Be a Blogger 2024! by Ceri Riley '16

Petey had a mighty nine-year run of writing this post, but a king [of the internet]’s time as ruler rises and falls like the Sun, so now it’s my turn to take up the mantle of “person who announces the admissions blogger application.” While some days I’m in Cambridge at the MIT Welcome Center, most of my summer is spent in Framingham, where:

1. I go on my silly little mental health walks, sometimes to dog-watch in local parks, sometimes to get an açaí tradicional,⁠01 Framingham has the largest Brazilian community in the state of Massachusetts and many lovely bakeries and cafes and sometimes to walk my boys⁠02 What I call my virtual critters in the OTHER Nintendo-affiliated Niantic game, Pikmin Bloom
2. the Commuter Rail is on its summer schedule and people are going on vacations, which means the trains are slightly less crowded as I make my trek to campus (but still packed when there’s an event in Boston, like the Celtics parading on duck boats)
3. it’s time for anyone who’s interested in blogging to share your writing and let us perceive you, as though you were a shy yet wondrous deep sea octopus

Cephalopods aside, here’s what it means to us to be an admissions blogger:

MIT students are the Institute’s best ambassadors and community-builders. Admissions Officers (AOs) can explain complicated processes and provide words of wisdom, but we can’t write about what it’s like to experience Interphase EDGE/x, or live on Conner 2, or host an adMIT for Sin LíMITe, or UROP, or become a mentor for Project Manus, or learn a cool new thing in class, and so forth.

The mission of the blogs is to help our students communicate what MIT is actually like. We do this by hiring students who have good judgment, a compelling voice and perspective, and the disciplined exuberance to post at least twice a month on average. We may ask you to help advise creative projects in the office and serve as a touchstone for student culture. We pay you for this work. It’s a pretty good gig, to be honest.

This application was designed mostly by student bloggers to help ask and answer the kinds of questions that might be useful for identifying their kin. Your submissions will be read by a small committee made up of AOs, senior bloggers, and a few blogger cruft.

Please note that *only* current MIT students may apply to be bloggers (i.e. no prospective students or students at other colleges). This application is open to all MIT undergraduates of any class year.

This application will go live on 07/01/2024 and close on 08/01/2024. Anyone who has started their application by 08/01/2024 will have a grace period of 7 days to complete and submit it. We will begin reviewing complete applications after the application has closed, and we hope to select and alert bloggers before orientation if possible.

If this sounds like something you might like to do, then head over to SlideRoom and fill out the blogger application to help us better understand what kind of admissions blogger you would be. If anything isn’t clear, let me know in the comments or by email, and I’m happy to help!