Today marks the deadline to apply for next year's LSA and FSP programs. That's right, I submitted my application this morning for the Spanish department's LSA in the spring of 2006. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that means that I just applied for a program that won't take place for another year and two months. The calendar has just barely entered into 2005 and the deadline has already arrived to apply for programs that are more than a year in the future.
There is something fundamentally wrong with a system that requires over a year to process its applicants and make necessary arrangements. I didn't even apply to colleges a year in advance. If schools that receive thousands upon thousands of applications each year can process their decisions and organize matriculating students in a dozen or so weeks, why is it that the Off-Campus Programs Office requires 14 months of lead time to process a few hundred applications and prepare their various programs?
As a member of the '08 class, I have spent only a little longer than one term on this campus. I have completed exactly three classes and basically know only three professors. The Spanish LSA application requires that I ask two of these professors to write recommendations on my behalf. I was lucky to have had my freshman seminar during the fall term so I was relatively well acquainted with one of my professors. Unfortunately, I was also faced with the difficult decision of asking a professor who taught a lecture class of 120 students to write a recommendation for me. Thankfully this professor was willing and able to do so only because of the success I had achieved in his course and a brief resume that I had prepared. There is no doubt that many of my fellow '08s faced a similar dilemma and perhaps were not as lucky as I was with securing two professors to write recommendations as part of their application. It is a bit ridiculous that freshmen applying for off-campus programs are given so little time to develop meaningful relationships with professors and are then required to solicit recommendations from a very small pool of potential sponsors.
Moreover, I ended up applying for an LSA program that gives credit for the third term of Spanish. I intend to take the first two terms of language in the fall and winter of my sophomore year. In other words, I am applying for a program sponsored by the Spanish department when I have essentially no experience whatsoever with the language departments at Dartmouth. It doesn't make any sense to me that I would be required to apply for a program when I have not had the opportunity to take a single course in the subject. This does not mean that I won't be fully prepared for the program by the spring of 2006, but rather that it feels a little bizarre that I am applying to study in Spain for three months when I have never even spoken a word of Spanish.
I fully understand that the reviewing of applications is a very rigorous, stressful and time-consuming task for the Off-Campus Programs Office. However, it is simply unfair to students that the deadline for applying for any program in the Fall, Winter or Spring term of next year arrives so early. I personally know multiple students who decided not to apply because of the time pressure created by the absurdly early deadline despite their serious interest in participating in one of the fabulous programs. Furthermore, if the fall term programs can be organized in half a year, why can't the winter and spring programs be organized within a similar timeframe? Why can't there be separate and later deadlines for application to LSAs and FSPs in the winter and spring?
I don't intend to trivialize the process of applicant review and planning for these off-campus programs. I'm sure that there are countless hours and days of scheduling and organizing these valuable experiences. However, the deadlines are simply unrealistic. Asking a student in his or her second term at the College to find professors to write recommendations and make decisions about programs five terms in advance is unreasonable. I'm not asking to be able to apply for an LSA or FSP one month before the accepted students are set to depart, but I am asking for the Off-Campus Programs Office to be a little more flexible regarding their deadlines. Extending the deadline to the end of the Spring term or perhaps early in the Fall term would give all students, especially first-year students, the opportunity to get to know more professors, sample more classes from more departments and in general make a more educated and confident decision regarding their application to various off-campus programs.
