Editor’s note: This commentary is by Dede Cummings, of Brattleboro, who is a poet and publisher and the founder and publisher of Green Writers Press.
[T]here is no doubt that getting into top colleges in this country is highly competitive.
One of the first things I say to the high school students I interview for Middlebury College, as a volunteer alumni interviewer, is how hard it is to get in and how impressed I am with their getting this far in the process. I tell them that I assume their SATs, ACTs, and transcripts are all excellent so there’s no need to talk about that in the interview. I start out by telling them that if they don’t get into Middlebury, and get into another college, it doesn’t matter, because they will make their own path in life.
My husband always teases me that I talk more about myself during the interviews and I don’t let the kids get a chance to talk … but I do encourage them to tell me what they’re passionate about in their own words. It’s not an essay, and it’s not a transcript, rather, it is who they really are. I want to know this. I tell them that I will go to bat for them and I write up a detailed essay about each applicant.
I have a feeling that the admissions office at Middlebury College has gotten to know my style. I like to vary off the path of pat answers to the questions and try to delve deeper into what the students do in their spare time, and why they do community service — is it for the application purposes to look good, or do they truly believe in social justice, food security, and making a difference in support of immigrant rights and the climate crisis.
I have been doing interviews for almost 10 years. I have to say that I am continually surprised and delighted by each student I interview. They all bring their unique selves to either the Skype interview or face-to-face interview over coffee at a local café. Mostly, I interview southern Vermont students. When things get really busy, they ask me to do Skype interviews with students from all over the country.
This is the way I give back to the Middlebury College I loved as an undergraduate. I don’t have a lot of money to make big donations, but being an alumni interviewer is really important in the application process and the college considers what we have to say about each student very carefully.
I remember back in 1976, as a freshman at the college. I wasn’t happy there and I wanted to go to Brown like everyone else in my family. I called my parents and said I was thinking of transferring and I was working on my application. My father chimed in on the phone and said he would be happy to talk to the director of admissions, who was a squash buddy of his. A few days later my dad called me up and he told me that the director of admissions at Brown said that if I got straight A’s at Middlebury, they would consider me as a transfer student. That semester, I worked the hardest I ever had and achieved the goal of straight A’s. I was a college scholar that semester. By the spring, however, I fell in love with Vermont and I started making friends. I never did use that family connection to Brown University and I’m glad I stayed where I was.
