<p>In my opinion, as you surmise, the essay is just a way for the colleges to apply subjective admissions criteria.</p>
<p>When a kid applies to school, she has 4 years of high schools grades, ACT, SAT, APs, etc.</p>
<p>Isn’t that enough information for the colleges to have?</p>
<p>Do they really need to read an essay on who was her favorite person in history?</p>
<p>We in America tend to view essays and extracurricular activities as an integral part of the admissions process, but in many other countries, they simply go by grades and test scores.</p>
<p>It is also an awful waste of a student’s time, who is busy with her regular school work.</p>
<p>And it impedes applying to a lot of schools, if you have to write essays for each school.</p>
<p>Just like there is a common application, why do some schools need to have their own essays? Why not make it uniform. Why does School X need a different essay than School Y.???</p>
<p>Now, if the essay is “why do you want to go to this particular school”, that in my view is different.</p>
<p>Gourmetmom - I knew somebody would say something about what I wrote because people always read into what I say for some reason. </p>
<p>When I say he’s a “gifted” writer, I mean he’s a very good writer. I never said he was Ernest Hemingway. He writes short stories, poems, plays, etc. in his spare time. Sorry you didn’t like my word choice.</p>
<p>When I say he needed help because his essays weren’t up to par, I meant that they had no life to them. When he was asked “where do you live…?”, his answer was I live in such and such a city, blah, blah, blah…" That’s not what they’re looking for.</p>
<p>When I say he’s getting help, I meant that the woman is taking what he wrote and offering suggestions on how to make it better. He already possesses the skills to write good essays. He just needed guidance on how to get there. So it’s HIS voice and HIS words and HIS authentic self. It’s just more interesting than “I live here. I used to live there.”</p>
<p>I think that some of these kids have no idea what the colleges are looking for even after all the workshops. A question such as “where do you live?” is not actually asking you where you live. They don’t care. They care about how you write that answer in 2 sentences. That’s all I’m saying.</p>
<p>Ursinus College asks for either a personal statement OR submission of a graded analytic or research paper from an academic subject as part of the application. </p>
<p>S1 sent a copy of a year long project from his junior year in which he had been assigned a random book of American fiction to read, then had to find a piece of American art from the same era which could be used to represent a major theme of the book. Had to research the historical era, the author, the artist, the book and the piece of art, write a paper and present it to a panel of teachers at the end of the year. The copy he sent to Ursinus included the grade, the teacher’s margin notes, and the grading rubric that was used to assess the project.</p>
<p>Now THAT was something that represented him as a student better than a 500 word essay ever did. And because it had been done prior to him even beginning to think about college applications it was an honest look at him as an unpolished, real student.</p>
Well that’s pretty easy, because in fact colleges are different and are looking for different things from students. Chicago shows that it values out of the box thinking by its quirky essays. Lots of kids panic at questions like “How did you get caught (or not as the case may be)?”, but my kid looked on it as an opportunity to have fun. (And he actually recycled an essay, ending it “So, did you catch me?”) Chicago usually also has a sciency/math prompt - my older son generally hates creative questions, but loved the question “If you could pick an equation to represent you what would it be and why?” (That may not be the exact question, but close enough.) Tufts has a bunch of optional essays - they are optional and the Tufts rep who posts to CC assures kids regularly that option really does mean optional, but for a kid like my son with a lot of potential but not a perfect record, it really gave him a chance to shine. (He wrote a clever alternative history of the US which he did a lot of research for so that he could adjust famous headlines and other primary source documents.) I like schools that suggest handing in a term paper as one of the options - as I think that can also achieve many of the objectives I think a university ought to have when judging would-be students. The biggest surprise of the whole application process was that my younger son really did understand what colleges were looking for a stepped up to the plate. It made me feel a lot more confident that he was ready for college. Older son, a pure STEM type, wrote a pretty good for a computer engineer essay, at least he wasn’t afraid to show he had a sense of humor.</p>
<p>I don’t have a problem with the essay contribution on the common ap. I told my son that your essay is the replacement for a interview. The adcoms have no other way to hear something in your voice.</p>
<p>What I object to are the supplement essays that ask “Why School X?” Those essays are asking for BS. As if the majority of applicants are just drooling over their websites, reading about their schools activities daily or studying everything they can get their hands on about the school. </p>
<p>Most kids just want to go to a school with a good reputation, stats that match their stats, a selection of majors that match their interests and in a location that is appealing. </p>
<p>Some kids have a “dream” school but when I see someone applied to a large number of Ivies, it is obvious “Why school X, and Y and Z”. I would love to compare their essays and see how similar they are to each other.</p>
<p>I almost died laughing reading your comments. My sentiments exactly. Those times were truly hilarious and exasperating to say the least. Infact my H recorded one our heated arguments, without telling us. And it was a debate whether to use the word "captcha’ in her essays or not. And I have such a good time laughing now when I watch it but trust me it was not funny then. She did not want any help whatsoever.</p>
<p>I think my own learning from last year is we need to let them be who they are and write as they feel and experience things in life and not what or how we as parents define those experiences should be. And I want to share this which is slightly off the topic of writing about oneself but related to the topic of writing the essay anyway.</p>
<p>One short essay required her to bring an imaginary person to current situation and link the two. And because she used to read a lot and so she decided to bring a character from Ann Rice’s vampire series
,an immortal to deal with human beings in the middle of divorce. A case of humans ‘forever’ love and the immortal who’s relationship has lasted for centuries. Now we as parents are worried ‘what if’ the person reading this essay is going through a bitter divorce himself/herself. And 'Will they be able to relate to the fictional character?</p>
<p>But that is what she wanted to write about and we were not able to
change her mind to stick to ‘safe’ topics. For us as parents one more time lesson learnt was we should allow and trust our children, they will surprise you, pleasantly of course, most of the time. However also all the dabating and discussions are what helps them stay true to themselves. I believe it works because once they know they can convince their parents they feel confident that they will be able to do that outside too. That intellectual sometimes heated session is very important. </p>
<p>It all worked out fine in the end. She got into her first choice which was also her dream College. And I miss all that a lot now that she is 7000 miles away from home.</p>
<p>It seemed to me that the format of the application forms (and the Common Application, in particular) forces the applicant to break the picture of him/herself into tiny pieces and scatter them all over the application. The essay offered my kid a chance to put the puzzle back together and present the picture reassembled. When they said she could use her own topic, she took them at their word, and submitted the same essay (edited to various lengths) for almost all of her applications.</p>
<p>I have heard that colleges put less weight on essays these days because of the wide variation in support that students receive while writing them.</p>
<p>My kids had no class for college essay-writing at school, no teacher or counselor help, and certainly no hired help. They did bounce their topics off me, in the beginning. They wrote them at the end of Christmas vacation, senior year.</p>
<p>Their essays certainly were authentic, at least. They ended up at the schools they wanted, but I don’t think essays played that big a role in their acceptances.</p>
<p>Forty years ago, I think we all had to write these too. The biggest change seems to be the competitiveness, the sense that an essay has to be more “special” than anyone else’s, which is too bad, because it induces so much stress.</p>
<p>In addition to the “Why School X” essay I also dislike the “What are you going to do for us?” essay. How will you contribute to our mission of diversity or community service etc. ? </p>
<p>As if any of us have taken a new job and went in already knowing how we were going to contribute or change a company. Don’t you figure that out after you have been there for a while?</p>
<p>Our D had a variety of “highlights” in her resume, and we discussed this strategy beforehand. She probably corralled them in her essays, but we never read them (before, during, or after submitting), so we can only guess.</p>
<p>I’m generally skeptical about how useful the essay can be, since it’s hard to really tell how much help a student has had. I think it can be helpful if it contains actual information that isn’t elsewhere in the application. Perhaps once in a blue moon an essay is so good that it puts a kid over the line into admission.</p>
<p>I do think, though, that a bad essay can hurt you. There was a long discussion here of an NPR piece about an admissions committee at a top LAC (I forget which one), and one of the kids discussed was rejected, in part because of a statement in his essay to the effect that “no subject really fascinated me until I discovered music.” The admissions committee didn’t like that–they want kids who are fascinated by lots of subjects, not just one! I felt then, and still think, that this is a lot of weight to place on a statement by a kid who might have worded it differently on a different day (“I’m fascinated by many topics, but my greatest passion is for music.”) This leads me to think that even if your kid doesn’t want any help, the essay should still be read by one or more adults to see if there is anything that inadvertently puts your kid in a bad light.</p>
<p>I agree with Hunt. While it is admirable that parents say they have never read what their kids have written in their essays it makes no sense to me. </p>
<p>Everyone needs to have someone read over written material that is supposedly that important in the admission process. It doesn’t need to be a parent, it could be a sibling or other person with skill in written communication. </p>
<p>My son’s English class did their essay’s as an assignment and his teacher made various comments to revise in his final draft. Some he did, such as tense correction and punctuation, but others that were his voice or style he left.</p>
<p>How can someone know whether to consider doing a revision that is being read and judged by others if others don’t read it and give their input?</p>
My son wrote his Chicago essay about how he was initially resistant to applying because it “wasn’t on a coast”, his lawyer uncle attended and he definitely didn’t want to be a lawyer, and he wasn’t aware of it being a place to study IR. Then he went on to say that Lake Michigan was “practically a coast” and that academically it was clearly fine and he thought our collection of Chicago t-shirts (thanks to that uncle) were hysterical. I know they liked the essay because they commented on it on the holiday card they sent him. (He’d been accepted EA.) </p>
<p>For his Tufts essay he wrote that he liked all the chalk advertising on sidewalks for events and elections.</p>
<p>When I’ve heard admissions officers speak directly about how much difference essays make they generally say a few definitely get the student rejected - either because they are so poorly written or because the student comes off as unpleasant, a few get them in - and the vast majority don’t make much difference one way or another (at least that the committee is aware of.) My younger son was very cognizant that this was his best chance to stand out from the crowd and make a good impression. He made it a point not to play it too safe.</p>
<p>It seems to me that the “Why School X” is a good opportunity for the student to determine if he really has a good answer. If not, he should be applying somewhere else.</p>
<p>mathmom, your post harks back to my original statement:</p>
<p>Most kids just want to go to a school with a good reputation, stats that match their stats, a selection of majors that match their interests and in a location that is appealing.</p>
<p>The supplement I like it the one for USC. You do write how you are going to pursue your academic interests in their school but then they have a section that you describe yourself in 3 words, favorite food, fictional character, greatest invention, role model, favorite book, best movie, favorite musical performer and dream job.</p>
<p>What a refreshing way to get students to talk about themselves.</p>
<p>Hunt: as i just indicated, the actual school is less important than the whole package a student is looking for. </p>
<p>To not apply to a potential fit is like not applying for any job that you don’t have an exact answer why you want to work there. Havn’t you ever applied for a job that you figured might like but didnt’ have an exact reason for applying?</p>
<p>I don’t know about those short answers–I think the answers are suspect. How many kids are going to answer truthfully that their favorite book is Harry Potter?</p>
<p>Ahhh, so now we are talking about only writing truth. </p>
<p>So the truth is, I am applying to your school because it fits my stats, it is close to home, it is a well regarded school …</p>
<p>Not that I am in love with your school or that I think your program in X is necessarily any better than another school’s program in X because how could i possibly really know how good your program is?</p>
<p>Actually, I think it’s useless to say that you love the school in the “Why School X” essay. Schools aren’t fishing for compliments. They want to know why you’d be a sensible addition to their class. So what you really want to point out (in my view) is what that school has that you want (I’m interested in economics, and X has a well-regarded econ department), and what you have that the school might want (I play French Horn, and am interested in playing in the orchestra).</p>
<p>^Actually (at least from discussions I’ve seen on CC) quite a few say Harry Potter is their favorite book. My son admitted that The Lord of the Rings was his favorite book, but that he also really likes reading the books (by many different authors) in the Star Wars series, (something that his family considers hopelessly lowbrow, but he always makes a pretty good case for why he likes them.) He also admitted to liking Johnny Cash, Tchaikovsky and Metal Rock music.</p>