"… Add, too, the litany of other administrative burdens that drag down the application process. Writing a personal statement, for example, takes a significant investment of time and opens up advantages for wealthy applicants who may have parents, tutors and essay coaches to help in its composition. Supplemental essay prompts require still more personal resources, and the most common prompt – “Why Us?” – leverages applicants with the means to visit campus and to use that experience in the essay. Even the sheer variety of due dates makes meeting deadlines an administrative maze.
I haven’t even touched on how the steps for receiving financial aid intensify the administrative burdens of applying. A bipartisan bill released last December promises to ease the financial aid application process. We should be hopeful, but given how recent beneficial changes to the college application process have also resulted in unintended complications, we have reason to be a bit skeptical at the same time …
… The longer I work in the admissions space, the more I think students would benefit from a uniform application process. There are too many distinct due dates, too many supplemental essay prompts, too many separate requirements for individual colleges. I know that a post-CEPP world means that colleges need to be careful about coordinating with other institutions, but a truly common application would lessen the administrative burdens on applicants and likely send more students to college."
Curious… how many institutions actually have essay requirements that are college specific? Meaning the prompt is unique to that school. Seems like most of the prompts my D18 had were pretty much all the same (for example U of Richmond typically has as a choice prompt about spiders… but you can choose others).
I understand the need to help URM, lower income, and first gen students get to college, but US colleges, especially selective ones, can’t eliminate EVERYTHING. Otherwise, we end up with a stats driven system, which doesn’t help lower income and first gen kids either, right? I can’t see that colleges will one day admit students based on grades alone.
Disadvantaged students need to have better opportunities well before they get to college, starting in their early years of school. I don’t have a solution. I don’t think the drive to get rid of tests and essays is helpful though. In fact, essays can give disadvantaged students a chance to show more of who they are and the issues they face. If anything, it might give these students a little more of a chance.
I think these colleges need to justify the cost of the application that adds up every time you apply. Do we think they are really reading the essays, personal statements, evaluating grades and other factors of thousand of students? They created this impression that your 'creative writing" should be different from other students to distinguish you and give a better chance. This is the “business of the application” even before you get to the admission and expensive tuition.
There is no fairness or equal opportunity. It is sad that education has reached this level of degradation in the US.
And just saying, it’s pretty clear to me that @lindagaf noted “selective colleges” and that not all colleges will move to admitting based on stats alone.
One of the primary reasons for supplemental questions IS to distinguish among applicants. It’s not another set of hs writing prompts, not meant to just fill space. How you answer reflects what you know of that college and what it wants, how you match. If it’s too much for you, sure, apply to those that look at stats primarily.
And blaming rich families as if they all produce better apps? You really think so? Based on what? Or is it more assuming? Try to know what does matter.
In some ways, stats driven admission is more fair, but again, disadvantaged students will get the short end of the stick if admissions are based only on stats.
Are you still trying to convince us that parental money is not a substantial advantage for the kid in preparing for college admission, making the applications, and paying for college, regardless of how selective the target colleges are or whether they use stats only or additional criteria like essays?
Tons! My daughter had to write SO many essays. Most she applied to had the “Why here?” essay and many had several more. Multiple ones had the “diversity essay” - worded something like, “We value a diverse student body. What will you bring to our community?” And even though she had multiple of those, they had different twist and word counts. So, she couldn’t just reuse her essays. Heck, Rice even has “the box” where you have to upload a photo of something that “appeals to you” with no explanation. That one doesn’t take up a lot of writing time, but the kids agonize over what to choose and try to second guess what admissions is looking for.
She got to the point where she started ruling out schools that were not super top choices if their application process was too extensive. And she applied to a couple of safeties because their process was simple (and she wanted some safeties to fall back on it needed).
Even both of our state schools had an essay prompt - “Why us?” - unique to the school. And both of their honors programs/colleges had 2/3 unique essay prompts, along the lines of, “If you could create a new course at this college, what would it be and why would it be a good fit for the students here?”
S19 wrote 17 essays, 5 long paragraph responses, and 2 lists for 9 schools. He could borrow bits and pieces from one to another, but they required careful editing to make sure the final essays were coherent and school specific.
That reminds of of one of Wake Forest’s prompts - create a list of 10 things. What ten things? Any ten things, just a list with no title, leave it to the app reader to decide how they tie together. S19 made a list of his 10 favorite pieces to play on the piano, a friend made a list of her 10 favorite lipstick shades. (For what it’s worth, he got in, she didn’t.)
Money does remove limits and provide opportunities to use the smarts, achieve the accomplishments, and demonstrate thinking skills. You obviously overlook that.
But then don’t you also favor preference for unearned legacy status that correlates to privilege and advantage?
Short of moving to admissions by random draw (actually proposed by some on CC) students from wealthier families will always have and edge: better schools, test prep, money for apps etc.
Many of the changes discussed in the article, to me, seem to make things more difficult. Self-reported test scores or grades eventually need to be validated (I assume).
And, if we value the distinct cultures fostered by different schools, w need to ensure that colleges have the tools they need to build their classes. If this means supplemental essays, students just need to invest the time they need to craft them.
Money surely doesn’t buy smarts, but money does give students opportunities to better prepare for and navigate the very complex and college-specific admission processes for the very selective colleges. At the other of the day, the current complex admission processes don’t even produce student bodies that necessarily correlate that well with smarts, certainly not compared to some UK schools.