Behind the Curtain

I have now been on the other side of the student/faculty divide for about four months. I am continually amazed at how unorganized higher education can be. At least in the circles I swim in, organizational tasks are the last thing anyone wants to do – time is better spent with students, reading, or writing. I certainly didn’t become a professor to ruminate over bureaucratic minutia, and nobody else did either. This does breed some surprising ways of doing things. Or perhaps shocking is a better word.

When I was applying to graduate schools, for example, I obsessed over my “statement of purpose.” This is a document that explains an applicant's future plans and research interests. I had this picture of graduate student selection committees poring over every word of my statement, ready to reject me at the slightest hint of naivety. I wrote it and rewrote it, taking hours of my time (and Ellie’s time, too). In the first meeting where the graduate admissions were discussed here at OSU, however, I was interested to find out that hardly anyone had even glanced at the application materials, let alone studied them with any care. I certainly hadn’t. The process simply consisted of a quick check of the “numbers” and a quick skimming of the statement of purpose, if even that. And all this was done by only a few members of the committee. (The letters of recommendation seem to be joke that no one really takes seriously -- they all seem to say the same thing). These applications, which many applicants had obsessed over for hours, were given only 30 seconds consideration. And remember these can be life changing decisions!