Glimpse Video Guide 2026-2027

Parents whose children have started college since the debut of ChatGPT may have noticed that the number of colleges allowing optional Glimpse submissions or similar video submissions has been increasing. This is no accident. As many schools have reconsidered supplemental essays because their well-defined prompts make it easy for students who do not know any better to generate AI slop that they consider passable enough to submit, admissions officers have become inundated with generic essays. These essays make it harder for admissions officers to give the truly authentic, high-quality essays the careful review they deserve. As a result, a growing number of colleges are now giving students the option to submit an unedited video that shows who they are as people, in a way that a written document increasingly cannot.

This guide covers what Glimpse is, which schools accept it, how it differs from school-specific video prompts and from full video interviews, and, most importantly, how to make a video that strengthens your application rather than cluttering it.

What a Glimpse Video Actually Is

Glimpse is a product of InitialView, a company that has provided admissions interviews since 2009, largely for international applicants. Glimpse is its domestic offering, built for students attending high school in the United States. It is a self-recorded video of 60 to 90 seconds that you film yourself on your own device, using the Chrome browser on a computer or Android phone, or the InitialView app on an iPhone or iPad.

The defining feature of Glimpse is that you cannot edit it. You may delete and re-record as many times as you like before you send it, but no editing or production software is permitted, and the finished submission is a single unedited take. That is by design. Admissions officers want the focus to be on you and your voice, not on your editing or production skills. A polished, overproduced video misses the point and can even work against you.

Glimpse costs $22, and that single fee lets you send your video to as many colleges as you want. Fee waivers are available for students who qualify. You record the video once, link it to your application using your Common App ID, and then route it through the InitialView platform to every participating school on your list. InitialView is already integrated into the application portals of many colleges and universities, which is what makes the one-recording-to-many-schools model work.

One important mechanical detail: you can submit only one Glimpse per college, the same way you cannot rewrite an essay after you have sent it. Once you send your Glimpse to a given school, it is locked for that school. There is a single re-record opportunity that opens on December 15 for students who applied Early Decision or Early Action, available by request through InitialView, but it exists only so you can send a video to schools that did not already receive your earlier version. You cannot use it to replace a Glimpse a college has already seen.

Why Colleges Started Asking for Video, and What That Means for Your Strategy

Now that Glimpse is no longer new, we at Cosmic believe that applicants who want to be as competitive as possible at schools participating in Glimpse should submit a video. But submitting one is only half the task. The other half is understanding why colleges want it, because that reason should shape everything about how you approach it.

Remember why many colleges are now accepting these videos. Because of AI, it is becoming easier than ever to fake who you are during the admissions process. A polished essay is no longer a reliable signal of an applicant's authentic voice, and application volumes at selective schools have grown large enough that officers are actively looking for components that are harder to fabricate. A short, unedited video is one of the few remaining pieces of the application that AI cannot convincingly produce for you. The purpose of these video submissions is to show admissions officers the real you in a way that AI cannot replicate. This means you should come across as the same warm-blooded human being who wrote the Common App essay they just finished reading, completed the activities listed on your Activities section, and earned the honors reported in your Honors section.

Just because there is no prompt does not mean that the video most likely to move the needle with admissions officers should be a spontaneous performance that seems disconnected from the essays you submit, the activities you report, the honors you have earned, and the recommendation letters written on your behalf. Rather than simply showing a new dimension of yourself for the sake of it being new, your video should somehow connect to your hook, the distinguishing characteristic of your interests and goals that earns you a place in the incoming class of the schools to which you are applying.

Connect the Video to Your Hook

At the same time, you do not want to repeat yourself. Your Glimpse video should not introduce unnecessary redundancies into your application. The goal is a video that is consistent with the person the rest of your application already describes, without restating anything that application already says.

One way to remain consistent with how you presented yourself throughout your application without repeating yourself is to discuss a hobby or activity you genuinely enjoy and provide a glimpse of how the same intellectually curious mind that is fascinated by your academic interests also influences how you engage in that hobby. For example, perhaps you build Yu-Gi-Oh! decks by calculating the probabilities of drawing certain starter cards in your opening hand. Or, if you are a devoted fan of a particular celebrity, you could explain how you engage with their work before or after spending time on your favorite academic subject, or discuss how their values and beliefs resonate with your own. In each case the surface subject is fun and personal, but the underlying thread reinforces the intellectual identity that runs through the rest of your file.

Handling the Publicly Available Prompt Lists

If you search online for Glimpse video ideas, you will find examples such as, "Describe a piece of clothing that has special significance to you." These publicly available prompts are excellent starting points. However, it is important that you do not take the path of least resistance by giving a straightforward answer. Instead, your response should be one that only you, the person who wrote your admissions essays, earned those awards, and completed those activities, could give. Even if only subtly, your answer should connect back to your hook.

The reason this matters is simple. Every applicant who searches for the same prompt sees the same suggestions, and a generic answer to a generic prompt produces exactly the kind of forgettable, interchangeable submission that video was supposed to replace. Your answer has to be unmistakably yours.

Script It, Then Set the Script Aside

When preparing your Glimpse video, write a script and practice it until it feels natural. However, when it is time to record, do not keep the script in front of you. Instead, be relaxed and confident enough to improvise if it feels natural in the moment. That is the key to conveying the greatest amount of meaningful information in a way that feels authentic rather than rehearsed. Schools say so directly. Wake Forest advises applicants to speak extemporaneously and not to memorize a speech, and InitialView is emphatic that the video should not look overly rehearsed or professionally produced.

Note that this advice does not apply everywhere. If a school uses the Bowdoin model, where you receive a random question and cannot plan your answer, there is nothing to script. In that case the preparation is different. You practice thinking on your feet and speaking clearly under a short clock, rather than rehearsing specific content.

How to Record: The Practical Details

The production values here are intentionally low, but a few basics make the difference between a video that helps you and one that distracts from you. Film in a quiet space so your audio is clean, and check your device's audio levels before you commit to a take. Sit with a window or a lamp in front of you rather than behind you, so the light falls on your face and you are not lost in shadow. Keep your background simple and free of obvious distractions. As Wake Forest puts it, if an outfit is fine to wear to school, it is fine to wear in the video. A phone camera is perfectly acceptable. Nobody is grading you on cinematography, and trying to look professional tends to read as stiff and disconnected.

When to Record and Submit

Deadlines vary by school and by round, so confirm the specific date for each college on your list. As a general rule, InitialView recommends submitting your Glimpse within about a week of submitting the rest of your application to that school, because the arrival of an application often starts the review process, and you want your video included when your file is first read. Many schools cluster their video deadlines in early November for Early Decision and Early Action and in early January for Regular Decision, but do not rely on those approximations in place of the actual dates.

A good sequence is to submit your application, take a few days to record a Glimpse you are happy with, and send it well before the school's video deadline. If you applied early and later add schools that did not receive your original Glimpse, remember that the December 15 re-record window exists for exactly that situation.

The Bottom Line

Video submissions are quickly becoming a standard part of selective admissions, and for a straightforward reason: in an era when written materials can be generated or heavily assisted by AI, a short, unedited video is one of the few components that is genuinely hard to fake. That is precisely why it is an opportunity. A video that shows the real you, connected to your hook and consistent with the rest of your application without repeating it, does something no essay can do anymore. It proves there is a specific, intellectually curious human being behind the file.

If you would like help identifying which of your target schools accept Glimpse or a video interview, deciding what your video should say, and preparing a submission that reinforces your hook rather than diluting it, schedule a free consultation with a college admissions expert today.