<p>mathmom, that's a good post. This is a good thread. Lot's of interesting perspectives from all.</p>
<p>Mathmom, kids and their parents often seem to get caught up in the stress of the whole process. They are determined to make it into their reach schools and often don't stop to realize that those reach schools may not really be the best choice. In our family it was my W who had the calm perspective. She always seemed to maintain faith that what happened with college admissions would be for the best. In retrospect I have no doubt she was correct. My D really did not belong at some of those colleges that did not give her an offer. Some rejections were disappointments because they seemed like solid matches. They were based on stats, but not based on fit.</p>
<p>My daughter really didn't want to do any extra essays, but one of her friends pointed out that she already had all kinds of good starters in her blog and some journal entries she wrote in response to a book she was reading in her lit class. The extra essay she ended up using most often was humorous, poignant, and introspective all rolled into one, and I think it added to the over-all picture of who she is and what a cool person she is to have around (gosh, I miss her!).</p>
<p>She was very busy and tired of the whole process, though, and probably wouldn't have done them based only on my saying I thought she should. And they really were optional, so what do you all think--does not doing one put an applicant at a disadvantage?</p>
<p>Renee! You did it! A BLOG!!! Just send the nice adcoms the link to your blog if they want to see the real you! Or your facebook or your myspace. With the personal info kids put there, no one will mistake that little "blemish" in your nose - they'll know it's from your nosering.</p>
<p>A blog... the perfect supplemental essay.</p>
<p>^^^ Ah, if only she would send me a link to her blog, or friend me, or whatever it is that they do........then I wouldn't feel so lonely without her!</p>
<p>Ha! What a concept. Applications that include a section: "Do you have a Facebook or MySpace account? If so, please share..."</p>
<p>This would clear up all the inappropriate stupidity that goes on among high school students on the internet. They'd be scratching their heads... </p>
<p>"Hmmm. If I do NOT give the college my Facebook address, they will wonder what's on it. If I DO give the college my Facebook address, I'd better clean it up."</p>
<p>Seems like a win-win situation.</p>
<p>Hi coarranged- Thanks for your posts. You're giving me some perspective on the process. You seem to be a good writer with incredibly thorough responses. I have no doubt you're had no problems with the essay process. My D did read some books on writing essays and they go over content in school as well. As one poster noted on this thread her son was a hardworking athlete and student dealing with the failing health of a grandparent. Detailing his emotional struggle with this while trying to keep his grades up, attending arduous football practices and attempting to keep up the spirits of his parents during a tough time would seem like a great essay. In fact, based on what you read in the top notch essay books mentioned on this site, and others, this subject is POISON. I mean here's an adcom type reading the opening line. "The fall of my junior year was difficult for us all due to the physical demise of my grandfather." Supposedly at this point the adcom type reads the opening sentence rolls his eyes and says to himself, "Not another dying grandparent essay" I don't mean to be callus but that is the impression these books give as to topics that are common amongst teenagers. I mean here is a kid who is facing the physical decline of a beloved grandparent while dealing other stresses as well. It is a crucible type period for him but his GC or his Lit. teacher says, "Oh no.. don't write about that.. too common."
Most of the stresses visited on teenagers are common amongst all teenagers. On the one hand these kids are asked to write from the heart, to open a window from which the college might peer in and know them better. It could be how they felt hitting that walk-off home-run, (too common), finally making a varsity team after years of struggling, (too common), thier first summer job experience, again (too common). The overriding rationale for a "successful" essay seems to be, don't anger the person reading and evaluating with a common (and thus assumed to be boring) topic ... or else. If that's is the case maybe these colleges shouldn't have one person reading 300 essays. And granted some kids out there can make brushing thier teeth an interesting essay topic, but those kids, and perhaps you're one of them, are the exceptions. I agree with an earlier poster who thought many colleges want essays topics particular to thier institution, perhaps out of hubis more than anything else, and thus the supplement essays. I thought the purpose of the Common Ap. was to provide colleges with what they need in a common format thereby simplifying it for all concerned. Things seem to be moving away from the the term "common" as one poster mentioned kiddingly to the "Uncommon Ap."</p>
<p>My pet peeve are the "talk about some adversity you have overcome" essays. Again, many kids haven't had an adult's wealth of life experiences and thank God, most kids haven't had to deal with real adversity such as illness or death.</p>
<p>I hope those who read this kind of essay keep in mind the author. Dealing with being cut from a team, for example, may seem trivial to an adult who is paying bills, trying to deal with sick parents, etc., but may be a crushing blow to a child, who has to work through the disappointment, etc.</p>
<p>I feel about college essays the same way I do about writing in general. The conventional wisdom is for the most part wrong. Doubleplay if your kid was who you say he was then that's the essay he should have written. </p>
<p>Have your kid write the best essay he or she can write. Not the best essay someone else could write.</p>
<p>This process is worse for those parents who have kids who don't like to write. No question. </p>
<p>From my daughter's experience, she did best on the applications with lots of small questions - because then her genuine self came out. Her most eloquent essay was a short one for Stanford and Princeton about my sister's adopted daughter and struggles with infertility. Hackneyed? Well maybe. Heartfelt? Yes definitely.</p>
<p>Something heartfelt can't be hackneyed, IMO.</p>
<p>I think the problem with the 'dead grandparent' essays is that they are archetypes of two forms of essay that anyone would be encouraged to avoid: ones that fake the importance of something in order to sound profound; and ones that are nothing but an excuse. </p>
<p>The first group tend to be badly written and say nothing about the person who is writing them, because they are talking about something that is important, rather than something that is important to the writer. They give no insight into someone's character and are often full of cliched profoundness about life lessons dressed up with some nice dictionary words.</p>
<p>The second group also often say nothing about someone's character, because that is never the true aim of them, they are written to make excuses, to say "please let me into your school because I have had a hard life" and "please excuse my B+ in math" but not much else. </p>
<p>It's perfectly possible to write a good 'dead grandparent' essay, if the event has real meaning to you. Admissions people would probably like to see well-written and truly insightful essays on the subject, it's just that too often they don't. They see essays they have seen a thousand times, because there are a lot of people who want to sound profound and important, or want to make excuses. They are bored, and more likely to read into the essay a lot of negative character traits because they can't see any positive ones: so-and-so has delusions of grandeur and no original opinions or voice; so-and-so is a whiner, good at making excuses, takes no responsibility for their own lives. Like Alumother says, good essays that reveal something about someone's character come from the heart. You can't fake that by pretending something that is generally important was important to you and had real impact on your life.</p>
<p>I think the sports ones about hitting home runs or making varsity, again, aren't terrible subjects for essays, but it is much too easy to write exactly the same essay as everyone else who writes on the subject. It's essay-writing-by-numbers: 'I was sad. I worked hard. I succeeded. I learned this about my character. I was happy. The end'. The problem is that the format is too common and people are too unwilling to go outside it, because everyone loves a classic story of redemption and triumph against the odds. The problem is not that a lot of people play baseball.</p>
<p>alummother,
I agree. S should have written about his life, whether or not essay readers think his topics were hackneyed or not. And he did, but he selected the topics carefully and avoided certain hot buttons. </p>
<p>We must have read the same books/articles as Nightingale because I distinctly remember reading about adcoms criticizing kids essays because they dealt with family member illnesses and sports stories (which pretty much summed up some of my kid's most important experiences thus far). I thought at the time, "how dare they ridicule a kid for writing about his grandparent's illness!", especially since our family had just gone through what was, for all of us, one of the most impactful and defining experiences of our lives. </p>
<p>All in all, it's pretty demoralizing when a college app reader admonishes students not to write about the very things that are on son's list of all-time important experiences.</p>
<p>I crossposted with tli83.</p>
<p>If someone asked me right now to write about an experience that changed my way of thinking (common essay prompt), I'd have to write about my father's illness, and I'm in my mid 40's. Not to make myself look important, profound, or make excuses. Ayone who goes through something like a terminal illness or battling cancer knows you are never, ever the same afterwards.</p>
<p>There were many ways that experience changed our lives, including the "realization of what's really important". Sounds hackneyed? Probably, but it's the truth. Nothing like staring death in the face to reboot your whole life. Suddenly, whether or not my child's roommate is annoying or whether he likes the cafeteria food seems pretty darned unimportant.</p>
<p>But you see, writing stuff like that is exactly what the adcoms roll their eyes at, according to articles I read. They consider it pompous? Insincere? Self-absorbed? Overdone? Unoriginal? Negative? (That last one really kills me- try finding a life-altering, challenging, paradigm-shifting experience that doesn't have some negative component.) Well, bully for them! I'd like to see their reaction to a life-threatening situation; maybe I can sit back, roll my eyes, and say stuff like "yawn...what a whiner." </p>
<p>(Actually, I'd never wish anything like my father's illness on anyone, but I do get annoyed when I see what amounts to pure callousness, cynicism, and <em>ridiculousness</em> on the part of people who claim to have young people's best interests at heart.)</p>
<p>doubleplay - that's what I was trying to say. If something truly is the most important thing that has happened in your life, then it's perfectly possible to write a good, heartfelt essay about it, and you shouldn't feel that you can't because of what you read in some essay writing book. The admissions staff are people too, and they can tell themselves when something is meaningful.</p>
<p>I think the problem comes when people write essays about something that isn't an important thing in their lives because they think it sounds important. The death of a grandparent doesn't always have a great impact on someone, it isn't always the most life-changing event they have experienced, or the one that tells the most about their character as it is today. In those cases, trying to write in a heartfelt way about something you don't feel that strongly about will not make a good essay.</p>
<p>I had not seen this board during the few days my S decided to apply to college in his jr year. I didn't have any application books. Consequently, the first essay S wrote was about death of grandparents. This essay just flowed. He addressed life lessons learned and care taking. e.g. learning to drive by taking GF to dialysis sessions.</p>
<p>I don't know if the essay helped or hurt with admissions, but I will treasure it always.</p>
<p>For example, I could imagine writing a good essay about the the death of a grandparent didn't affect me, and why, and what it meant.</p>
<p>My grandmother died 20 years ago. I felt a small nostalgia. I saw her image in my mind. But it was her house I remembered. The horsebell leather she used as a doorbell. The lamps she had made out of glass cases for Japanese dolls gathered in her travels with her second husband. The terrifying cartoons in the bathroom downstairs that were gaucho drawings from that same second husband's stay in Argentina.</p>
<p>The taste of watered down ginger ale in the garden room and the smell of all the books piled on shelves. The dreadful bronze statue of a nude girl in amongst the indoor plants. The copper watering can.</p>
<p>My grandmother had lived rich. But she ended her days holding onto a life that didn't exist. The road outside her driveway had turned into a small highway. She could barely leave her house as a result.</p>
<p>I wasn't sad when my grandmother died. She and I had no real connection. But I had feelings, feelings about my family and the meaning of possessions and the passing of generations and the changing of a culture.</p>
<p>You can say something you mean about almost any event if you observe it and you observe yourself, carefully.</p>
<p>The problem is when a reader claims to have some kind of clairvoyant power that allows him to detect the sincere from the insincere. I'd hate for my son's "life-altering experience" essay to be deemed a fake by some guy who has never met any of us, sitting in his cozy office a thousand miles away. I am not buying that these guys have some special skills that allow them to separate the truthful essays from the false ones, unless they've spoken to someone who knows the applicant and can verify the story.</p>
<p>This harkens back to the "true voice" posts a couple pages back- who's to say they have some insight into a total stranger's "true voice"? No one can detect falseness never having known the writer- how can they?</p>
<p>mathmom--I know the type! When one of my sons was doing Power of the Pen and not really happy about it, I assured him he would be ok if he interpreted every prompt to have something to do with science fiction. Same son wrote a college app essay that was not in essay form--just a bunch of things, mostly humorous, he learned from doing a robotics competition.</p>
<p>bookworm,
My son wrote a heartfelt essay about his grandfather as well. After his grandfather (my dad) battled and lived through two years of hell, I gave the essay to my mother. She read it out loud to him, and everyone ended up in tears. It was and is a family treasure.</p>
<p>doubleplay--detecting sincere from insincere is different from detecting if an event really happened to the writer. A writer of children's books isn't limited to events he/she experenced in childhood. But the reader can tell if it rings false, if the dialogue isn't realistic, if the writer has not found the voice of childhood. I sometimes see this in adult novels, where they introduce a child and say this character is 8, or 10, or 12, and it's apparent the author doesn't really know what kids that age are like.</p>
<p>The college essay equivalent is sitting down with a thesaurus and plugging in "difficult" words to make an essay seem more "intellectual." Adcoms can tell.</p>
<p>I don't think kids should shy away from writing on a topic (such as the death or illness of a family relative) just because it might seen hackneyed. If it's a real emotion they're tapping into and it was significant to them, then go ahead. But, I think it's fair to think about the adcoms and how many essays they have to read and how it would be a little tiring if everyone was how I coped with this relative's illness or how I scored the winning goal or how I overcame my fear and played Mozart in front of thousands. It's a balancing act -- write what is real and conveys something about you the adcoms wouldn't know from your transcript and teacher recs. But also keep in mind that you want to make an impact and not be just one of many.</p>