<p>I was deeply disheartened by the news. Writing my essay, I felt choosing my topic was the only way I could really get my voice out there. After years of being told this was the important thing I’d ever write, and it had to overflow with “me”, what else could I do. I love how educators expect to get to know us from an essay, and then shut down the truest form to express yourself in. It’s great if your cousin Juan inspired you by running a marathon, or you overcame you fear of heights to climb a mountain, but some of us haven’t done or experiences the things essay prompts ask for. Or if we have… they’re boring. I got to write about myself in a way I wouldn’t have been able to with the other prompts, and better yet, it wasn’t just a good essay, it was an essay I was proud of.</p>
<p>The problem with the SAT/ACT/AP essays is not only the short time and the lack of writing process (what publication requires), but also the artificial, truncated genre. My daughter, whose writing skills were carefully cultivated at a good private school, had to learn to write in strange ways for the standardized tests. Underline your thesis, short 5 paragraph themes do not approximate real writing. </p>
<p>I’m not really happy with the literary nature of college essays, but they at least allow a certain quality of thinking.</p>
<p>How about using the essay’s from AP Exams. Both the history or english AP’s require reasonably lengthy and insightful essays. I agree that the 25 min essay on the SAT does not illustrate writing ability in a meaningful way, bu there are too many cases of students getting their essays “proofread” (read ghost written) to use the current essay system. This is probably only relevant for top colleges though because that’s where most of the “proofreading” takes place (plus students applying to top tier colleges are likely to have taken a plethora of AP classes anyway).</p>