The Office of Admissions’ new recruitment video has garnered more than 49,000 hits since Friday night, and it’s not just Yalies and pre-frosh who are watching. The video has gained some traction on major online news outlets, virtually all of whom scramble to point out the similarities between “That’s Why I Chose Yale” and Disney’s “High School Musical.”

From Gawker.com, “Yale: The Musical!”:

“Sensing the timely (very timely!) interest in things like High School Musical, one of the Western world’s most prestigious universities has decided to roll out a sixteen minute and forty-nine second-long info movie, much of which involves current students warbling and dancing awkwardly, as most Ivy League dorks are wont to do. Watch in glee, and horror, as they sing to you about living in a castle with a gym and a pool table or something, and then they just call everyone else dumb for a while in harmony, Brian Williams shows up!, and then the kid who looks like Barack Obama ends the song and… was it all a dream?? I don’t know. I can’t figure it out. I mean, I didn’t go to Yale. What I want to know most of all, though, is: Why? Is Yale really that hard-up for strong students that they need to produce the most elaborate propaganda film since Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Williams?”

From The Choice, an NYTimes.com blog, “Yale Admissions Office Sets Its Pitch to Music (and Dance)”:

“Many fans of Disney’s “High School Musical” franchise are now old enough to apply to college, so it was probably inevitable that an admissions office would try to reach them by turning an otherwise staid group information session into a peppy music video … Only in this setting, perhaps, could someone get away with singing the line: ‘Now I volunteer at a law school clinic on human rights protection.’ “

From Washingtonpost.com, “Yale: The musical”:

“It feels like an episode of Glee, the popular TV show that overnight made it socially acceptable and even sexy to sing in the high school show chorus. Those involved admit they watched the movie ‘High School Musical’ for inspiration.”