[Letters] Haste makes waste

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[Letters] Haste makes waste



Recently, the final admissions guide for the 2010 early decision college applications was announced. This is a follow-up to a tentative guide announced around March this year.

The required documents and selection process seem to be quite different from last year’s, due to the education reform based on the admissions officer system.

Some universities require the applicants to prepare various forms including a personal statement. Other universities ask the applicants to prepare letters of recommendation from high school teachers written on a designated form.

One thing that is common to all the universities is that they start to accept applications around early September.

Moreover, most universities officially assign scores for the documents in an admissions process and keep telling applicants that evaluating those documents is one of the most important selection criteria.

Under these circumstances where we have only a limited amount of time to prepare the documents and the content of personal statements and recommendation letters are more important than ever before, it is not surprising that both students and their parents are having a hard time preparing the mandatory documents.

Some students even seek out private educational institutions to get help with preparation.

Seeing the current educational turmoil, I have come to think that we are moving too fast toward a perfect implementation of the admissions officer system.

I believe that this is partly because of the Lee administration’s push to reform the college admissions system within a short period of time.

Many people think that a national consensus on the trust and fairness of the selection process should take precedence over the others, and hiring qualified admissions officers is crucial for the successful implementation of the admissions officer system.

Also, whenever universities need to change the necessary documents for applications or modify the selection process, they are responsible for announcing those changes in advance, and a grace period should be set before applying the new rules.

It should be noted that it took almost a century for the United States to stabilize the admissions officer system.

We need to recall an old saying, “haste makes waste.”

Bumsoo Park, Ogum High School Student
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