<p>Fascinating event last night at Boston University, and very well-attended too. After a promo of what BU has to offer, admissions counselors broke up the group into smaller groups. We critiqued three actual (but I suspect the names have been changed) applications. Anyone else attend? My takeaways:
Taking a rigorous course load throughout including senior year is good.
Staying with foreign language all 4years is good.
Demonstrated interest in the university is good.
Essays were all less than perfect, but points given for being less than polished (and therefore actually student's own work). Negatives were essays that lacked depth about the student (e.g. The "grandfather essay" which is where a student talks about how great their grandfather (or parent, coach or teacher) is without talking enough about him or herself.)
Extracurriculars are good, but if they soak up so much time that attention to coursework suffers, that raises concern about success in college. You can do extracurriculars anytime, but an application to college should show you are a dedicated and motivated student.
High test scores coupled with disproportionately poorer grades was a big negative.
Leadership was mentioned but at least in our group was not talked about at length.</p>
<p>I know essays that aren’t the student’s own work are a big problem, but what about the hapless student who actually produces a “polished” essay with no outside help? That would have been my son.</p>
<p>I participated in a similar exercise at an event at Barnard nine or ten years ago. That exercise produced more insight than 20 information sessions combined. We had real applications with the names and schools blacked out, and no recommendations; we read them in groups of four (and ranked them). </p>
<p>Too-polished essays were not an issue in the set I read. The essays ranged from awful to mediocre. One thing that was clear, however, was that people were far more forgiving of a bad essay from someone whose application screamed “STEM!” than from someone who looked like she wanted to be an English major. Nothing could redeem the application of the literature-focused girl with great grades and a completely pedestrian essay.</p>
<p>The other takeaway was that the most effective applications essentially told a consistent story, one that bound all (or most) of the elements together. That was very powerful, and every group ranked the applications with the clearest stories higher than anything else.</p>
<p>So JHS I have to ask. Given insight to most of an application package Among applicants that might appear similar from the outside (similar SATs and GPAs) did some stand out as much better candidates given an insider’s view of the application?</p>
<p>The mention of essays really got me thinking…I have heard over and over again about the importance of the essay at competitive schools and how the essay can make or break an application. Of all aspects of an application, the essay seems the component most easily fabricated. On one extreme the essay can just be completely written by someone else, but there are more subtle ways of getting assistance. Plagerism for one. Look how many kids each year either post their essays outright on the internet, or ask for volunteer readers. Now if someone is at a loss for a good essay topic, isn’t that a great way to find a not so original starting point? How about input from counselors and teachers and parents and friends and even hired coaches? Even just the editing process-these essays can be in the works for a year or even more, and when the submission comes I am sure many barely resemble the students original work. Much is said about students finding their “inner voice” for these essays and having their true personality shine through, but is that really happening? How many kids really sit down and write their essays 100% on their own without assimilating any outside advice or assistance into the process? No internet searching, no brain storming with Mom or Dad or Uncle Pete that went to Harvard, no English teacher proofreading…100% on their own? And where should the line be drawn?</p>
<p>Brainstorming with other people is 100 percent legit. Getting other people to critique is 100 percent legit. I’d be surprised if most people didn’t write their own essays. Sure, there will be cheaters, but I think many can be smelled out.</p>
<p>So in the brainstorming session someone throws out a tremendous essay idea that a student would have never come up with on their own–once you have a unique concept aren’t you half way there already? Then a dozen people read the essay after the student has written it and make corrections and offer new ideas and tweaks and the essay is rewritten a dozen times. Technically the applicant has written the essay. 100% legit. So if you end up with a mediocre essay, perhaps adcoms just consider you lazy for not taking advantage of the assistance that you could have utilized? I’m not passing judgement–I will definitely play the game and help my kids find their “inner voice”.</p>
<p>Re: the essay. The first assignment senior year at our high school was the college essay. The kids turned theirs in, and got feedback from the HS English teacher. And rewrote, if suggested.</p>
<p>BOTH of my kids rewrote their essays for the English teacher. NEITHER used the rewrite for college applications. Both got accepted to all but one of the schools to which they applied. The suggestions the English teacher made were fine for an English paper. The English teacher suggested my daughter take one “small moment” and expand on that (this was the buzz word in 2006…small moments) but that would have meant only telling a very small part of a great story. To be honest, it wasn’t a great suggestion by the English teacher for a college essay. DD got comments on three letters of acceptance about her essay.</p>
<p>I know at least a couple of colleges my younger son applied to did suggest talking to other people about your essay, having them tell you whether it sounded like you, and getting it proofread for glaring careless mistakes. I don’t think my oldest would ever have gotten started without a lot of brainstorming - in the end the essay was of the “pretty good for an engineer variety”, it sounded like him, had touches of humor and even included the results of a program he wrote. I wish more colleges were clear about their expectations.</p>
<p>My youngest had a teacher who said his main Common Application essay was pretty good, but “not Ivy League or Georgetown” good. He ended up writing another very weird essay that this teacher approved. It didn’t get him into the Ivy League or Georgetown, but a slightly twisted version of it got him into Chicago. For my younger son his biggest request for help was what to cut so that the essays fit into the word limits.</p>
<p>I think you’d have to be crazy to write such an important essay with no input from other people. What if you accidentally tossed off a sentence that made a bad impression? Or what if your whole essay comes across as negative? I have seen kids treat college essays as a confessional where they proclaim their inadequacies, and I don’t doubt that some of the kids who do much worse than expected with college acceptances committed some kind of essay faux pas. On the other hand, I have seen people take it on themselves to rewrite their kids’ essays themselves, input from kid not needed. To me, that crosses a line.</p>
<p>CIEE83,
While it “may be crazy”, there are many teens who take the “I will handle this myself” attitude (for better or for worse)towards the college app process and feel that they can do it independently, without an extra set of eyeballs.</p>
<p>Of the three applications we saw last night, the essay was not a huge focus of the package. The admissions counselors said they usually spend the most time poring over the transcript. With that said, one essay clearly irritated a counselor, so it was more of a case of it having a negative effect. Same candidate also had a 3.1 gpa and SAT score around 2200 - I don’t remember exactly. But it was a negative, and also bolstered by comments in letters that the student was not working to potential. The student had created a smartphone app, but they still felt that s/he was a risky admit due to mediocre academic performance.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info LBowie
Yikes, the letters actually said the student wasn’t working to potential? Was it stated with a positive spin? Hard to believe that a teacher would agree to write a recommendation and then throw the student under the bus! Scary.</p>
<p>They said it in a nice way and pointed out many strengths. There were two letters. One from a teacher and one from the guidance counselor. The counselor also had to mark how difficult the student’s curriculum was and rate the student in other ways so there was no getting around this issue.</p>
<p>Oh, was there mention of the impact of the high school you attend? I wonder how uneven the playing field really is between a top student at a no name public school with limited college prep offerings vs. performing well at prep school/“competitive” public/“ivy feeder”? Of course I have heard a million times that adcoms want to see that you maximize what is available at your given school, but admission results around here don’t support that assertion.</p>
<p>Proudmodx3:
I interview +dozen kids and help coordinate the accept parties afterward for my Ivy alma mater. I see the lists of accepted students and their high schools. While our area has several schools which appear regularly, each year our cohort of accepts is sprinkled with kids from out of the way, hardly known for being academic powerhouse- type high schools. And my alma mater has one of the lowest admit rates extant…</p>
<p>I can attest to you that each year, our area gets some kids admitted from no-name public schools – not bad for a record low admit rate of 6.72 percent</p>
For my younger son his biggest request for help was what to cut so that the essays fit into the word limits.</p>