Apply for an MBA program with a tweet-sized essay? Sounds easy! But don’t get too excited. University of Iowa’s Tippie School of Management initiated that innovative idea two years ago—and they’ve already abandoned it. Alison Damast filed this report in Bloomberg BusinessWeek in November 2012.
Read it here: Damast, “Tippie’s Twitter Essay: An MBA Admissions Experiment Gone Awry”
- Did you ever think you might need to use your tweeting skills for a school admissions process? How comfortable are you using social media tools in professional contexts? Does it feel like a natural progression or a collision of separate worlds? Explain your responses within the context of your past uses of social media and your future career goals.
- As Damant reports, Tippie officials were surprised and disappointed with the Twitter essay experiment. Jodi Schafer, admissions director, said Tippie officials expected applicants to exhibit more comfort and familiarity with the tweet format than they did, and many candidates subsequently admitted that they didn’t have Twitter accounts or tweet regularly. Are you surprised? Why or why not? Do you think that the field of study might have made a difference and that candidates for Master’s programs in law, medicine, or journalism, for example, might have shown a different level of Twitter experience? Support your conjectures with examples from your own experience with people you know.
- Dennis Baron’s essay in Chapter 15 of They Say, I Say deals with the influence of Twitter and other social media in the events leading up to the 2011 overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. How might Baron respond to Tippie’s Twitter Admissions Experiment? Why do you think so? Cite evidence from his essay that could support your conclusion.
- Although Damast’s article doesn’t address the issue, Tippie admissions candidates might have found themselves facing a challenge of norms and conventions. A graduate school admissions essay is generally written in a formal style, while tweets conventionally employ space-saving abbreviations, creative spellings, and colloquialisms. Imagine that you are applying to a graduate program that asks for a tweet-size essay (that is, 140 characters or less, including spaces). Write the tweet. Did you write informally? Using the same language you would have used in a full-length essay? A mix of both or something in between? Write a paragraph describing all of the stylistic decisions you made and explaining your reasoning behind those decisions.
They Say I Blog 
Huang, Esther
English 1C 9:45
11 December 2012
Extra Credit
They Say, I Blog
In the article “Tippie’s Twitter Essay: An MBA Admissions Experiment Gone Awry,” it talks about how the Tippie School of Management tried out a new way of applying to their school of business through a tweet. Their idea did not work out as well, maybe because they did not specify what they wished for. Instead they received more applications that saw the tweet as a shortcut. At first, I thought that this idea was ridiculous. How are you supposed to express yourself fully in a tweet that has to be 140 characters or less? But as I read on, I realized more what the admissions was looking for. So the fault in the project not playing out as expected could be on both parties. Students who wanted to attend the school should have thought harder about ways to express themselves. If they had put more thought into it, they would have realized that 140 characters is not enough and that they should probably link the tweet to something else. Once they realized that, they might be able to understand that the school is looking for innovative applications instead of the very polished essays that are generally required of applicants. Also, I think that maybe the school could have helped the applicants along a bit. Instead of just dropping the program, they could tweak it around and try again. Maybe if they were a little more specific on what they were looking for, then more people would try to meet those standards. But I understand why the people in admissions would want to keep more information to themselves about the tweet application. This way, they could weed out the more inventive, creative, and intelligent applications when letting the students decide how they want to format their tweets.
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I never think about I can use my tweeting skills for a school admissions process. As an international student, I didn’t have a tweet accounting until I arrived the US, and I do not support to use tweeter to apply for the university. As far as I’m concerned, tweeter is a place where you can express your own thoughts and your own emotion, but it cannot be used as a shortcut for students apply the college. College is an academical place, instead, tweeter is more like an entertainment. So there’s a collision between them.
I’m not surprised about that. Actually, I also didn’t have a twitter account. Although I have one now, I do not use it regularly. According to the article, the new challenges for applicants are becoming more and more valid, and some of them are more efficient than the tweeting way. Perhaps these new different experiences can make a difference in the field of study. Such as in my English 150 class, my teacher let us have a comment towards a blog, and then send the link to her. It’s also one way to use the technology for our study.
I think Dennis Baron will not support to Tippie’s Twitter Admissions Experiment. He says, “just as new technology can kindle uprisings, so too can it be used to suppress them. This sentence seems like a negative attitude about the influence of new technology to the applications.
I will write informally if I applied to a graduate school which ask me for a tweet-size essay. As you can see, just 140 characters which includes spaces and commas, I need to try as much as I can to save space for my center opinion and express them. Also, twitter, as I think, it’s informal as itself, of course I can write informal.
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In the article “Tippie’s Twitter Essay: An MBA Admissions Experiment Gone Awry,” it discusses how schools have tried new ways of soliciting school applications through twitter. The applications did not go as planned because the students did not know what the college was looking for. Personally, I think this was a horrible idea because I cannot fully explain myself in less than 140 characters. Another factor to consider was that they could possibly go through your other tweets and they could make a bad impression on the school because most students tweet negative comments about school. Tweeting a school application seems too informal for me and I feel like I would not be able to take it seriously. Students must be super creative in order to come up with an interesting way to tweet something short and sweet. John Yates mentioned in this article made a haiku for an essay contest through twitter and I think that is original. I know technology has become a big part of our country and America is one of the most improper countries in language and morals. I still believe colleges should keep their schools within an image that is professional and exclusive. The school admissions realized this was not the best application method because they did not receive the responses they expected. This year the Tippie School has come up with a new school application format, which is submitting a picture, and write an explanation of 350 words or less why it is meaningful. I think this idea is great because it can still be written in formal English but can be a fun way to submit applications rather than an essay. In between all three choices of doing a tweet, an essay, or picture I would definitely have chosen the picture submission because it seems much more effective than a tweet but way more interesting than a formal essay.
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Ruiz, Adriana
English 1C
15 May, 2013
The article “Tippie’s Twitter Essay: An MBA Admissions Experiment Gone Awry” by Alison Damast, had some good points on how to change the college application process. I believe that students should get an opportunity to show a different side of themselves, other then what admissions reads on paper. I do not, however, believe that a school should give the option to future students to do an online essay through a social media website like twitter. The online essay may be a disadvantage to some people who do not have a social media page. The person may not have the rescores to do so. It may also be difficult to talk about ones self, and their accomplishments with just one hundred and thirty-five characters. Some people may find it hard to talk about themselves in an essay, and now only having a small number of words to do it may be harder. Most people are not critical thinkers, and would not think about adding a link to their one hundred and thirty-five essay, unless it is stated in the directions. I also don’t believe that scholarships should be given away to those that use the social media websites to apply instead of doing an essay. I think that it is unfair if the people who do the traditional way of applying do not get the same opportunities as the people who use social media. I was not surprised that using twitter to apply to a school did not work. It is not a very conventional way to have people apply. People should not have to create a twitter account just to apply to a college. Some people do not even know what twitter is or how it works. It was an idea doomed to fail, but the University of Iowa was on the right path to being more creative with their application process. I do believe that the application process should be creative, but it should be made available to everyone. The essay portion of the application process should be more creative, but it should not ask for random facts about a person like Duke’s Fuqua School of Business does. I believe that creativity is good, and should be embraced in an essay for a college application.
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That’s the kind of image that i really thing is super image like. If more images very real like this were out there we’d be super full of graet images in the world.
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I’m of two minds about Lan Feng’s claim that Twitter and college collide because one is used for entertainment and the other is used for academics. On one hand, I agree that the use of Twitter to apply to college is a shortcut. On the other hand, I’m not sure if they completely collide with each other. In fact, I believe that the University of Iowa’s initial intention was a great way for students to set themselves apart from their test scores and GPA. If the project had gone as planned, it would have been a great way for students to show admissions who they were and what they could offer to the program. Not everyone is a strong essay writer, especially when it comes to an essay about themselves. Giving students the opportunity to show who they are in an interactive and creative way levels the playing field for everyone and their particular strengths.
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Using twitter as a short cut is not a good idea to me. The tippe is used for a short cut, which individuals can’t get their facts across. People want to use this short cut to apply for the school, which makes no sense in my opinion. Applying for a school people should take their time and think about it instead of using a website and not getting all the facts down.
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