<p>My son and I attended the info session and campus tour at UVA today. The campus tour guide was by far the best we have seen anywhere. </p>
<p>The best part of the info session was the information about how to write an effective essay. Although UVA itself is completely wrong for my son, that essay advice, summarized on a short handout and discussed in the session, was worth the entire day we spent there. </p>
<p>And yet...I can't help wondering whether the essay advice -- basically to write something which will "move" the reader, make you stand out from the pack and convince the reader to fight for your admission over the hundreds of other candidates with plain vanilla generic essays -- is rather self-serving. </p>
<p>The handout mentions an essay written about lymphoma, a disease which I have. I would never expect my son to take advantage of my disease to secure a place in college.</p>
<p>I wonder how many excellent candidates have been turned away from UVA and other elite colleges, simply because they haven't been able to game the system to produce a word picture which satisfies an idealized image of what college admissions officers want -- the bright, passionate, involved scholar who is going to "make a difference" and "change the world" for the better. </p>
<p>I hope that one day someone will do a study to see how this process turns out. Why have we forced these high school students to think inside the box all these years to get into college, when what we want is to graduate students who will think outside the box to create new jobs, businesses, government policies, technologies, etc. </p>
<p>The UVA official told us today that she is looking for an essay which shows that a student can think outside the box. I don't think she truly believes a 250 or 500 word essay can do that.</p>
<p>The whole process saddens me because colleges aren't going to admit students who don't meet the idealized version of what the admissions officers want to see. Maybe that is the right decision but we might be missing out on admitting some truly great game changers who don't know how to write a good essay.</p>
<p>I believe you gained too negative a view of the process. My CommonApp essay was about how nature moved me emotionally, and how I believed human society was negatively affecting it. My UVa essays were about how I wanted to change architecture for the better and how I thought the song “When Doves Cry” by Prince was more than just a pop song. I didn’t “take advantage” of anything. I wasn’t “playing the system.” Colleges see right past that. They see when people are trying to win them over. What they want is true passion. A student doesn’t have to take advantage of a health condition to get into college. They have to play up their passions, write something they care about. That is the real way to get into college. Admissions officers will ignore bad grammar if content is pristine, and couldn’t care less about perfect grammar if the content is empty. Sure, some kids will play the game and get into good colleges. But the large majority will get in because they have a real passion for what they do, and I know your son can do that.</p>
<p>I’m assuming your son is a junior? You’re just in the pre-application freak out mode. Once you start looking at the complete application the essay part will seem a bit less contrived. I thought the UVA app. was pretty good at gaining insight on the applicant. I thought Stanford and Rice had good applications too. Columbia offered no wiggle room for me. All in all, I agree though, one essay is not enough, as I recall UVA had a couple. If your son is a junior I would suggest he start playing around with some personal essays, the sooner the better. You may be surprised at what comes out. And I agree about not wanting to write about a disease in the family - my dad has a medical issue that would cause alot of tears in admissions but I wouldn’t dream of using it - to each his own I guess. Drop some advice you get and shoot from the hip… good luck</p>
<p>Perhaps the Dean giving your session was trying to convey that we are craving personal statements, which are much more interesting to read than the standard, academic essay. Many students go on autopilot when they see the word “essay” and give us a formulaic piece of writing (intro paragraph, three supporting details, concluding paragraph). </p>
<p>We aren’t expecting essays about epic tragedy or heroism. Most students haven’t experienced those things yet. After all, we’re talking about 17 year olds who are still navigating the sometimes difficult social and academic waters of high school. </p>
<p>We get essays about silly or quirky or unusual topics all the time. What makes them great isn’t the topic, but how the student writes about that topic. I’ve read essays with pretty mundane topics that have been wonderful because the student has been thoughtful or clever or enthusiastic about that topic.</p>
<p>By the way, what makes that essay you referenced so amazing is the fantastic way in which the student wrote, not the diagnosis.
<p>is a solid B student who takes average classes and, according to the dad, bombed her SATs. She’s going to an Ivy League school to play field hockey. Not only that, she found out months ago. There’s alot of unfairness in the admission process. I don’t think the fact that an admissions officer welcomes the opportunity to read something that sounds different and genuine, or quirky and funny, is one of them. My two cents.</p>
<p>I can understand why a super field hockey player with a B-average may get into a stellar college. Sports is very very important for our colleges. And I do not have much problem if 5% or so incoming students are superior athletes but somewhat weak academically compared to the general student body. </p>
<p>The importance of essay in the admission process is not understood by me as yet. A good story and a terrific writing can both be borrowed and I just dont understand how the adcoms can make out the authenticity of the work. Maybe I am very off-track and they actually can. I am coming off as a cynic and a suspicious kind and I am very sorry for that but just dont know why the essay is so vital.</p>
My personal belief is that the essay is important because the objective doesn’t tell the whole story. Most students have made the academic choices needed to be competitive. They have the top courses, the good grades, and the nice test scores. Teacher recs these days are all positive, if not glowing. Most students have a pretty impressive list of activities, too.</p>
<p>What do we do to narrow things down? We start looking at the subjective to assemble that interesting, well rounded class we’re charged with admitting. The essays are where we get a sense of the student’s voice, what makes them passionate, what part they might play in our community.</p>
<p>Thanks DeanJ. Hopefully, over the next 4 years I will get a little more understanding from my S about the whole process when he gets into college this fall.</p>
<p>Goodschool, just a parent with a condition of ‘Atrial Fibrillation’ - nothing serious.</p>
<p>UVAvisitor, wow interesting that you had this reaction to UVA visit & essay advice. when we visited the administrator explained how admissions was sick of what they called the apocalypse now essay! yet they always manage to ask essay questions like what have you overcome/what is your greatest weakness etc virtually guaranteeing a negative response! s said he wanted to write an essay on how normal & well adjusted he is! ha ha. seriously google the website called “This I believe”- many short essays that are passionate will give you great food for thought</p>
<p>When my son went through the application orocess last year, I think his best essay was in response to Pomona’s prompt: tell us about something you do just for fun. Finally, a chance to tell a vivid story that wasn’t necessarily aimed at revealing what a stellar person the applicant is! I find the college essay perplexing - I think the advice Dean J posted above is great, but it’s still hard to know what would be a good topic for a kid who hasn’t faced huge challenges in life. Tell a story, tell what makes him tick, talk about his interests, write about an intellectual topic? I really don’t know what works in the eyes of ad officers.</p>
<p>If your struggles have affected him then perhaps it is something that he should write about. I was always told to choose a topic I cared about and I believe that is the best advice. It is impossible to write any other essay than the one you know. You don’t know who will read it and what they might want to read. </p>
<p>All you can really do is write to the best of your ability and hope it measures up.</p>
<p>UVAVisitor, first, the advice that the UVA counselor gave was excellent advice (the UVA talk gave me the best college essay advice…). Second, you are worrying too much!!! Calm down. </p>
<p>Elite universities have many qualified applicants to choose from. These colleges demand out of the box essays because they need a way to filter through all the students with 4.0s and great SATs. Stanford, in its early admission round rejected many applicants that had 2300+ SATs. (hahahah proved my point that you don’t need a 2400!!) But even these colleges do not REQUIRE the type of essays that you described. One of my Stanford essays was about my family, the other was about my experiences at Stanford Summer College, and the last was about my science fair project. I got accepted and my essays were not profound. </p>
<p>With respect to UVA, my essays were fantastic, exactly what the counselor described. But, this is not because I was trying to get into the mind of an admissions counselor. I decided to write about passions that I have had since childhood. If you write your essay about something you love, you will not only enjoy writing the essay, but also (more often then not) write an interesting essay. So ja. Don’t worry; be happy. Tell your son to write an essay about something he loves… it works.</p>