Application essays and college writing

Parents Forum
1

<p>I have been struck by the fact that many of the colleges that give a lot of weight to college application essays--including those that seek out imaginative, creative applicants through the use of quirky writing prompts--are often the ones that lament most loudly that students don't write well.</p>

<p>This leads me to wonder whether the function of college application essays is merely intended to reveal something about the personality of the applicant but is not a good gauge of the applicant's ability to read critically and write expository essays. Does having an individual voice matter in a paper on the Suez canal crisis, for example?</p>

<p>What should the proper role of the college application essay be? How can colleges gauge how well prepared a student is for writing several essays per term over the next four years?</p>

2

<p>marite, this is an interesting question, because it raises another issue that interests me -- what are the expectations in terms of writing ability for incoming freshmen?</p>

<p>Is writing well something one should expect to learn in college, or should one already be able to write well as a high school senior?</p>

3

<p>Considering the fact that far too many kids have far too much "help" on their essays...everything from brainstorming and editing, to true ghostwriting, I wonder how much value such essays are in the admissions process anyway.</p>

<p>A truer measure of writing ability is a placement test at the beginning of college, where all kids are given the same prompt and a time period in which to write. Then, it might be easier to tease out who is well prepared and who isn't.</p>

4

<p>Allmusic:</p>

<p>Ah--but by then, it might be too late to sort out the students who are poor writers. Should remedial writing be offered at the most selective schools?</p>

<p>I am thinking, however, that even for students who receive no help with their application essays, the question still apply. Is the college application essay a good gauge of what constitutes good writing at the college level?</p>

<p>Fendrock:
I expect students'writing to improve over four years of college, but I also would think that freshmen at the most selective schools should have decent writing skills to begin with. Yet, at schools such as Swarthmore, Harvard, Stanford and many more, far too many students need remedial help.
I actually think that high schools do not put sufficient emphasis on expository writing. There are too many assignments asking students what their thoughts and feelings are with reference to something or other and not enough assignments asking them to do research and analyze texts. The application essay falls into the first genre of writing. But college essays usually fall into the second.
A number of high schools have writing guides on their websites. Often, it turns out these writing guides were written for college students. Should college students not know what a thesis statement or a topic sentence is?</p>

5

<p>This is from the perspective of a college applicant.</p>

<p>I personally found that the most enjoyable part of my applying to colleges (if any part in the process can truly be called enjoyable) was writing the various essays that were required.</p>

<p>Perhaps I'm a bit biased in that I love writing, but it seemed to me that in a process that was quite impersonal and entailed much mindless filling up of boxes and packaging of activities and accomplishments to fit word counts and drop down boxes, the essays served as a vital counterpoint, something to retain the 'me' in 'my' application.</p>

<p>For me the manner in which I approached college essays was similar to the approach I adopted for interviews. The two are possibly the only human aspects to the application; and that's why I truly appreciated those colleges that attempted through their prompts and topics to gain an insight into who I was.</p>

<p>You know, over the year that I've spent on CC; I've noticed the oft quoted "SATs and your GPA open the door, your essays and ECs grant you admittance" or variants of the same statement to be the prevalent consensus particularly with regard to admission at the most selective colleges. With that in mind, I don't believe that the essay should or is a measure of writing ability. </p>

<p>Acceptance to college need not come with a prerequisite ability to analyze or critically review situations, rather acceptance to a college would be with a view to the 'fit' or the student most suitable to the college, and that's where the essay serves its purpose.</p>

<p>My brother and I did attempt to go against the grain wherein the college essay's viewed as something sacrosanct, and asks for the applicant's view on international affairs or similar topics; we tried to show a bit of ourselves in our essays.</p>

<p>Here's an example of what I'm talking about:</p>

<p>
[quote]
On this note of benevolent optimism, let me ask you the reader, to stop a second, look up to the start of this page, and read down to where we are presently.</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

<p>Now, what exactly have I said in this essay, I ask?</p>

<p>Nothing.</p>

<p>And, all things being equal, that would be perfectly all right, but, in days of yore, there seems to have originated this misconception that college essays actually need to be about something. So, allow me to present my magnum opus, my thesis if you will, as to what this essay is about.</p>

<p>It’s about me. </p>

<p>Now with that suitably profound remark, let us make a compact you and I, and abandon any further attempts to seek for deeper meaning where there is none.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I do apologize for the exceedingly long post :)</p>

6

<p>k-twin:</p>

<p>Thank you for your perspective. You do write well. I have a question, though. What do you mean by "fit" in this context? From a college's perspective, "fit" must mean, inter alia, that a student will do well academically, not one who will need help from a writing center to be able to produce a minimally acceptable paper for one of the many classes that will require papers.</p>

7

<p>Marite, you have mentioned in the past that both you and your husband have PHDs. Are you a professor? Is your husband?</p>

<p>I know this is slightly off topic. ;) Fine. Do either of you teach a writing course?</p>

8

<p>I recently served as a judge for an "Academic Decathalon" competition that included a segment where the participants had 30 or 40 minutes to write an essay, choosing from among three prompts. They knew in advance what general areas the prompts might be in, but not specifically what they were. One of the prompts was literature-based (essentially a softball, down-the-center question about a book they had been required to read), one was a fairly straightforward climatology/global warming question, and I can't remember the third because no one answered it. The set of essays I judged (together with a high school teacher) were from kids with unweighted GPAs between 3.0 and 3.5, and some alternates (i.e., not "first team") from the group with higher GPAs, although if the kids I knew were any indication all of them were academically ambitious and taking challenging courses. All the schools were good schools: Five well-known suburban public schools, my son's urban public academic magnet, and a suburban private Catholic school.</p>

<p>What I'm saying is that these were good students, not necessarily great students, heading for good colleges.</p>

<p>To say that the essays were horrible would be a gross understatement. The other judge and I, trying to align our critical faculties, spent about 20 minutes discussing how much we disliked the first essay we read (at random), and why. That wound up being the essay that scored second-highest of the 25 we read! Half of them were almost completely inadequate -- no organization, no ideas, poor word choice, poor use of evidence . . . The other half barely attained the heights of mediocrity. The very best two or three might have deserved a B or B-, and that was with oodles of credit for anything resembling an idea.</p>

<p>But I will say this: The essays sure differentiated themselves. There was an enormous range in quality, albeit from mediocre to awful. We learned a lot about the skills of the students who wrote them.</p>

<p>I also judged prepared and impromptu speeches by some of the same kids. Their prepared speeches were of much, much better quality. Even the impromptu speeches were superior to the essays, although there was definitely a correlation between kids who did well on the essay and kids who did well on the impromptu speech.</p>

<p>In the end, I think the exam-type essay, especially if written without the benefit of a word processor, is probably a poor tool to tell what a student can do. I certainly wouldn't want to read too many of them.</p>

9

<p>marite - my daughters' schools do emphasize critical thinking, and the girls definitely know what a thesis statement is.</p>

<p>That does not mean they necessarily know how to write a thesis statement that is probing or thoughtful. (This became apparent to me, for example, when my 8th grader had to write a research paper on Plessy vs Ferguson).</p>

<p>I worry about it, because I don't think my 15-year old writes as well she should. But maybe my expectations are too high.</p>

<p>I do think public high school teachers have too many students to assign the number of writing assignments required for students to develop these skills.</p>

10

<p>JHS:</p>

<p>The essays you helped judge sound a bit like the new SAT essays. I would not want to be reading too many of those either. I also think that requring a writing sample from applicants would be excessive (and the samples might have been heavily edited, just like the application essays).<br>
I am just struck by what I see as the disconnect between what is asked of the application essay and what is expected in college as well as the poor level of writing at so many top universities and colleges.</p>

11

<p>I would believe (I am speaking only from my experience here, so feel free to correct me), that colleges would be able to ascertain a student's writing ability through their grades in their English classes and their SAT scores. The application essay, as such isn't really sufficient to judge or evaluate an applicant's writing ability; college classes would require papers and written material on a wide variety of topics and ideas and as such to encompass all of these in one or two essays would be very difficult, bordering upon impossible.</p>

<p>In addition to this; the type of paper required may vary wildly, English classes for example (from my High School point of view), require analysis and literary interpretation, while something in Biology or any of the sciences might be far more scientific or logic based. Different writing styles (albeit all being formal) would also be required for different courses and classes.
Colleges would therefore (if they wished to evaluate an applicant's ability to write college standard papers), have to increase their essay requirements by quite a large amount and thereby increase the work load on both applicants as as the admissions committee.</p>

<p>In addition the format in which a college essay (not an application essay) would have to be written would require comprehensive references, footnotes perhaps, and a completely formal approach, which while retaining originality and creativity would still be limited to some degree in the dogma of a "paper"; is very distinct from the application essay which, as I understand it, is in the voice of the applicant.</p>

12

<p>Even when my daughter was attending a famous private school, she got very little actual writing instruction. She was always a facile writer, one of the best in her class, and the result was that she hardly ever got any comments on her papers other than a high grade. From 7th through 12th grade, she only had two teachers who ever gave her substantive comments about her organization and ideas (as opposed to circling a misspelling or syntax error). One of those was retired, the other was heading off to a PhD program.</p>

<p>I read some of her stuff (never before she handed it in). It was good, but far, far from perfect. There were dozens of things she could have done to improve her writing -- not necessarily the style, which she did very well, but more how she developed themes, how she moved between generalizations and specifics, etc. She had the basics down cold -- every paper she wrote looked like a good high school paper -- but she wasn't learning much.</p>

13

<p>With regard to your point about the dichotomy evident between the requisite standard of an application essay and those expected of students at college; I'd say that part of the responsibility or role of a college is to expose its students to ideas and expand their points of view (part of the reason that I like the idea of a core curriculum) and also to instill in them the ability to write cogently and with coherence.</p>

<p>The reason I'd say this is the college's role is due to the fact that students would be arriving at college from all over the US if not the world from different educational systems that may have emphasized writing skills to varying levels.</p>

<p>JHS's daughter's schooling curriculum may not have emphasized a high degree of writing, whereas a large part of, (for example) my school's English Literature course in grades 11 & 12 involves literary analysis of Poetry and Shakespeare. We're encouraged to read college level analyses and papers and our 100 mark term paper has 75 marks devoted to 3 essays each of 500-600 words. Getting a perfect score on an essay hasn't occurred in 20 years of the school's existence, in fact the first ever 90s in English Literature were awarded this year.</p>

<p>With this level of disparity in schooling approaches, perhaps college is perhaps the only place where coordinated writing education could take place.</p>

14

<p>


No, I don't think it is. </p>

<p>Of course, some who write great essays are great writers across the board. But, taking DS as an example; his essays ranged from quite good to not so very. I don't believe any of them were terrible (and of course I am an unbiased observer ;) ), but the stronger ones were those which came closer to creative writing. He is a natural at creative writing; has written some excellent short stories, tagged as such by teachers as far back as third grade. He is, imho, a not very good analytic writer - too much redudancy, not enough organization (he has gotten better at the latter over the years but not up to my own standards), overuse of passive voice. He may well have the insights. And he does seek editorial review and comment (from me via email, sometimes), so there is hope that he will continue to improve. He is in Engineering and he's probably pdg at writing compared to some of his peers. He understands that being an Engineer does not absolve him of the need to communicate well orally and in written form. But I am not sure how much he will consciously work to improve, beyond the required "writing intensive" courses at his school. Not suprisingly, he would like to take some of the creative writing classes. But that won't really help with the issue we are raising here.</p>

<p>I think marite has hit on part of it in her post #4 - that high schools, even good ones, may not put enough emphasis on the nuts and bolts of research writing. I think my son's hs had a fair balance of "creative writing", writing about your "thoughts and feelings" vs. research/analytic writing. But I don't think they worked hard enough with the kids on how to polish the latter type of writing.</p>

15

<p>jmmom,</p>

<p>You've had a different experience at your kids' HS than we've had. Creative writing? What's that? DS2 was in a humanities program for highly gifted kids (they had to write to be accepted), and not once in three years did they write anything creative. I was sorely disappointed. Now he's a freshman in an IB program -- I fear he will never have a chance to get back to the amazing short stories he used to write.</p>

<p>What I worry about is that DS1's (my junior) essays will be too analytical and wordy, and not personal enough. (Takes him forever to make his point, even though it's good when he gets there.) However, if the admissions essays are in the form of "write a blog about..." we may have some hope! His blogging style is personal, sharp, incisive, and to the point. His AP Lang teacher would love what he writes there. </p>

<p>Our school system is all about formulaic, analytical writing. Creativity was squeezed out of the curriculum long ago.</p>

16

<p>
[quote]
How can colleges gauge how well prepared a student is for writing several essays per term over the next four years?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Getting back to Marite's original question, I'd like to ask if colleges should even make the writing ability of a student a major criterion in their admissions? While I'd say that this could be so for acceptance to creative writing programs and the like, should this be the case for acceptance to the college/university as a whole.</p>

<p>With differing schooling systems having different approaches to course content and writing instruction, (as we've seen in previous posts), and creativity having nothing to do with the system in many places, wouldn't colleges then be only able to see a high degree of writing ability in students from High Schools that focused on writing, and therefore wouldn't students from High Schools that focus less on writing instruction be at a disadvantage?</p>

<p>Isn't the entire point of writing seminars to inculcate in freshmen and other members of the seminar the ability to write well?</p>

17

<p>I think the admissions essays are used to get to know the students, not to evaluate their writing ability.</p>

<p>I think most if not all the top colleges now require all students to take writing classes in some way (some have specific required classes, others just a range of classes with emphasis on writing that students can choose from). Most schools have writing centers where students can go for help, and doing so is not considered "shameful" in any way (like going for homework help at middle school is).</p>

18

<p>My son has had at least one or two creative writing assignments a year - they are usually the ones that have him in tears in the middle of the night. They generally write several longer research papers in history classes and a half dozen or so analytical papers in English. The English papers is where I see the real difference between big public high school and small private where I went. His teachers have been pretty good, but it takes much longer for them to read the papers. With smaller classes I was generally assigned a 3 to 5 page paper every single week in English rarely anything longer though I wrote some longer research papers in history classes. When I got to college writing papers was never an issue though my papers tended to be on the short side. Luckily they usually included as much info as kids less used to writing.</p>

19

<p>Again for instance (apart from English), no other class in my schooling system requires any sort of long essay analysis or research. There's a similar situation prevalent amongst many international applicants (and schooling systems) with such analysis being restricted to the college level. (except perhaps for the IB system)</p>

20

<p>I guess I don't really have anything to add, except that I work in my school's admissions office, and most of the essays I've seen are in pretty sad shape. Obviously I don't sit there and read through all of them but I will read a bit of one if something catches my eye, or read through the first few sentences of a few random ones sometimes. Most of them are not eye-catching at all, and a lot of them are pretty sloppily written. Occasionally I'll come across one that goes in the opposite direction...an overly pretentious essay by someone who has clearly been told they're a good writer one too many times, and probably should not be allowed to own a thesaurus. I can only assume that they use them to judge personality and interest in the major, because if they judged them based on writing talent no one would get in.</p>

<p>Unfortunately it doesn't seem to get much better. We always had to do peer reviews in all of my freshman writing classes, and we had to do peer reviews for one of my classes last term too (senior year). I remember I always hated them freshman year because I would get through the paper and not know what else to write for a comment besides "learn grammar, start over again". Most of the senior year papers were better, but some were still a bit questionable. We also have a writing center where you are supposed to be able to go and have your papers looked over, but they never have anything to say about mine except for one or two comments like "underline this title instead of italicizing it" or "you used this word twice in the last 3 sentences, look up a synonym in a thesaurus".</p>

<p>As far as I can remember in high school, we did not really write that much. We might do one or two big writing assignments per year for history/social studies type classes, and maybe one every month or two for actual English classes. I remember there being a lot of emphasis on 5-paragraph essays: intro paragraph with 'thesis statement' at the end, 1 paragraph for each point you were making, conclusion paragraph. I think the hardest transition for me to make was going between that format and regular college papers that had to be at least x pages long. I guess maybe they were trying to teach people to be organized, but it seems kind of useless in the end.</p>