<p>mommusic I understand what they were looking for is the EC’s but at face value the question is a little surprising the first time you see it on an application. One tends to immediately think I am not diverse. I should mention that at both of these schools my D’s class rank, GPA and test scores made her an automatic admit so it didn’t really matter if she would bring diversity to the campus. </p>
<p>And I am sure her hobbies, EC’s and career plans match hundreds of other applicants.</p>
<p>I think folks put way too much time and emphasis on essays. Not even sure adcoms really read most of them. Perhaps for borderline admits, but I assume that most people are admitted on stats alone, regardless of what adcoms say. My kids were/are both performance majors with admissions based almost solely on audition. Their essays were “meh” and I doubt they really made much of a difference. That being said, S did receive an email from an admissions director glowing about something he said in his essay - not that it was well written, but he did mention an impressive achievement that wasn’t in his general application. So…I guess some people do read these things.</p>
<p>Are we talking about the main essays here or the random supplement essays that many elite colleges force upon you? I would agree that those supplement essay questions sometimes appear to be written by sadists; they provide little additional value other than seeing how much time you will waste jumping through hoops to “prove” your interest in the school.</p>
<p>I have read that most colleges don’t put that much stock in the essays, because there is wide recognition that some applicants have coaching and others don’t.</p>
<p>I do think that applicants need to understand that not all (or even any) application essays are creative writing exercises. The schools want to know about the student, beyond the stats and EC’s, and sometimes a straightforward answer is what they want, not an expansive answer aiming to be “unique.”</p>
<p>And the essays do demonstrate basic writing skills needed for college, at least for some schools.</p>
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<p>And on selecting extracurriculars and entering competitions and getting research opportunities some applicants have coaching and others don’t. How are essays any different?</p>
<p>I think short answer questions that ask the student to describe himself, his academic and EC accomplishments, his activities and interests, his career goals, and his reasons for wanting to attend that particular school are all fair game. These do allow the student to demonstrate literacy, show some individuality, and give additional information not on the application. </p>
<p>But essays that require true creative writing are unfair, in my opinion. For most majors and most college assignments, creative writing skills are not necessary. Research skills and academic, expository writing skills are needed. Yes, one needs to be able to express oneself well, and you could make an argument that some imaginative word choice is needed for self-marketing. But the basic application questions would cover that sufficiently. The essays that require the student to write a chapter of their own autobiography 20 years from now, a poem about themselves, a letter to some imaginary prospective roommate at this school to which they haven’t even been admitted yet…those go too far.</p>
<p>I think that we have to differentiate between an applicant who writes his own essays (with an editing from an English teacher) and the one who is being coached on what/how to write to appeal to adcoms of each college. We all know of college consultant companies who make a lot of money advertising such services. I do agree that while an admission rep believes that he is reading an “original” essay, it might be a product of two, three people with an applicant’s name on top.</p>
<p>I just don’t see how colleges can put much weight on essays–unless they convey something really bad–because they really can’t tell who wrote them. I know they say they can tell if somebody other than the student wrote it–but how do they know they can tell? I suppose an essay might help you if it conveys information that isn’t present elsewhere in the application.</p>
<p>On diversity essays–my middle-class, white S wrote that what he’d bring was familiarity of a diverse environment–how coming from a non-majority school gave him a different angle on ‘diversity’ because it was the norm for him. Got admitted to that school with a big merit scholarship–had to write 3 essays overall for them, and I think they set his app apart–not because of his writing style (though it is very good), but because they showed how he thought.</p>
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<p>Well, no. I have the feeling that they are looking for some thinking a bit deeper than that. :rolleyes: (crossposted with garland)</p>
<p>My impression is that, at least at highly selective schools, the essays are part of the picture, along with grades, course rigor, class rank, recommendations, ECs, and test scores. And as such, a valuable piece of the puzzle. What’s the problem with that? Any of those things can be affected by factors other than sheer brilliance and/or work on the part of the student acting alone. I really think people need to get over complaining about whatever piece where they–or their kid–doesn’t shine. If your kid is a rebellious intellectual who isn’t handed all of the awards by the school staff, s/he will have a chance to go in and anonymously blow them out of the water on the SATs. If your kid is an affable pleaser with great people skills, s/he will probably have leadership positions and awards that the rebel does not. And so forth. Different schools will be looking for different types. It all generally tends to work out.</p>
<p>I am fine with the common app essays. But I HATE the supplemental ones. My D will end up writing a total of 18 supplemental essays in order to apply to 10 colleges. Plus the common app essays and scholarship essays. Blech.</p>
<p>She liked the college that wanted “Why X” in 47 words. That lent itself to a few brief sentences on why she actually wanted to go there, not paragraphs of text.</p>
<p>I am definitely with Hunt (and others) who decry the random application section called “essays”. Take a minute to think about the huge effort and expense the College Board has taken in recent years to eliminate fraud in standardized testing - and yet it still occurs!</p>
<p>If anyone believes that students limit themselves to “editing” or “collaboration” in the creation of the essays, they are hopelessly naive. If an applicant with money wants an advantage, they will find abundant choices for essay writers.</p>
<p>@Consolation - “My impression is that, at least at highly selective schools, the essays are part of the picture, along with grades, course rigor, class rank, recommendations, ECs, and test scores. And as such, a valuable piece of the puzzle. What’s the problem with that”. The obvious answer is that all the other criteria you cite can be easily verified with a simple phone call. However, the essay can only be taken at face value - there is no way to determin who played what roles in its creation</p>
<p>If you are comfortable with your application losing out to someone who can hire big guns, then essays are for you. However, if you prefer a standardized, objective evaluation then essays should be a minimal consideration, if at all.</p>
<p>My guess is that colleges continue to use essays because it gives unqualified applicants hope (resulting in more app fees) and essentially costs the college nothing.</p>
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I’m not so sure–I worry, rather, that adcoms really do believe that they can tell if an essay was written by the student, and that they really do think they can gain useful insight into the mind of a 17-year-old by means of the essay. And I have to say, sometimes they probably can. But at the margins, it’s too easily manipulable, in my opinion.</p>
<p>This thread is on track to end up in the usual way, with the usual posters telling the rest of us to face the reality that colleges are free ask for whatever they want from students and use whatever data they choose to admit or deny applicants. And then the other usual suspects will ask us why we care about this, and then they’ll declare we shouldn’t care or are ____________ if we care, and for Pete’s sake there are plenty of good schools out there that don’t require creative essays and so apply to them.</p>
<p>Whatever. IMO, which I’m aware the colleges don’t care about, the pendulum of evaluating applications has swung too far away from assessing core competencies for success in an academic environment toward all kinds of less critical and harder-to-evaluate things like diversity, personality, passion, leadership, community service, athleticism, likeability, uniqueness, and maturity, among others. All of this is designed to keep them from getting sued when they admit less academically qualified applicants for various reasons we might not like. They can simply say the person wrote a more creative essay.</p>
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<p>Well, what I am comfortable with is that my applicant did not lose out because others hired big guns. (At least, not completely. One of his classmates did hire a college consultant who did some packaging, but on the other hand the kid had stellar qualifications without that.)</p>
<p>I know that he was not the type of person that a couple of schools that rejected him were primarily looking for. His classmates who did get into those schools WERE that type. I think that the schools in question make somewhat of a mistake in valuing the BMOC type over intellectuals, but hey, that’s their choice. S wrote a personal statement that clearly showed who he was. I think it was their loss.</p>
<p>I do think that adcoms who think that they can tell what a 17-yr-old writes are probably wrong some of the time. I also think that they favor the easy read, sob stories, and the like. After S was deferred from his first choice school, we switched his essays around on the advice of several knowledgeable people, so that the “philosophical” essay that was his original personal statement was supplemental, and his “more accessible to someone reading their 100th essay of the day at 1 AM” essay was the main one.</p>
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<p>How do really you know they even read his essay? </p>
<p>My take on Essay’s is they prevent people from applying to a massive number of colleges with a few clicks of the mouse. Even if one pays a college essay writer at elance.com create them, they are still a pain and take extra effort to match each essay to each college.</p>
<p>When I was in college, I won a writing award from the English dept. sophomore year. That same year, a professor in a different department told me he hated my writing style and wanted to rip up my papers. So, I doubt two professors from the same college would agree on which of two strong applicants’ essays was the better one. One could argue that admissions officers are even less qualified.</p>
<p>Furthermore, pity the poor student who believes that he should have his essay reviewed by an adult and choses the wrong adult. He might ask his high school English teacher to read his essay, but that person may very well make editing recommendations that hurt rather than help the applicant, such as by muting the student’s voice. Heck, if it were some of my kid’s teachers, they’d correct grammatically correct sentences to make them incorrect. That’s another reason I’m uncomfortable with essays carrying a lot of weight.</p>
<p>SAT/ACT writing scores of 10+ (max 12) should mean something for even the most selective of the elite colleges. If these scores are not indicative of innate writing competency, I don’t know what would be; surely not the heavily edited and polished personal essays? Arguments that some kids don’t write well under time pressure or can’t deal with unknown prompts sound vacuous. It is also equally easy to make similar arguments for Critical reading or even Math sections (solving 60 ACT math problems in 60 minutes) - if given more time and a dictionary, most kids will score significantly higher or even ace them.</p>
<p>Back to SAT/ACT writing scores and essays - apparently, by relegation, the actual essays are downloaded for comparing the submitted personal essays against a reference, when disparity from academic record is evident or fraud is suspected. Is that their primary role at selective colleges these days? What a waste of time and resources! Say Anachronism, any one?</p>
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<p>I think this is very true. My S took his essay to the person in his college counseling office who red-lined it to boring beyond belief. BUT… what it told me is that she missed the point, and if she missed the point, it wasn’t written well enough, which sent S back to the beginning to rewrite.</p>
<p>There are a lot of schools that are a numbers game - in fact, most large state Universities are all about your test scores, GPA and class rank. I am thinking with in incoming class of 10k, no one is reading the essays IMO. But here’s the thing… if we think the essays don’t matter (or shouldn’t), why should recommendations? I mean, you select who you want to write on your behalf under the assumption they’ll say good things. At my kids’ school, it was well known if a teacher wasn’t going to sing your praises they’d just decline the request rather than sandbag a kid. And my recommendation to any kid seeking recommendations is to find your most challenging teacher (not necessarily the one you liked best or who liked you best) where you put out your best efforts regardless of final grade who is also the best writer. </p>
<p>As for the essay itself. A kid I know had his English teacher use their college essays as a writing assignment for in-class peer review. Talk about risking losing your own voice! I told said kid to just write something benign as an exercise because there is no way you can truly do a personal essay justice if it is being judged by a bunch of teenagers who are essentially competing with you. However, I do think it’s important to have a trusted someone to see, like my son, if what you intend to say is actually being said (in 500 words thereabouts). And I see nothing wrong with putting your best foot forward with a little editing help - moving a sentence here or there, saying a word is unclear. And while some use their English teachers who are good with a red-pen, others have Aunts, uncles etc who are just as good, if not better, because they truly know the student.</p>
<p>What I have a problem with, however, is the number of folks who literally have someone else write their essays for them. I have helped all three of my children with their college essays and I have reviewed and made suggestions for several more of their classmates and their friends. Mostly, however, it starts with a discussion about what they might want to say because it seems to me what is hardest for HS seniors to do is start. It is this brainstorming about what they might want to write about that gives them the confidence to just write. And when you are applying to some of these selective schools and you have a 3.8 GPA, several AP’s with 5’s, mid 700’s SAT, and over a 30 ACT, with a smattering of EC’s with a leadership position or two- Your essay and recs are all that’s going to differentiate you. </p>
<p>But here is my strongest support in favor of a personal essay. The essay is the ONLY piece of the application the student has complete control over in that moment in time. You can’t go back and improve your GPA, you can’t change scores, and you can’t be elected president of the spirit club in the final quarter of the calendar year (when applications are due). And frankly, if you want to write an essay about the stupidity of college essays that in no way can capture who you are or what you can bring to the college campus in depth, diversity or academic prowess - that is your choice. And IMO, this is the point. And NO WAY, NO HOW does writing on SAT’s mean jack. No one should write that way. Writing is about edit and rewrite, not whatever flies off your head in a 4 hour testing situation. That is all about length of sentences, mixing up your pace, etc. You can write gibberish lies and get a good writing score. And worse, I think, if anything, it’s far more prejudicial against the math/science kid than the application essay.</p>
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<p>Actually, it can be entirely reasonable that a writing style that works well for one subject (e.g. English literature) does not work well for another subject (e.g. math). Of course, there is no way a college applicant to know what style an admissions reader prefers.</p>