Everyone knows the internet is a scary place where it becomes frighteningly easy to do slightly awkward things, like when you “Like” a mupload of someone you’ve never spoken to (stupid Facebook for iPhone), or Reply All when you REALLY did not want to.

To accidentally link the @BrownUAdmission Twitter to your private Facebook account is kind-of on another level.

Yes, it seems that someone working for our Admissions office—hopefully in an attempt to link the Admissions Twitter with the Admissions Facebook page—somehow managed to send all his/her private status updates as tweets to Brown alumni, students, and whoever else follows @BrownUAdmission.

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http://youtu.be/yn3mktl30iw

Remember that four-eyed brown M&M in those white high heels who made us all LOL on Super Bowl Sunday? Ms. Brown (not to be confused with Chris Brown) is the newest addition to the colorful M&M crew that rolls deep: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Orange have all embraced their posse’s newest sassy, smart and sophisticated member. For these reasons (among some other fairly obvious ones), we think Brown University would be the perfect fit for the little lady. Here’s why:

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At 5 P.M. today, decisions for the ~2,765 early applicants to Brown became available on the Brown website. Commence the stalking of current high school seniors’ Facebooks!

Image courtesy of The Huffington Post

After going four admissions cycles without an early admission option for prospective students, Harvard and Princeton announced yesterday that they will be restoring their early action plans.  Both reinstated programs will allow prospective students to apply in the fall through a non-binding application process.

The admissions offices at Harvard and Princeton announced in September 2006 that they would be eliminating their early admission programs due to the fact that they catered mostly to students from high-income families and purportedly led to increased stress on high school seniors.  In the last several years, however, the early application pool at other universities appears to be skewing less towards privileged students, according to Harvard President Drew Faust.

At 5 P.M. today, decisions for the 2765 early applicants to Brown became available on the Brown website. Commence the stalking of current high school seniors’ Facebooks!

There’s an app for that–college, that is.  The future class of 2015 is currently suffering through that oh-so-familiar struggle that we all had to put up with during senior year of high school: the college application process.   A recent post on the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet blog identifies several of the essay prompts from Brown’s application this year as examples of the recent trend in college admissions towards asking prospective students less traditional questions.  One of Brown’s more unorthodox prompts reads:

French novelist Anatole France wrote: “An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don’t.” What don’t you know?

We also liked the University of Chicago’s first essay option this year:

Find x.

For the more abstract thinkers among you, this question should have been a piece of cake.

As high school seniors begin to prepare their college applications, a number of articles have come out revisiting hot-button admissions topics:

Richard Kahlenberg took on legacy preferences in a recent NYT op-ed:

At our top universities, so-called legacy preferences affect larger numbers of students than traditional affirmative action programs for minority students, yet they have received a small fraction of the attention. Unlike the issue of racial preferences, advantages for alumni children — who are overwhelmingly white and wealthy — have been the subject of little scholarship, no state voter initiatives and no Supreme Court decisions.

Newsweek made the case against college athletic recruiting [Read more →]

Brown got a shining review from a Washington Post College Tour ’10 contributor today. It sounds like she didn’t find Emma Watson or Scout Willis (Brown is “known for” its celebrities?), but she was impressed by other (maybe less important?) features of Brown, such as the open curriculum. She was also happy with her tour and info session, when an admission counselor told them, “Please make sure there are no typos in your applications. For instance, please don’t spell Brown Y-A-L-E.”

The series provides a nifty map of other schools they’ve reviewed.

Head over to The Herald to read all about it. 2,804 admits out of more than 30,000 — feeling insecure about your SAT scores yet?

Right, like standardized tests matter in our plus/minus-less, S/NC Brown bubble.

Early-decision admit Jeff Handler said it best:

“It was raining when I visited and I still liked it,” Handler said. “And if you like a school in the rain, you know it’s the right place for you. I’m thrilled about the next four years.”

Did no one tell him about the flooding? Here’s to hoping starry-eyed prefrosh feel equally sunny in four years.