't be totally certain where the breakdown happened (whether the student didn't ask for those grades, or whether whoever submitted their transcript left it out) I give the applicants the benefit of the doubt and give them another chance to get their grades in. If they aren't in by this Friday, well, then it's too bad for them.
I can see legitimate arguments either way on this, but fairness is a really difficult thing to pin down in this situation. In the end, not knowing 100% whether it's truly the student's fault or not, I would feel bad preventing their application from going to the selection committee. So, ultimately I think I'm doing the right thing. Unfortunately it holds up the whole process, and it creates a lot more work for me (sending out 34 personalized e-mails, and subsequently receiving 34 replies, as well as >30 report cards and recommendations, plus faxed and mailed duplicates of many of them, plus more worried phone calls from parents, plus follow up phone calls to confirm receipt.... is not helping my overall productivity). So once again, just when I thought I had my head above water, a new wave of materials comes crashing in and I'm buried under applications again...
So instead of just complaining, what am I going to do about it? Well, this summer I will definitely be devoting some of my resources to developing an electronic application system. It should make collection, tracking, and notifying significantly easier, and it should allow applicants to better keep track of their application packages. That makes it all sound lovely and easy and straightforward, but I bet it's going to be a lot more complicated than I think and we will probably have some issues to have to remedy when we try to employ it. Oh well, it's a process, and at least we'll finally be bringing our applications into the 21st century.
Anyways, once everything is finally and completely processed and on to the selection committee, I'll post my annual "by the numbers" data on this year's pool of applicants. Stay tuned!
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