At the outset, this is a weird post for me, but it's been building over the last month, and I feel like I have to create a PSA on this topic.
tl;dr: Professors aren't admissions officers for undergraduates.
I became the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the CLPS Department in the Fall of 2022. Both that fall and this fall, I've gotten a lot of emails from high school students asking me to help them get into Brown.
At first, I didn't know what to make of it. This year, I posted to a social media platform, where I'm in contact with other academics, about this. I asked whether others were getting messages like this. No one else was receiving these.
The messages fell into two categories. One set of messages were clearly written by an AI (OK, let's go back to the piece about using AI; at least right now, WE CAN TELL). I don't respond to these.
The ones I do respond to are ones written by students earnestly. The students always express interest in the CLPS Department, or even my lab's research in particular. In rare cases, they want me to contact the admission office endorsing them for admission.
To be clear. I don't do this. I won't do this. I will never do this. I have never met an admission officer at Brown. I have no idea where the admissions office is (this, by the way, is my most commonly asked question when I'm stopped on campus for directions).
And I usually respond, as politely as I can, pointing them to our admissions website, and explaining that I am not part of the admission team.
I wrote all of this in case a high school student is reading this right now. And they are thinking to themselves - that's a good idea. Let me try that.
Please, for the record: Don't.
I have no idea what admissions officers do or how they evaluate applications. I will admit that the more I think about it, the more I like Barry Schwartz's ideas about college admission. But I do know that emailing me about getting into Brown is a waste of time.