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We must be really sheltered here; I've read (on CC) about pressure-cooker NE high schools. Is that really what they are like?
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<p>Yep. And I don't think Newton North holds a candle to some of the Southern California magnet schools.</p>
<p>There were some Dallas area high schools every bit as bad. It is not unique to the northeast. It has to do with affluence and status.</p>
<p>If the article was a good representation of NE schools, and I don't like that representation, why would I ever want to go to one of those schools? Or one of the colleges made up from students at those type of schools?</p>
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When I seek assurance about important spiritual things, when I begin to doubt that there is any kind of divine force regulating reality, there is nothing in Newton to grasp onto, no well of faith to replenish me.
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<p>This is problematic for an application featuring church involvement. Beyond that, elite colleges aren't offering spiritual retreats. She wonders aloud what Williamstown has to offer her, rather than what she offers in return. She doesn't come off as an energetic, bloom where she's planted young person, which I think she probably is in real life.</p>
<p>dstark:</p>
<p>The essay was well-written. Ester (and probably her Dad) had obviously spent a long time refining it.</p>
<p>However, it was so impersonal and, ultimately, false. Boston is one of the most tradition-bound places in the United States. Vastly more anchored by tradition than Kentucky.</p>
<p>Of course, a 17 year old can't possibly see that, which is why applicants should run as fast as they can from these types of essays.</p>
<p>The problem is that they've grown up watching teen angst drama on Dawson's Creek, so they think a college essay has to have grand sweeping themes, like the search for the meaning of life. What we end up with is a student who doesn't enjoy life in Kentucky, doesn't enjoy life in Newton, and -- who knows -- might not enjoy life at college. That's not a very good sales pitch.</p>
<p>I didn't care much about her essay either way. It seemed like so many of the other example essays S. showed me last year -- in books, articles, and posted my numerous colleges on their websites. Some of their "best" ones were the ones I found most pretentious, irritating and cringe-worthy. Most seemed to have themes like "I see the world differently than others" or "Let me tell you why I'm so much more interesting than my peers," or the dreaded "I march to the beat of a different drummer." Ugh.</p>
<p>That said, this girl is only 17 or 18 and trying to do her best.</p>
<p>I go to Esther's school and have been in several classes with her. I'll try to address what issues I can so that you all can have a better understanding of our school and of Esther. </p>
<p>For people commenting about our counseling department and system for proofing students' essays, I'll say this: our guidance counselors do not handle making college lists. We have a dedicated "career center" staffed with amazing professionals who do a great job of it. Most top students meet with a career counselor twice in the spring and once again in the fall to compile their college lists. These counselors make "long lists" of schools that fit the student's criteria and then at the second visit, check to make sure the student has a list of realistic safeties, matches and reaches based only on stats. I have no doubt that they did their job correctly. </p>
<p>Our senior English teachers are the ones who proofread students' essays. In my AP English class we spent considerable time on talking about what to write about, what not to write about, etc. We wrote several "practice" essays and chose two to polish significantly. Esther, however, is taking an elective English class so she may not have had any help from the school writing or proofreading her essay. </p>
<p>"I've read (on CC) about pressure-cooker NE high schools. Is that really what they are like?"
Yes and no. I manage to get plenty of sleep and still be a "top student", as do many other kids. It's cliche but really it's all about balance and choices. </p>
<p>If anyone has more questions please feel free to ask!</p>
<p>"Beyond that, elite colleges aren't offering spiritual retreats."</p>
<p>Well you might want to run that bye Notre Dame unless you don't consider Notre Dame an elite university. In fact Davidson still holds surprisingly close to its Protestant roots and wouldn't be surprised if they had spiritual retreats there as well though I haven't investigated.</p>
<p>That girl's essay highlighted much of what is wrong about the privileged class in this country - she is totally out of touch with the real world. And if her guidance counselor thought it was OK, then he or she is out of touch too. </p>
<p>Her essay was rude, condescending, insulting to a large part of this country, and done in a knowing, insider "we are better than they are" way. If my kid wrote an essay like that, I would be ashamed that I raised such a brat!!</p>
<p>interesteddad,
You hit on exactly what I was thinking -- she's spent all that time serving her church and putting spirituality into practice, and she didn't write about it?!?</p>
<p>If I were an admissions person, failing to write about that would make me wonder about her sincerity in doing the work at the church in the first place. (I do believe she IS sincere in that work.) It would also have made a great transition into her course choices, writing, etc.</p>
<p>dstark,
I hate to disagree, but Esther sounds like an overindulged, self-involved and self-centered girl who did not have the sense to hide her snobbery and elitism in a college application essay.</p>
<p>I must not be of your world if you think she is going to do very well in it. :)</p>
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These counselors make "long lists" of schools that fit the student's criteria and then at the second visit, check to make sure the student has a list of realistic safeties, matches and reaches based only on stats. I have no doubt that they did their job correctly.
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<p>I have no doubt, either.</p>
<p>The hardest part of determining reaches, matches, and safeties is figuring out which students with which transcripts from that specific high school have been accepted. Newton North sends so many students to elite colleges every year, and has done so every year for more than a century. The database of acceptances and Naviance charts from Newton North would allow the kind of precision that most college counselors could only dream about.</p>
<p>I remember, from my daughter's year, that Newton North had three students accepted at Swarthmore alone -- one of only two high schools in Mass. with three (the other being Greylock in Williamstown -- professors kids). The numbers for Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Williams, Amherst, Middlebury and so forth are all high, year in and year out. That makes it much easier to pinpoint than it was at my daughter's high school, where she was the first to apply to Swarthmore in the fifty year history of the school and where a Harvard acceptance letter only comes along every few years.</p>
<p>At our school, some teachers assigned generic college essay writing prompts, others did not. The essays that were thus produced were not intended to serve as actual application essays, just as exercises. In my S senior English class essay, the teacher offered to read essays. S showed him one; the teacher only proofed for spelling and some grammar. He did not comment on the actual content. In fact, S did not use that particular essay for his applications.</p>
<p>I don't believe it's the job of teachers or guidance counselors to tell students what to write about and how. Aren't the essays supposed to be a guide to students--not teachers', not parents', not GCs'--interests and writing abilities? Those who knock the SAT writing section ought not to suggest that parents, teachers or GCs should have had a hand in drafting the girl's essay.</p>
<p>The GCs and teachers did not see S's essays when they wrote their recs. They had no idea whatsoever what he wrote about.</p>
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If I were an admissions person, failing to write about that would make me wonder about her sincerity in doing the work at the church in the first place. (I do believe she IS sincere in that work.) It would also have made a great transition into her course choices, writing, etc.
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<p>And, the real shame of it? Writing about church involvement could have made Ester stand out, in a positive way, at many of the schools on her list.</p>
<p>Adigal, why hate to disagree?</p>
<p>"I must not be of your world if you think she is going to do very well in it."</p>
<p>I can't comment on that. ;)</p>
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Aren't the essays supposed to be a guide to students--not teachers', not parents', not GCs'--interests and writing abilities?
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<p>I don't think that college essays are really about writing ability, per se. I think it is much more important to communicate personality.</p>
<p>If I recall, my daughter's AP English teacher volunteered to proofread essays. I don't think my daughter took him up on the offer. We did have a family friend read her essays, precisely to get a detached outsider's view to make sure that there wasn't an "Are you sure you want to say THAT?" reaction. Ester could have used that kind of reality check.</p>
<p>I can't believe grown ups are arguing about this. </p>
<p>She chose her essay topic. She sees her grandparents living a very different life than she does and she wonders.</p>
<p>She didn't get into certain schools. So what?
Really, so what?
Many people writing on here have similar traits to those they are criticizing. :)</p>
<p>I know not enough about the student or her family or her private thoughts & motivations to comment on what kind of a person or college applicant she really is. However, the NYT piece, and the varying reactions to it, illustrate to me what's wrong with the "required essay," "optional essay," etc. of the college application process.</p>
<p>My D attends a school on the opposite side of the country, not unlike how the featured student's school is described --with further information fleshed out in post 47. Every junior in the school is required to sweat over the Reflective Essay format, as set out in the AP Engl Lang & Comp class, even if the junior elects not to take that class. I would have preferred that assignment to be completed in an extended special class period, and kept on file in student records in the college counseling office as "the college essay." Yes, I suppose an essay could be developed at home and memorized for in-class submission, but it's also possible for this to be scheduled as a surprise, making that difficult.</p>
<p>My point being: The way it works at this school is that it is worked & reworked to death, via "peer editing" and via teacher suggested comments. When I read my D's first version I found it powerful & gut-wrenching, without being maudlin. Then everybody and her cousin got into the act, especially the teacher. I felt that the teacher's comments were most inappropriate, being as they were from an adult perspective about a childhood experience within an <em>adolescent</em> perspective. Some of the teacher's suggestions were way too "academic" and sophisticated & reflected much too much life experience. I am not as happy with the "revised version" of my daughter's spontaneous & fresh essay.</p>
<p>My second point being: Don't know if the same or similar thing happened to the student featured.</p>
<p>Frankly, I thought the article about the kids generally speaking was what was so awful, not the essay in particular. I mean I think it's great, I guess, that a bunch of rich 17-year-old girls get their jollies by reading Kierkegaard. But that's what made me cringe - the quality of their lives and experience, and the absurd expectations of their parents and peers, not their college packaging.</p>
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I can't believe grown ups are arguing about this.
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<p>We aren't really talking about Ester the person. We are talking about Ester the exemplar or Ester the fictional applicant concocted by the New York Times. </p>
<p>The thread is really about the larger topic of college essays, which seems like an appropriate topic for College Confidential. I think it's fair to say that, when an essay makes a number of detached readers gag, it probably falls into the "risky" essay category. God help poor Ester if the adcom reader were from Kentucky.</p>