<p>Well, Klements, did you find the applicant’s answer to be impressive?</p>
<p>I didn’t.</p>
<p>To say that he looked forward to college as the time when he could finally fail seemed to be a roundabout way of saying that he had not yet taken any risks.</p>
<p>Okay, he gets points for recognizing (or being coached) that failure is okay and an acceptable, if not necessary, part of growth and innovation. But in making that point he’s also saying that he hasn’t yet ventured down that path. This is like an applicant saying, "I look forward to college as the time when I can…(a) start getting involved in extracurricular activities, (b) really buckle down and focus on my GPA, (c) start doing community service.</p>
<p>If this admission officer values risk taking, then he should be more impressed by the person who talks about failures than the one who asserts he has the untested and unproven capacity to fail. If this admission officer hasn’t seen applicants who have already failed and flopped, then he’s talking to the wrong people. These people who already failed aren’t going to talk about college being the place where they will finally take risks and finally fail because that’s not how college is going to be different for them.</p>
<p>So why isn’t this article about the applicants who talk about their failures in interviews?</p>