Your senior has probably seen the Glimpse option in a college portal by now. Most students decide it is either a waste of time or a production. It is neither, and with early deadlines coming up, it is worth an afternoon to get right.
What Glimpse actually is
Glimpse is run by InitialView. Your student records a 60 to 90 second video in the Chrome browser or the InitialView app on an iPhone or iPad, and that one video goes to every participating college. There is no editing, and only the last take is saved. It costs $22 for unlimited colleges, with fee waivers for students who qualify.
Two rules matter more than the rest. Once the video is sent to a college, it is locked for that college for the whole cycle. And a student who sends a Glimpse in Early Decision or Early Action gets one chance, starting December 15, to record a new video, but only for colleges that never received the first one.
Colleges accepting Glimpse this cycle include Brown, Duke, Vanderbilt, Rice, Barnard, Swarthmore, WashU, Middlebury and Colgate, and several limit it to students at U.S. high schools. UChicago, Bowdoin and Wake Forest run their own video options with different formats, so your student should read each college’s own page.
Should your student submit one?
My default is yes at every college that offers a video. Most college pages call it optional, and students are admitted without one. But as with every optional part of the application, the student who submits gives the reader one more way to know them. I would skip it only when the video would be weaker than the rest of the file, or would take time from a required essay that matters more.
A caution on the evidence: most of what is said publicly about how these videos are read comes from InitialView and its co-founders, Gloria and Terry Crawford, whose interest is for every student to submit. None of the college pages I read says how much weight the video carries.
What admissions readers say they want
Gloria Crawford has described admissions officers listening to a Glimpse in the background while they work through the rest of a file. If that is right, your student’s voice and words matter more than the picture. Her test is whether the 90 seconds tells the reader something that is not anywhere else in the application. A Holy Cross admissions officer, in a testimonial InitialView published, asks for “just a little bit about you, not everything.”
That leads to three rules. Your student should not repeat the essays or recite accomplishments. They should not name a college or wear its sweatshirt, because the same video goes to every school. And they should not read from a script, which InitialView’s own FAQ says in so many words.
How to prepare without over-preparing
Start by listing what the application already says, then pick one thing the reader has not met yet: a part-time job, a daily ritual, an object with a story behind it, or the reason behind an activity rather than its résumé line. An object can anchor the video, but the reason behind it is the content.
Your student should write two to four bullet points, say them out loud as if talking to a friend, and then put the notes away. A phone is fine. College Essay Guy’s production advice holds up: face a window, keep the camera at eye level, find a quiet room, and remember that good audio matters more than perfect lighting. Expect three to five takes, and leave out music, ring lights and text overlays.
Glimpse lets a student add a counselor to review the video before sending it. That review should check for reading, repetition, school names and audio, and should not rewrite anything. Gloria Crawford says admissions officers tell her applications often sound like “very polished adults.” The video is the one place your student can sound like a 17-year-old.
Timing
InitialView recommends sending the video within about a week of submitting the application. Video deadlines can differ from application deadlines; Duke and WashU, for example, list November 9 for their early rounds. If your student is applying early, record carefully now, because that video is the one most colleges will see.
If you want help deciding which videos are worth your student’s time and what one should be about, that is the conversation we have in a free 30-minute strategy session. Families who book one get our College Application Rules guide.
