Before I read these essays, I had just finished watching the 2017 movie Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri. I see similar qualities of insight and unresolved intellectual curiosity in the three essays as is in the Three Billboards movie.
If it were up to me, all three essay authors would have been admitted regardless of their grades, standardized test scores or extracurricular activities. Clearly, they get it.
@JenJenJenJen no one is interested in those kids and I doubt any of them got into more than one school.
I just read all the comments posted prior to my impressions shared in posts #19 & in #20 above.
Very interesting how all of us can read the same three writings and have such very different understandings & experiences. And that is a key element in all three of these remarkable essays–deriving substantially more out of every day common experiences.
And you keep repeating yourself: you think they are remarkable. I think they are trite and mercenary. I seriously doubt these were written and re-written by these kids either. Authentic they are not is my reaction. They are designed to elicit sympathy and guilt for their suffering and struggles. But as a society we are suckers for a victim. Which is why roughly 50% of all SAT/ACT test takers get accommodations. Applicants are calling themselves transgender, mixed race, hispanic and any other thing they can grab onto to win the sympathy lottery. No other applicants that are not a prized PR bucket can afford to eschew the advantage of ED/EA, @JenJenJenJen. Further no other applicants could get away with comments like pulsing veins and jettisoned churros…
@Center: Why are you so angry ?
These essays are very well written and check a lot of boxes. They also leave me completely indifferent. They feel highly polished and impersonal even as the students talk about their personal experiences. But I’m obviously not sitting on the Harvard adcom.
I’ll give it my subjective best.
The first essay about math and music, while well written, would have benefited from a topic sentence to guide the reader. Why is this guy going on about the synergy of the two, with well placed asides about Mu Alpha Theta and MITES? He tells us at the end. That sentence, or something like it, should have gone first. It felt like he was trying a bit too hard to be sophisticated and I didn’t get a clear read on him as an individual.
The second essay I found more successful. I felt like a HS senior might have written it. I don’t know which prompt he chose so I can’t speak to how well he answered it. I did get a sense of him as a person and how he sees the world. It was less clear about how insight into his stream of consciousness would make him a more compelling applicant or what that might bring to campus. It did show that he could write a story about himself and where he comes from that felt genuine.
While you did not mention it, I’ll add that I also think that the Costco essay is not a good model to follow. Sure, it is funny and memorable. But much of the writing seems forced to me. While her sense of humor came through clearly, Costco as an incubator of intellectual curiosity fell a bit flat. It also felt more about Costco and less about her.
My 2 cents - a college advisor once said that if you dropped an anonymous copy of your essay on the floor that a friend or teacher should be able to identify it as yours if they picked it up and read it. Use your own voice.
Adding one more vote to the “costco essay is overdone and not what got this minority student into a top school”. It didnt keep her out, but it didnt get her in. Ditto for the essay a few years back where a student fused words together to stay in the word count. Some thought it was clever. Not me.
I honestly didn’t like any of them. The first two seemed mechanical, devoid of personality, designed to check boxes. Maybe that’s what they did? The third one, I’m always doubtful of people who claim to have vivid memories from when they were two years old. As a consequence, I find it hard to buy into the story.