Legacy rant

Parents Forum
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<p>Did it ever occur to you that maybe the reason your son got rejected from BC was because of a weak essay topic? Something that might seem good in theory, but didn’t manage to catch fire when he wrote it. (I’m not trying to attack you – see below for more explanation)</p>

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<p>Sometimes parents are way too close to see things objectively. </p>

<p>My son is dyslexic and was not able to read until he was in the 6th grade. He overcame his learning barriers and refused accommodations, so naturally I was very proud of him when he was a straight A student in high school and had top test scores, and of course I suggested “how I overcame my dyslexia” as a topic for his essay – which he rightfully rejected.</p>

<p>I thought my son’s ultimate choice for a college essay was nuts. It fit into the “risk” category – as in… you want to write about WHAT!!! But it worked for him – his voice came through, he got accepted to all but one of the colleges he applied to, apparently without leading any ad coms to toss his application away in disgust – and the essay was memorable. </p>

<p>The reason I asked the “weak essay topic” question above is that you seem to be fixated on finding an external reason for your son’s rejection, branding the system as giving an “unfair” advantage to a student who is a legacy. But its quite possible that there were other issues at work, too – and one could have been that your son’s true voice was muffled because he was writing what he thought he was supposed to write, and so the admissions committee lost the opportunity to learn something new and different about him. </p>

<p>So all I am saying is that before you cast about for an external, blame-the-system explanation – you might consider that each person ultimately has control over, and is responsible for, their own application. If there is too much parent and not enough student in the application, the result may be that the application fails simply because it doesn’t have the emotional resonance that could have been there if another path had been taken.</p>

<p>I think my son was very right to reject my suggestion to write about dyslexia – because it is very difficult to write about topics like disabilities, health conditions, severe hardship, death in the family, etc. without coming off as sounding self-pitying or maudlin – and because the writer risks becoming defined by the disability/hardship. </p>

<p>Also, it is often far more effective when the “pity” type issues are brought to light through other information in an application packet, such as information provided by the guidance counselor.</p>

<p>I used to read essays for CC students, and several times I was asked to help choose between two essays – the kid would have written two essays, one on their own and one that their parent had suggested, and would be seeking an outside opinion. Always the parents were strongly lobbying for their topic – and the kid-chose essay was invariably much better, while the parental-chosen topic seemed prosaic and lifeless. Now maybe that’s simply because the kids wouldn’t have been asking for help from strangers unless they already knew that their own essays were better than the parent-chosen topics – so I’m not saying that would always be the case. But I do know that when a parent is hovering too closely, it can be stifling. </p>

<p>I don’t know your nephew but I am sure that there must be a young man who has hopes and dreams and ideas and aspirations that have nothing whatsoever to do with his heart condition… and I hope for his sake that he will have the opportunity to fashion his college application in a way that is a springboard for his future rather than a mere reiteration of his past.</p>

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<p>The SAT1 now does include an essay. I wonder what adcoms think if that essay is horrendous and the essays with the app are good. </p>

<p>Of course, there are kids who have their college essays written for them. Plagiarism, buying term papers and essays, having mom/dad/sister/brother write your papers, having your papers written under close supervision, getting micro managed edits are being done all of the time, and most of the time the kids are not caught. That’s why it continues to happen. All that can be done is to make the penalty severe if the kid is caught.</p>

<p>I’ve never felt that the essays count that much unless they catch the adcoms eye. That can be for good or bad reasons. It could be that the language just doesn’t jive with the image of a high schooler. Or too much difference between writing styles in essays. In such cases, a big fat deny would be put on the file and I doubt the student will ever know why. But given the number of kids accepted at schools that have had a lot of help on their applications,never mind just the essays, I don’t think that the adcoms can tell, and unless it is jumping out at them, like some fool mom signing the form swearing the essay is the kid’s with her own name while burning the midnight oil (yeah, it happens, it’s not going to make any difference. I know too many kids accepted at select schools with lousy essays. My own kids included.</p>

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<p>I can think of many better essay topics. Anything the kid picks him/herself. I teach English at the college level and teach kids how to write.</p>

<p>Coming up with the topic is really an important part of the process. I am pleased both my kids had abundant ideas, and S’s essay got a special letter from the U of Chicago adcom, so I think his ideas were fabulous.</p>

<p>However, when you said, “has completely outlined his essay,” I did take you literally. Why wouldn’t I when you said she had already chosen the first line?</p>

<p>It’s great that that is not the case.</p>

<p>D’s first line: “I am a dork.” I could never, ever have thought of that, and she got into her number 1 dream college.</p>

<p>S asked what he should write about. I refused to answer. I simply said, “What you really care about.” He chose Star Wars. Got him into an Ivy, U of Chicago and a slew of very selective LAC’s. It was an amazing essay on Star Wars, including a discussion of the ethics of the Jedi Code. </p>

<p>I really wouldn’t have suggested he write about Star Wars.</p>

<p>Of course, it’s fine to make a suggestion, but writing can only have life when its contents are something a student really wants to talk about.</p>

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<p>My son’s U. of Chicago “prompt” essay was about the semiotics of an image of Madonna. No, not that one – an image of Madonna on one of her album covers. He did get in.</p>

<p>And, yes, he cared a great deal about Madonna. After all, he listened to more of her music from the age of 8 or 9 than anyone else with the possible exception of Tori Amos! (Another icon of the younger members of a particular community.)</p>

<p>I was extremely dubious about the topic, but I guess I was wrong to doubt him.</p>

<p>Although I do believe it’s a good thing he wasn’t applying in second grade, when his essay would almost certainly have been about Elvira Mistress of the Dark.</p>

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<p>Well, that would probably have been a great essay, too.</p>

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<p>It’s not the topic – it’s the degree to which the essay succeeds in conveying something important about the student or his/her personality, or that it draws the attention of the admissions readers in a positive way. </p>

<p>I mean – we had a regular parent poster here on CC who was dismayed 2 years ago when his daughter chose to write about her dirty socks. She, of course, was admitted to a very top elite college with that essay. (Which may have helped, or may have been ignored in favor of her other excellent qualifications – we’ll never know – but what we do know is that the kid’s essay didn’t match the parent’s idea of a good topic).</p>

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<p>A friend’s D wrote about Pez and graduated from Harvard and is now a doctor.</p>

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<p>My younger son wrote about origami and being dragged around museums by his parents. </p>

<p>He also wrote a funny EC essay about how our neighborhood association has no institutional memory and the limits of primary sources.</p>

<p>My older son started his essay with the results of a computer program that compiled examples of exemplary essays he found on various college website into one semi-comprehensible paragraph. The message being he’d much rather write a computer program than a college essay!</p>

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<p>And here it is… years and years down the line… and you still remember the essay topic about the Pez.</p>

<p>I always try to envision a scene in the room of an admissions committee meeting. They are all sitting around a table going through files. There is a stack of perhaps 50 files sitting on the table. The chair of the committee pulls a file from the top of the stack and reads the name of the student. Then someone asks, which one is that?</p>

<p>The answer, the one with the really high SAT score or the high school class valedictorian isn’t going to cut it. There are a lot of high scores and class valedictorians in that stack.</p>

<p>Now…the girl who wrote the essay about Pez – that works. </p>

<p>Someone else chuckles… oh yes, I got a laugh out of that. Isn’t she the one who also won a community service award for her volunteer work at a local hospice? … and pretty soon everyone around the table is nodding and smiling and remarking upon what a fine addition the student will be to their incoming class. </p>

<p>Of course it doesn’t always work that way. The first response could be, that was a strange essay - I didn’t get the point. It doesn’t look like she’s all that serious about academics and the file gets tossed into the reject pile. You don’t know… but at least everyone around the table knows which student they are talking about.</p>

<p>Because I have another mental picture – and that’s the one where it is late March and there are only 10 slots left to fill in the class and there are 600 files left to read and an exhausted admission panel. And maybe then there are a lot of students who get passed to the reject pile simply because no one can remember anything significant from their application package. So it may be better to have written the essay the admissions people hated than to have written the essay they forgot, at least at that stage of the game.</p>

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<p>Heard a very interesting essay comment from an admissions rep - picture he has in his hand 10 essays without names on them and he drops them all. Can he identify which essay goes with which applicant? The generic “sports injury leads to personal growth” - no idea - he has read dozens of those. The “what I learned from my late grandfather” - touching - but he has read so many of those. But wait - here’s an essay about cheese - how the student loves cheese, has studied cheese making and compares the various influential people in his life to different types of cheese. It’s quirky and insightful and he readily matches that essay to its proper file. I always keep this story in mind.</p>

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<p>Hyperfocusing on one topic and how it relates to a lot of other things in our lives is something that we learned in speech class. I think that most teens don’t get to experience something like Toastmasters but you can pick up a lot of interesting ideas on doing presentations and some of these can translate well into essays.</p>

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<p>I’ll bet adcoms now have to slog through thousands of “quirky” essays. My opinion is that an essay is not likely to make a difference unless it is remarkably good or remarkably bad, and that this is true of a tiny number of essays.</p>

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<p>My daughter wrote an essay about baking cookies that was riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes. It was her first draft and she accidently submitted it through the Common Application site. She was accepted by the school, though!??</p>

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<p>Because a topic is quirky that doesn’t mean the essay is quirky. A talented writer can come from a quirky angle and end with something profound and moving. That’s the trick, and that’s what makes an essay the most memorial.</p>

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<p>All this talk about essays written by someone else makes me sad. Even the posts about parents suggesting the topics makes me sad. IMO, kids who can’t write the fairly short essays for college applications don’t belong in that particular school. They should at least have the imagination to come up with a topic to write about. Spare me the comments about how child X is great at math/science but doesn’t write well. Those kids should apply to the schools that don’t require essays. NC State is a great example of a great school that does not have an essay requirement.</p>

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<p>GT…the problem is that no one knows who “belongs” in a school and who doesn’t because too many kids don’t do the essays or prepare the apps themselves. It’s just like in grade school, when the teachers would assign these ridiculous art projects that most parents needed to help with significantly. Year after year, the kids would “do” the assignments, and the teacher probably just started to think the assignment was appropriate because the norm was having parent help. It’s often the same way in college admissions. Sure there are stellar artists who did those projects themselves, and stellar writers who write amazing essays themselves (I happen to be fortunate enough to have a kid who is a great writer, but can’t draw his way out of a paper bag) but the majority of kids are getting help, at least in my part of the country. I wish there were a solution but I really can’t think of one. I even know a kid in college who sends every paper to her mom for “editing” before it gets handed in.</p>

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<p>The solution is the one mentioned above–have the essay be part of a timed standardized test. Even then, of course, there will be differences in access to prep.</p>

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<p>I don’t know that these application essays are good predictors of success in college. Perhaps the SAT writing section will be a better predictor although many schools do not consider those scores. Our guidance office encouraged students to share something in the essay about themselves that wasn’t already evident from the rest of the application. (My DD wrote about baking cookies and cakes for her friends.) And all senior English classes (including the APs) had a college essay homework assignment. Every senior had to turn in an essay to their English teacher by the end of September even if they were not applying to college or applying to schools that did not have an essay requirement. So each kid had at least one essay that had been reviewed by their English teacher.</p>

<p>Parents just love this policy!!! Now none of them look at their kids’ essays and they are so relieved not to have to nag their kids about it!</p>

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<p>“too many kids don’t do the essays or prepare the apps themselves. It’s just like in grade school, when the teachers would assign these ridiculous art projects that most parents needed to help”</p>

<p>No, it’s not like that at all. Every college bound senior should be perfectly capable of filling out a college application including the essays. </p>

<p>“But the majority of kids are getting help, at least in my part of the country.”</p>

<p>Somehow I think that taking personal responsibility for completing an application on time is way more important than getting into a certain college. Doing this for a child, or paying to have it done, is abdicating important moral lessons we’re supposed to be teaching our kids. The fact that “everyone is doing it” shouldn’t matter. My kids somehow managed to get into very good schools without me involved in the application process. If they had to go to lesser schools because everyone else is getting professional help, I’m OK with that. </p>

<p>I stand by my original statement that seniors who don’t have the internal motivation and sense of responsibility to independently complete a college application should not be going to that college in the fall.</p>

<p>My kids did have some help in preparation. AP English 3 (taken junior year) involved writing bunches of short essays.</p>

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<p>Have the essays be part of a timed standardized test. Hey presto, that’s why they put in the writing section of the SAT! </p>

<p>Ready to Roll, thanks for reminding us about the Parent homework. I’ll never forget the doll making assignment my 7 year old DS received in 2nd grade. He could barely read the complex instructions, let alone gather all the supplies and sew (yes) the hair onto the doll’s head after punching holes (yes) through the head of the 2 foot tall creature that had been stuffed with paper and stapled together. He sat with tears welling up in his eyes because he thought he was supposed to be able to do it himself but he simply was unable to accomplish the assignment without help. For the next project, which was making an insect, I read him the instructions and he ran all over the house collecting materials, went up to his room and glued together a very respectable insect, asked me for spray paint which I provided from the basement (green irridescent we were amazed to find). When he proudly turned it in, the teacher said, “You could surely do better than THAT.” We stopped playing the school game after that all the way up to college. We realized then that there was utter insanity out there and our job as parents was to teach the kids to take it all with a Huge grain of salt and think for yourself and move on in life.</p>

<p>What does this mean for kids applying to college? Some will need help. Many will need help. Most will need help! Goody for those of you who claim your students had no help but frankly I just don’t buy it. If you didn’t help them, your hired tutors or your private school teachers or your suburban college-stat’s-obsessed administration did. Or your educated people’s dinner table conversation since childhood did. Or your community did. People help people. Colleges accept people who help their community in some way shape or form - at least they try to. And there are far more wonderful kids out there than many schools can accept (for these few years - demographics and financials therefore demand are changing). Any college can provide a great education for students who are ready to sit down and learn!</p>