(Source: Johns Hopkins University)

High school students will sniff out any opportunity to uncover admissions-related tidbits on their target colleges. So when an admissions officer sets up shop in a conversational blog, they understandably flock.

That's what has happened with Johns Hopkins University, among others. Have these blogs helped applicants overcome their anxiety? Do students gain any insider tips? Do they make the process somehow more transparent?

Read this from the Washington Post:

Daniel Creasy and the other Johns Hopkins University admissions office staff have to read 200 files a week to get through the 14,840 applications piled on chairs and Crates in the hallways. That's 65 percent more applicants than they had just five years ago -- so many, Creasy joked, that he has to get his dog to help read them.

He even posted a photo of his dog, paws planted next to a stack of files, on the Hopkins admissions Web site.

Creasy is trying to lighten things a little and ease some of the anxiety of the application process as the admissions frenzy whips up. With more applicants than ever competing to get into the top schools, students' stress is obvious. It chokes online message boards about college admissions. (One site -- where overachievers crunch numbers, analyze their chances and obsess over scores -- had 17,048 posts about Hopkins alone.)

Now, some schools have staff members like Creasy who not only read files but monitor message boards, field questions on their own Web sites and try to humanize the process.

In charge of Hopkins Insider, "a behind-the-scenes look at the Johns Hopkins Admissions Office," Creasy hopes to take away some of the mystery, correct misinformation here and there, crack some jokes and, occasionally, talk students off the ledge.

"When I got into the field, I was told this is a very secretive field. Not a lot of people know what we do," Creasy said. "I agreed with that." Many in admissions still do. Creasy used to think of himself as an admissions officer, working for the institution to create the strongest possible 1,200-student incoming class. Now, he has far more contact with applicants -- at least electronically -- and knows just how much they're sweating the admissions process.

Read the full article here. And look here to find that Hopkins blog.