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YouTube college essays: The best Tufts application videos

To better evaluate young minds, Tufts application videos asks prospective college students for a one-minute YouTube tour of their lives.

YouTube

With these Tufts application videos, students aren't looking for their 30 seconds of fame. They want four years of top-notch education.

By Chris Gaylord

February 24, 2010

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a one-minute video must reveal more about prospective students than their 450-word admissions essays.

This year, Tufts University in Medford, Mass., has embraced the growing influence of YouTube and openly accepted application videos from students.

"Share a one-minute video that says something about you, upload it to YouTube or another easily accessible website, and give us the URL," reads Tufts' official admissions criteria. "What you do or say is totally up to you."

The university stresses that these supplemental videos are optional. While an HD-quality Flip camera only costs $199, Tufts does not expect its students to have the craft or charisma to stitch together a dynamite YouTube video. But the university does want to see your creative side – whether it's through one of six potential essays, a similarly open-ended project to "use an 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper to create something," or the YouTube route.

About 1,000 of Tufts' 15,000 applicants sent in videos this year. None have attracted the pop-culture following of T-shirt War or A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything, but at least one has now pulled in 55,000 viewers. Here are five of the Monitor's favorites.