Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I watched and listened to many AOs in the past year about what they are looking for in applicants. Many said there is a difference between student voice and adult voice in essays. If you want to disagree fine, but I am not uninformed and my kids’ self-crafted essays resulted in very good acceptances and merit offers and a fellowship offer.
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This is, I believe, the outcome of test optional, even without throwing in all the hooks. When tests were required, a high percentage of applicants were weeded out by the test, and the rest who applied all had one single hard non-subjective data point in their applications. Now, with absolutely NO hard data point that is a component of every application, I can certainly understand why a student might apply to a couple of happy safeties, 4 happy matches, and even 30 r 50 reaches, if they are willing to spend that much on applications. Rejected from Rice, but accepted to Harvard and Columbia? Only explanation is if they have a hook that Rice in particular is not looking for.
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30 to 50 reaches? That’s just absurd.
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I understand that these are strange times but the idea used to be that you go to your matches and if one of these reaches work out then great. Now it seems the expectation is to get into a “reach” school, not the other way around.
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On adult editing- my kids’ essays were cringe-worthy. Seriously.
Like they were written by 17 year old’s (17 year old’s who used spell check and didn’t write “youse guys” to mean “you”.)
Their HS offered the option of having an English teacher (or another faculty member) proof the essay and provide comments- “You start strong but the ending sort of peters out” but no line editing. AND the HS recommended NOT having an “essay professional” get involved since that scrubs out the authenticity.
I dunno, I’m not an Adcom. But I imagine after reading thousands of these, you start to recognize the “style” of a professional essay writer, in the same way you can read a column in the New Yorker and know “David Remnick wrote this” even before you turn the page and see that in fact- David wrote it. And a few weeks ago Calvin Trillin was back and it only took three lines to say “hey, Calvin is back”.
Don’t miss David Sedaris on Covid btw…
Sorry, paid advertisement for the New Yorker is over. But I think it’s hard to be a professional college essay person without repeating your syntax, word choices, tone, etc. until Cambridge and New Haven and Hanover can recognize your work…
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Certain schools (Harvard is one) seem to like students with extraordinarily high achievement in the arts (music, dance, theater, etc). They know the student has this because the student puts it in their application, submits additional letters of reference, and submits a supplement (audition tapes), which get evaluated by the appropriate faculty member. I joke that my kid was a “recruited” musician, because they had achievement in music that the relevant faculty member wanted. It worked, for early action application. But it has to be a school that doesn’t have a pro school for that area, (because they obviously don’t need them then), but wants to have high level performers for their ensembles. For example, the U with a school of music doesn’t care about a tuba player who’s not also applying to the school of music. The school with an amazing theater conservatory program doesn’t care about the actor who is applying to the engineering school.
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Good for you.
I am going to ask that you do this one thing. Look up what the top private admissions counselors in the country did in their past lives. Clearly, they are making a pretty good living.
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My husband and I were joking about submitting kid’s humorous but not used essay draft to something like the NYT for a column entitled “The College Application Essay That You Decided NOT to Send”. It’s just so insane how high pressure and absurdist applications to the top schools have become.
Gotta find David Sedaris on Covid! Where?
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One reason for this “expectation” is that schools that would have been a match (in the parent’s era, or as recently as 3-5 years ago) are now “reach for everyone”…so what a family calls a “reach” because they are told it’s a reach actually represents what they spent most of the kid’s life thinking of as a “match” for that kid’s level of academic and extracurricular success. I see this a lot, and it could even apply to my kid’s own list for a couple of the schools. You’re right — people should be happy with a match — and in fact should be happy with a safety as well. But I’m pointing out that each year, there are schools that move from “match for some” to “reach for everyone” based on selectivity.
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Sedaris in the New Yorker on post-Covid life. For a writer who thrived on “if it’s Tuesday this must be Cleveland” in the old days…
Just hang in there. Even the AOs probably won’t be able to chance anyone at this point in time. But definitely CC community is strong and supportive if you need anything.
It’s hard to know which schools are looking for what without a great deal of research, and even then sometimes it’s hard to know which attribute will be the magic bullet at a particular school.
That said, yeah – colleges have triangular, round, square holes… and they are looking for pegs of those shapes to fill those holes/needs.
Clearly the most selective schools are inundated with 1500+/3.9+ kids who took 8 APs and scored 5 on all of them, or did a full IB diploma. It’s the other stuff that probably makes the difference most of the time. (demographic variables, a rare skill the school needs, unbridled passion – personality match, etc.)
Unfortunately I don’t agree. A professional essay writer will be able to make the essay sound authentic. and these kids are becoming professional college applicants themselves. the admissions process is a game and the essay part of it has just become another mini-game within the game.
the whole essay thing just gives the adcoms excuses to take the kids they want even if by some objective metrics they aren’t the most competitive applicants: “Hey, I know he only has a 3.6 GPA and didn’t submit test scores, but it’s that compelling essay he wrote that made us want him.”
sorry for the cynicism.
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I want to believe that but then I read some of the essays that the “College Essay Guy” publishes in his series, something like “The Essay That Got Me Into Ivy/Duke/MIT/Johns Hopkins, etc.” and those are some amazing essays that don’t sound like typical 17 year olds. But I guess if the rest of the application supports a masterfully written essay, then Adcoms are less likely to be skeptical about who wrote it.
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Except you don’t know how that 3.6 gpa kid will do. And I’m betting he is going to thrive in the school.
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No need to wait. No matter his scores, without a definite hook or an auto-admit policy they are all reaches.
I’m kidding of course, but you’ll probably find that it is much easier to identify reach schools than match, likely, and safety schools. It may help to spend some time considering the type of school where he might be happy (affordability, size, culture, diversity, location, curriculum, approach, etc.) then try to build a list from the “bottom” up in terms of selectivity. If he can find safeties where he can be happy, then the rest is much easier.
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I totally agree with this, @UnsentDementor . My mother was convinced that a school DS was liking for ED – because that would give him yhe best odds – was “everyone’s safety”.
This too comes from the lack of “socializing” college admissions.
One of my favorite things that the college counseling office at the school DS attended initiated this year was a seminar for juniors and their families in early November entitled something like “Managing the Thanksgiving discussion when it turns to your college plans.” Clearly, they’d seen a thing or two! But the evolving landscape means that few parents are well prepared for this when it happens or even know what they need to know.
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I wonder if any school has considered having kids write a couple of paragraphs on a topic as part of their interview - similar to tests given to potential employees when prior knowledge matters.
If not, it sounds like a good idea if they want to know it’s the student’s work. If they want the kids to have a chance to prepare they can always give them the topics ahead of time, but still expect the actual writing to be done in person.
For a high stats student in the San Francisco bay area, it isn’t hard to find likely or safety schools for admission. Examples:
- SFSU (other than pre-nursing)
- CSUEB (other than pre-nursing)
- SJSU (other than animation, computer engineering, computer science, pre-nursing, or software engineering)
Re essays, my D22 is a very strong writer, but we did get her to share her essays with us. She didn’t want verbal suggestions but was amenable to sharing it via Google Docs and getting suggestions that way. I corrected a comma placement here or there, noted some repetition in words, made a few other suggestions, but I didn’t write anything for her. The essay was definitely better after she incorporated a few of the suggestions, but she did not go for all of them. One essay got her a big scholarship. I don’t think she sounded like an old lady.
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