Happy Tuesday UMBC Applicants!

Before I begin this week’s blog, I want to share a quick joke with you:

a. Why did the high school senior throw his watch out the window?

b. Why didn’t the Skeleton go to senior prom?

(Answers are found at the end of the blog)

The application engine needed a little bit of oiling to get started, but now it is humming away. Early Action and Spring Transfer applications are rolling in and making their way through our processing area (being downloaded from Common App, being matched with accompanying materials, etc.). We do ask for a little bit of your patience, as we work hard to get decisions out to each student in a timely manner. We are updating our systems frequently, so each day new applications are received from the Common App and will trigger the initial “we have received your application” email to you. Likewise, once your application is complete, it will undergo review.

Keep in mind we are also focusing our efforts first on Early Action applications, than spring transfer applications, then Regular Decision applications and finally Fall Transfer applications.  So if you’re a Regular Decision or Fall Transfer applicant, we may not process your application at this point as quickly as someone who’s applied for Early Decision or Spring Transfer.

When we are processing applications and documents and your application remains incomplete, we will send you an email to let you know what we’re missing and how to submit it.  So please check your email in-boxes frequently. We will launch those decisions as soon as our process can run its course.  Early action applicants can expect to receive an admissions communication in mid to late December.

Stay tuned for more on our UMBC Undergraduate Admissions Blog for more information!

ANSWER A.) He wanted to see time fly!

ANSWER B.) He did not have any body to take!

(Please, please, do not laugh too hard.)

Portrait Garden is a series of audio and photographic portraits of eleven women incarcerated at Maryland Correctional Institute for Women in Jessup, MD, culminating a 1-1/2 year long collaboration between Ruby Award winning artist and Associate Professor of Visual Arts Lynn Cazabon. In the collaboration the inmates created perennial gardens on the prison grounds consisting of plants chosen to represent each woman, and Professor Cazabon recorded interviews with each about the selected plants and her past and present experiences with gardening. The completed portraits are photographs of the selected plants that were planted and cultivated over the course of a year, displayed with a short textual excerpt from the audio interviews and QR codes, which when scanned with a mobile device, play the full interview with each woman. The complete set of images and audio interviews are available through the project website: http://portraitgarden.org

For the month of December, Portrait Garden will be displayed as a series of 100 posters in trains within the Baltimore Light Rail system. This public dissemination is conceived as a moving gallery designed to bring the women metaphorically into the community of Baltimore City.