<p>In past years, I have read a writing sample, supposedly written by a fourth grader during a state writing test. It read like a brief story in the New Yorker. I still can’t tell whether there was a phenomenally talented 4th grade writer out there somewhere in our state, or whether the writing was bogus. Similarly, Connecticut College (I think) posted a set of 6 admissions essays they really liked. Again, some seemed authentic, but others seemed to reflect very unusual talent or an adult hand.</p>
<p>To some extent, the essays may depend on the quality of “story-telling” in the student’s family. This art, though ancient, is not easy to master, and having lots and lots of good examples over time really helps.</p>
<p>The current essay at least reads to me like an essay actually written by a 17-year-old.</p>
<p>A few years ago, I read the essays in “Essays that Worked” or “College Application Essays that Worked” (or something close to that). Each essay was followed by a pair of comments. It was interesting to me to see whether or not I agreed with the commentary or not. The commentary was rather specific about things that worked or did not work–at least according to the commentators. So it was not a question of assessing how the essay affected the student’s chances, but simply the quality of the essay itself. There seemed to be considerable room for disagreement. I felt that quite a few of the essays presented a veneer of pseudo-sophistication, or discussed issues in the stylized way that lit students are often taught to use, to set a scene. There was one essay by a young woman about a school uniform. It irritated me a lot that the commentators wrote negatively about it. Yeah, lure someone in to sharing their college application essay for inclusion in a book about essays that worked, and then trash it! Nice manners! That essay had several virtues, in my opinion. Foremost, it was clearly written by a 17-year-old. Also, although the topic was a little awkward in a 17-year-old sort of way, it came across as very authentic.</p>
<p>I think that some of us actually do disagree about the essay in this thread itself, JHS.</p>
<p>However, I think it takes a lot of courage to set out an essay as an example, and I am not going to be overly critical of what’s posted.</p>
<p>I liked it. I’ve read lots of ponderous essays that make my eyes glaze over – I thought this was well-written and engaging. I don’t see any reason why this applicant would not get into any college based on this essay. </p>
<p>I think too much emphasis is placed on the essay. Honestly, how many kids are accepted solely because they wrote an amazing essay? And how many kids here on CC, when they ask their chances, claim to have written a “unique” essay, when most likely their essay is just as run-of-the-mill as can be. (Really, how can high school students know that their essay is one-of-a-kind without having read thousands of essays?) (Sorry, slightly off-topic rant.)</p>
<p>I’ve read a fair number of essays and I have to admit they all tend to seem very similar, very few actually make me smile much less laugh or think I’d like to have this kid as a roommate. The best one I remember reading (a Caltech prospie the same year my son didn’t get in, but that turned out for the best I think), was about a moral dilemma you had faced. His was something about finding a wallet, I can’t remember exactly what the setup was, but in fact there was no possibility of stealing money from it. I pointed out that really there hadn’t been much of dilemma in the situtation. That kid then turned around my point and wrote for his final paragraph, that the situation had been as described and that the real moral dilemma had been whether he should have exaggerated the situation for his essay. Clever kid. His regular essay was about riding around on rollercoasters and thinking about physics, I liked it too. In fact it’s been almost seven years since I read either essay and I still remember them!</p>
<p>I don’t understand all of the “SAT word” bashing that comes up in these essay discussions. If a kid has a great vocabulary, can properly incorporate the words and is comfortable writing in that style, why is it taboo to do so? This is an informal, social forum yet I repeatedly read posts with very high level vocabulary and writing style. I don’t jump to the conclusion that those posters are hunched over their keyboards tying to construct posts to impress anyone, I simply assume they are intelligent, educated people who are accustomed to writing in that style.</p>
<p>I can think of one or two posters whose pompous style irritate me. Not many. I think the problem often is that they use words correctly, but I’ve never seen used anywhere but in these essays. Words like “plethora”, it’s certainly not a part of current spoken English, and I can think of very few places where it would really be the best word in an essay either. It’s so old-fashioned that it really jerks you out of the essay, making you wonder where the kid picked up that word.</p>
<p>I’ve read a lot of essays too. I’ve offered to read essays in CC, and I’ve helped friends with kids applying to schools. To me, this is not a good essay. It’s treacly and generic (JHS - I love the Reader’s Digest comment) and the quoted dialogue does nothing to convey the
writer’s own voice. I’m not sure why the OP thought he was giving us such a gift, and maybe he/she in fact wrote it, but I can’t imagine giving this to a high school senior and saying “write something like this.”</p>
<p>Funny, I actually do use that word in conversation…but then I am indeed old-fashioned. Pretty sure it has rubbed off on S, so I will warn him to keep it out of his essays, lol.</p>
<p>S’s friend recently shared his essay from last year, which helped him get into a top ivy.
The topic was the TV series, Dr. Who, and a few things he’d learned from it. It was good, but definitely sounded like a 17 year old. I liked it because it was unpretentious, but still thoughtful, and definitely not written by a grownup/college coach.(The kid had a lot of other things going for him besides this nice essay.)
I think the Santa essay is good. I’ve read a lot of ponderous essays. This one is easy to read, light, entertaining. Ending is sappy, OK, but fine for a 17yo.</p>
Good grief. The application will include the student’s academic record, extracurricular activities and the opinions of recommenders. How much else is there to know about a 17-year-old? Presumably, if he or she had some powerful personal story, it would have been the subject of the essay. But most applicants, like most human beings, have pretty humdrum lives and, at this stage in their lives, have a limited sense of who they are. I think this essay revealed that the writer has a sense of whimsey and a warm heart and is able to compose a nice story. Personally, I feel that the whole college essay process is a pile of nonsense since, given the varying input of English teachers, parents, and professional admissions counselors, the amount of original thought and craft in any essay is a complete unknown. And for that reason I hope the actual value of the essay in the admissions process is minor. But notwithstanding my opinion of college essays, I think this one was very appealing.</p>
<p>My S wrote an essay about a somewhat uncommon household object and how his use of that object (when there were alternatives) demonstrated a lot about who he was and what he valued in life. I assure you that only he could have written this; it expressed some sentiments about him that if you walked into his high school and read this essay and asked who wrote this, everyone would point to him. I think the essay is very sweet and the writer does have a nice way with words. It is a heart-touching essay, which may or may not be the right purpose for a college essay. I wish I knew more about having “lost the magic” impeded him (how he didn’t realize it) and how “gaining the magic back” made a difference. I am a sucker for the last line, though.</p>
<p>My kids’ essays would have told an attentive reader tons about them, notwithstanding their very humdrum lives. My daughter’s main essay was about how she had picked up a quirk of speech from a character in a juvenile-lit book she had read in 6th grade, and how she continued to use it as an homage to the girl she had been then, and wasn’t anymore. It was enormously subtle – way too subtle for a college application essay, I suspect – and actually embodied (without SAT words) a whole theory of reading and the relationship of literature to life. It was intensely personal, without revealing any external data about herself. It showed someone who had read and internalized a great deal of literature and literary theory, but who (like many 17-year-olds) cared as much about popular culture as about High Art. It demonstrated her craft as a writer, and her quiet, analytic style. Also woven into the weft was the sense of nostalgia and that had permeated her creative writing since she was 10. I have no idea whether any of the admissions staff at various colleges who read it “got” it – although she got a smattering of complimentary notes – but I sure loved it.</p>
<p>My son wrote a Common App essay about the movement to create many smaller, themed high schools, and how that threatened his high school – a huge academic magnet. It showed his ability to analyze and communicate the pros and cons of a current issue, and also his ability to understand his personal engagement with broader social issues, and both to use that and to adjust for it in the analysis. The writing style was straightforward and pedestrian, which was exactly what he was capable of doing at the time. His other essay – about a fake Navajo sweat-lodge thing he had done the previous summer – was 100% him, full of boundless enthusiasm, New Age spirituality, and not-quite-maturity. (It probably hurt him with colleges, but he loved it.) Anyone who read both essays would have known pretty much exactly who he was.</p>
<p>The essay struck me as overly cutesy. It flowed well and has a very clear voice, but the last line made me grimace. </p>
<p>Just my opinion, but if we want essays that sound like high school seniors wrote them, perhaps we ought to give them subjects that are appropriate for their ages. Ask them to reflect on their least favourite class, a setback in athletics, or the challenges and advantages of having siblings (or being an only child). As is, this exercise is nothing but the creation of pseudo-insightful linguistic cotton candy.</p>
<p>I think the problem is there is such a diversity of experience. Some kids have grown up in typical middle class families with no unusual life events. Others may have had their lives transformed by the death of a parent or sibling, severe illness, disability, racism, etc. I do feel some of these topics expect a kid to have had meaningful experience with things like this, when perhaps they simply haven’t yet. I know my daughter has struggled with her essays, partly because so many of them want to discuss the major transformative event in her life, which as far as we can tell hasn’t happened yet. It’s not that she isn’t introspective, far from it.</p>
<p>I guess I’ve had what a lot of people would consider a “major transformative event,” but I chose not to write any essays about it because at this point I don’t think I have enough perspective to comment on it. I don’t think essays about major life events are automatically going to be better than essays about smaller things.</p>
<p>I had a somewhat unusual upbringing, but felt no need to reduce it to a 500-word schmaltzy essay for the benefit of college admissions. I had several “transformative events” in college and law school, and frankly couldn’t imagine writing essays about those, either. </p>
<p>A lot of it affects the work that I do, the way I interact with people on a very personal level, and the causes to which I donate my time, but I lack the desire to talk about it as a means of procuring admission to an academic institution. It’s a little disconcerting that the entire process is set up so that you get extra bonus points for trotting out the most meaningful parts of your life in a cute little essay, like a performing seal balancing on a beach ball. What ever happened to decorum and privacy?</p>
<p>(I did mention some of the college stuff in a law school addendum, but it was mostly a very dry recitation and “Here’s why my grades were so lousy these semesters.”)</p>
<p>I didn’t like the essay at all. I also found it saccharine and cutesy. I suspect the dad wrote it, actually. It sounds like the Dad kind of stage-managed the whole thing, including getting him the job at NORAD. Has lots of dad fingerprints on it. </p>
<p>Too much about the kids. Don’t feel like I know the writer any better after reading this. Doesn’t tell me what he or she would contribute to the college in any way – except that he is probably pretty obedient, since he tends to do what his parents want him to do. </p>
<p>But I tend to like the annoying weird kids. This read like an Afterschool special to me.</p>
<p>One admissions officer told us during an info session that in the essays she looks for evidence of: 1) intrinsic motivation 2) personal responsibility (e.g. realizing when you are wrong or that you have limits) 3) maturity 4) introspection 5) honesty & authenticity</p>
<p>They say too many people write about their transformative experiences of a dying relative or a service trip. So I’m sure they get a lot a mundane topics and just try to get a sense of maturity (without expecting too much) and the ability to put together coherent thoughts in readable prose. One memorable topic she described was one applicant’s failure to learn to drive a stick shift with her dad. </p>
<p>I dug up my own (successful) college essays and they made me gag. I tried so hard to be profound it was silly. Told my son it is obvious that perfect essays are not required. As it happens, in one essay I cited as an influence the museum where I now work, thirty years later :-D</p>