My colleagues Bill and Peter have posted here about how admissions offices at schools like MIT and Yale are using social media to reach out to prospective students. But wait a minute — who’s reaching out to whom?

University admissions staffs are getting more creative with social media as a marketing tool. As Bill wrote here, MIT is hiring current students to blog about their experiences on the admissions website. And Peter blogged about the 17-minute video musical that Yale students, working with the admissions office, produced to tell prospects why they should chose Yale.

Tufts University, my own alma mater, is also getting in on the action, but in reverse. It invited applicants to create a one-minute YouTube video as an optional “essay,” along with their standard application. The New York Times reported in February that about 1,000 out of 15,000 applicants had posted videos.

Some are earnest monologues shot in messy bedrooms; others are photo montages, original songs, and animations. One prospective student made a remote-controlled helicopter in the shape of the Tufts elephant mascot. Another posted a crafty stop-motion animation that took a week to make and has gotten over 16,000 views on YouTube.