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Should Award Recipient Send News Clip to Admissions Offices?

Written by Sally Rubenstone | Feb. 12, 2011

Question: If i got an award and was honored at town hall for it, is it okay to send a copy of the article to the admissions?

Congratulations on your award. There are no hard and fast rules that govern newspaper article submissions, but here are the guidelines that I suggest:

-DON’T submit the article if it doesn’t provide much additional information about you and your achievement beyond the fact that you received this award. (You can update the colleges on the honor without sending the actual news clip.)

-DO submit it if you feel that it tells admission officials something about you and/or what you’ve accomplished that might have a favorable impact on your admissions outcomes and is not already available elsewhere in your application.

-DON’T send the article if it isn’t exclusively about you or at least primarily about you.

-DO consider the selectivity of the schools to which you might send it and evaluate the impact of the article there. In other words, at the Ivies and other hyper-competitive places, only a unique or exceptional honor would stand out in a crowd. Admission folks are already beleaguered by student folders that can be as thick as War and Peace. ;) So use your best judgment when deciding what to add to the overload.

Remember, you can report your honor to admission offices without sending the supporting news coverage, too. So check out the recommendations above before deciding how to proceed.

(posted 2/12/2011)

Sally Rubenstone

Sally Rubenstone knows the competitive and often convoluted college admission process inside out: From the first time the topic of college comes up at the dinner table until the last duffel bag is unloaded on a dorm room floor. She is the co-author of Panicked Parents' Guide to College Admissions; The Transfer Student's Guide to Changing Colleges and The International Student's Guide to Going to College in America. Sally has appeared on NBC's Today program and has been quoted in countless publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Weekend, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, People and Seventeen. Sally has viewed the admissions world from many angles: As a Smith College admission counselor for 15 years, an independent college counselor serving students from a wide range of backgrounds and the author of College Confidential's "Ask the Dean" column. She also taught language arts, social studies, study skills and test preparation in 10 schools, including American international schools in London, Paris, Geneva, Athens and Tel Aviv. As senior advisor to College Confidential since 2002, Sally has helped hundreds of students and parents navigate the college admissions maze. In 2008, she co-founded College Karma, a private college consulting firm, with her College Confidential colleague Dave Berry, and she continues to serve as a College Confidential advisor. Sally and her husband, Chris Petrides, became first-time parents in 1997 at the ripe-old age of 45. So Sally was nearly an official senior citizen when her son Jack began the college selection process, and when she was finally able to practice what she had preached for more than three decades.