McLovin Applied To Tufts And Has The YouTube Video To Prove it

Because perusing 15,000 essays about summer charity work didn't make admissions officers want to kill themselves enough, Tufts allowed aspiring Jumbos to add YouTube videos to their applications.  And it looks like Superbad's breakout star is itching to spend four years in Davis Square.

Alright, so this kid isn't actually Christopher Mintz-Plasse. But his admittedly clever video's riff on James Lipton's Inside the Actor's Studio makes the resemblance all the more uncanny. (Have you seen some of Lipton's guests recently? Mintz-Plasse would not be out of place on that esteemed stage.)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57yJCm-KKIk&eurl=http%3A//www.nytimes.com/[[IMPORT]]/graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/multimedia/TEMPLATES/GridGallery/GridGallery5.swf&feature=player_embedded#[/youtube]

This is all made possible by Tuft's decision to allow videos tacked onto applications this year. Back in the Stone Age, admissions offices subjected acne-ridden high school seniors to a nerve-wracking interview so as to weed out the under-socialized, brutish or just plain ugly barbarians. Now, the narcissistic cesspool that is YouTube has bulldozed its way into the Ivory Tower.

Tufts' Class of 2014 (yes, you're that old) wannabes also include one girl who, with her dentist's help, is apparently molded after Kanye West, or at least his "Through the Wire"-era mouth:

"There are videos showing off card tricks, horsemanship, jump rope and stencils — and lots of rap songs, including one by a young woman who performed two weeks after oral surgery, with her mouth still rubber-banded shut."

And confirming his school's reputation as a perennial fail-proof Plan B, Tufts admissions director admitted to the Times that pretty much anyone with a laptop camera and a fallback dream can get in:

"Lee Coffin, the dean of undergraduate admissions, said the idea came to him last spring, when watching a YouTube video someone had sent him. 'I thought, ‘If this kid applied to Tufts, I’d admit him in a minute, without anything else.'

Somewhere in Cambridge, Bill Fitzsimmons is laughing into a crimson kerchief.

Coffin went on to say that:

“So much of what we do in admissions is opaque, and that contributes to all the frenzy. This is something that’s completely transparent.”

Let's hope that, unlike on Chatroulette or Craigslist, that transparency doesn't extend to underage naughty bits. Or would that add a great "hook" and complete the admissions package?