Several years ago, I read a great book by Robert Fulghum called “All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten”, and a portion of it applies to the last part of File Reading:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
In looking at applicants, we are looking at future members of the UGA community. They will be living in the residence halls together, studying together, dating, hanging out, and generally interacting with the people in the UGA community 24/7. In light of this, I want to know how they interact with other people in their own community right now. Do they play nice with the other kids in school, are they respectful to people from other cultures, backgrounds, socioeconomic groups, how do they treat teachers, etc. In other words, how well do they get along with others?
We look at recommendation letters, essays, personal notes, and other indicators to get an understanding of this. It does not always come through clearly, but we many times can see this through the comments in the overall application. I am not saying that this is the biggest part of the file review by any means, but it does come into play, especially when we see very positive or very negative situations.
I hope that this six part review about file reading has helped, and it came about by a suggestion from one of the blog readers. So, if you have any suggestions about future posts, please let me know!
Go Dawgs!