What are “Lived Experiences” vs “Exeriences”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For applicants with unarguably privileged backgrounds, this essay is a minefield. Maybe there was someone in your life who had an outsized influence that you can focus on. But it seems like a no-win proposition for children of privilege.

This is why so many of you are so fired up about this question. Because your children are privileged and yes, this specific question is "no-win" for a privileged child, but here's the thing. Your privileged child has been winning in many other categories up until this exact point. You are angry that now at this point, you do not get to continue using that privilege to guarantee this particular success (admission to an elite college) for your child and you CAN buy this thing (paying full freight for a private college). About 45% of students at Ivy schools are full pay. The stats on how many Americans are rich are nebulous depending on what you consider rich, but if we use a basic number - how many households have a net worth over $2 million. That works out to right under 10% of households. What that number means is that rich kids are already incredibly overrepresented in those places. It is what it is.

I have yet to meet a parent of a child who is not privileged that has a problem with this question. Privileged children were overrepresented before in top colleges and they will continue to be. Pick another essay prompt and remember that 45% of the slots are going to 10% of the population. If your child doesn't get one of those slots, they will still have a decent life with whatever college they end up going to.

Being a child of normal middle class is not a privilege
It's a normal thing. It should not be penalized.

Under-privileged kids will still have a decent life with whatever college they end up going to.

Merit should be the major measure.
I can understand social status as a tiebreaker.
That much I can understand, but middle class normal kids should not be penalized.

You have to read the thread in conjunction with other threads about elite schools losing their luster.

It’s vexing if you think a small handful of elite universities are the ticket to a successful life, and then see how a certain cohort of high-achieving kids from well-off families are systematically denied access to those institutions because, on the one hand, they don’t have “hooks,” yet on the other hand they don’t check the diversity boxes (which essays about “lived experiences” are intended to surface) that give them an edge with liberal admissions officers.

However, if you recognize that some of the elite schools increasingly see themselves as in the business of promoting social change and mobility, and less interested in rewarding academic merit than in the 70s to 00s, you can move on. An ever-increasing percentage of the young adults who make valuable contributions to society will come from less “selective” state schools, and the Ivies and “top” SLACs will be seen as increasingly twee - a nice lottery to have won, but not necessarily indicative of exceptional smarts or intellectual strength.

So, sure, when some schools demand essays about kids’ “lived experiences,” they can try to write an honest, introspective essay, but it seems there’s also every reason to believe they are now used by left-leaning admissions officers as a tool to toss applications from kids deemed to have enjoyed too many “unearned privileges.”

LMAO, you are contradicting yourself.

Small handful of elite universities are not the ticket to a successful life, however it's a ticket for the poor people.

make up your mind.

+1

I don't think they intended to make sense. I think they were just itching to use the words "vexing" and "twee" in an argument

Obviously it's the arrogant eitle colleges that think their degree is a ticket to successful like(social change and mobility), hence they graciously donate some seats to poor people.

Impeccable timing! I JUST warned my son someone would say he was "given" the spot he earned.

What school and what are the stats?
Test Optional?

Same. And wow! It is like you're reading a script... I feel like I'm one number away from shouting "Bingo!"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Healthy society should reward hard working tax paying middle class instead of penalizing them.

There’s no evidence that this essay penalizes them unless your kiddo’s too stupid to think of something. In which case the essay has fulfilled its purpose.

The essay can be written by anyone in the first place including ChatGTP.

Essay should be done like SAT style.
Everyone go to the test center, given a topic/prompt, write it in a given time.

The whole system is just so stupid and fukced up.

You literally don't understand that this part of the application is not a test? "Tell me a little bit about yourself" is not a competition. It is conversation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:An experience is something you did once (a vacation, a summer job, a robbery, a championship game).

Your lived experience is your experience of life in your world on a day to day basis (preacher's kid, farmer's daughter, lawyer's kid, foster child, only white kid in a majority black high school, individual with a disability or child of a disabled parent, 6th generation Harvard crew offspring who really wants to go to Princeton, child whose parents don't speak English, expat kid who was moved from country to country from birth and has no Passport for a place that feels like home).

One is an event; the other is an enduring life circumstance (which can change or may have).

NP. Thank you for explaining this! I didn't realize that I didn't know the difference until reading this.

[Anonymous]

Watching a movie is not an "experience" because it is a passive activity. Nobody says they experienced a movie, we say we watched a movie. Experience implies that you were a participant, not an observer. There is no need to say "lived experience"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Watching a movie is not an "experience" because it is a passive activity. Nobody says they experienced a movie, we say we watched a movie. Experience implies that you were a participant, not an observer. There is no need to say "lived experience"

I hate that people insist on calling peanut spread... butter. It is NOT butter. Butter is a dairy product. Full stop.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Healthy society should reward hard working tax paying middle class instead of penalizing them.

There’s no evidence that this essay penalizes them unless your kiddo’s too stupid to think of something. In which case the essay has fulfilled its purpose.

The essay can be written by anyone in the first place including ChatGTP.

Essay should be done like SAT style.
Everyone go to the test center, given a topic/prompt, write it in a given time.

The whole system is just so stupid and fukced up.

X100000

No tutors, no parental stories. Done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An experience is something you did once (a vacation, a summer job, a robbery, a championship game).

Your lived experience is your experience of life in your world on a day to day basis (preacher's kid, farmer's daughter, lawyer's kid, foster child, only white kid in a majority black high school, individual with a disability or child of a disabled parent, 6th generation Harvard crew offspring who really wants to go to Princeton, child whose parents don't speak English, expat kid who was moved from country to country from birth and has no Passport for a place that feels like home).

One is an event; the other is an enduring life circumstance (which can change or may have).

NP. Thank you for explaining this! I didn't realize that I didn't know the difference until reading this.

Your visiting (impoverished country here) when you were five, means nothing.

[Anonymous]

Yes, but you still had the experience. Was it a meaningful one? At five, no. Did you live through the experience? Yes. The phrase "lived experience" makes no sense and is silly. I understand what the phrase is trying to convey, but that doesn't make the phrase any less redundant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but you still had the experience. Was it a meaningful one? At five, no. Did you live through the experience? Yes. The phrase "lived experience" makes no sense and is silly. I understand what the phrase is trying to convey, but that doesn't make the phrase any less redundant.

Why do they insist on calling the toilets "rest rooms?" I find them rather stressful. Especially in public. Not that "water closet" makes that much more sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but you still had the experience. Was it a meaningful one? At five, no. Did you live through the experience? Yes. The phrase "lived experience" makes no sense and is silly. I understand what the phrase is trying to convey, but that doesn't make the phrase any less redundant.

Why do they insist on calling the toilets "rest rooms?" I find them rather stressful. Especially in public. Not that "water closet" makes that much more sense.

A toilet is in a room. With a sink. Do you know wash your hands after using the toilet?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but you still had the experience. Was it a meaningful one? At five, no. Did you live through the experience? Yes. The phrase "lived experience" makes no sense and is silly. I understand what the phrase is trying to convey, but that doesn't make the phrase any less redundant.

Why do they insist on calling the toilets "rest rooms?" I find them rather stressful. Especially in public. Not that "water closet" makes that much more sense.

A toilet is in a room. With a sink. Do you know wash your hands after using the toilet?

Not all of them

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but you still had the experience. Was it a meaningful one? At five, no. Did you live through the experience? Yes. The phrase "lived experience" makes no sense and is silly. I understand what the phrase is trying to convey, but that doesn't make the phrase any less redundant.

Why do they insist on calling the toilets "rest rooms?" I find them rather stressful. Especially in public. Not that "water closet" makes that much more sense.

A toilet is in a room. With a sink. Do you know wash your hands after using the toilet?

Not all of them

You can still test while sitting on a toilet in a room.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but you still had the experience. Was it a meaningful one? At five, no. Did you live through the experience? Yes. The phrase "lived experience" makes no sense and is silly. I understand what the phrase is trying to convey, but that doesn't make the phrase any less redundant.

Why do they insist on calling the toilets "rest rooms?" I find them rather stressful. Especially in public. Not that "water closet" makes that much more sense.

A toilet is in a room. With a sink. Do you know wash your hands after using the toilet?

Not all of them

You can still test while sitting on a toilet in a room.

Rest. But nobody calls that a restroom anyway, its a portapotty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but you still had the experience. Was it a meaningful one? At five, no. Did you live through the experience? Yes. The phrase "lived experience" makes no sense and is silly. I understand what the phrase is trying to convey, but that doesn't make the phrase any less redundant.

Why do they insist on calling the toilets "rest rooms?" I find them rather stressful. Especially in public. Not that "water closet" makes that much more sense.

A toilet is in a room. With a sink. Do you know wash your hands after using the toilet?

Not all of them

You can still test while sitting on a toilet in a room.

Rest. But nobody calls that a restroom anyway, its a portapotty.

Buddy... if you can rest while sitting on that thing then I am certain you have some "lived experiences" worth writing about!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For applicants with unarguably privileged backgrounds, this essay is a minefield. Maybe there was someone in your life who had an outsized influence that you can focus on. But it seems like a no-win proposition for children of privilege.

This is why so many of you are so fired up about this question. Because your children are privileged and yes, this specific question is "no-win" for a privileged child, but here's the thing. Your privileged child has been winning in many other categories up until this exact point. You are angry that now at this point, you do not get to continue using that privilege to guarantee this particular success (admission to an elite college) for your child and you CAN buy this thing (paying full freight for a private college). About 45% of students at Ivy schools are full pay. The stats on how many Americans are rich are nebulous depending on what you consider rich, but if we use a basic number - how many households have a net worth over $2 million. That works out to right under 10% of households. What that number means is that rich kids are already incredibly overrepresented in those places. It is what it is.

I have yet to meet a parent of a child who is not privileged that has a problem with this question. Privileged children were overrepresented before in top colleges and they will continue to be. Pick another essay prompt and remember that 45% of the slots are going to 10% of the population. If your child doesn't get one of those slots, they will still have a decent life with whatever college they end up going to.

Being a child of normal middle class is not a privilege
It's a normal thing. It should not be penalized.

Under-privileged kids will still have a decent life with whatever college they end up going to.

Merit should be the major measure.
I can understand social status as a tiebreaker.
That much I can understand, but middle class normal kids should not be penalized.

You have to read the thread in conjunction with other threads about elite schools losing their luster.

It’s vexing if you think a small handful of elite universities are the ticket to a successful life, and then see how a certain cohort of high-achieving kids from well-off families are systematically denied access to those institutions because, on the one hand, they don’t have “hooks,” yet on the other hand they don’t check the diversity boxes (which essays about “lived experiences” are intended to surface) that give them an edge with liberal admissions officers.

However, if you recognize that some of the elite schools increasingly see themselves as in the business of promoting social change and mobility, and less interested in rewarding academic merit than in the 70s to 00s, you can move on. An ever-increasing percentage of the young adults who make valuable contributions to society will come from less “selective” state schools, and the Ivies and “top” SLACs will be seen as increasingly twee - a nice lottery to have won, but not necessarily indicative of exceptional smarts or intellectual strength.

So, sure, when some schools demand essays about kids’ “lived experiences,” they can try to write an honest, introspective essay, but it seems there’s also every reason to believe they are now used by left-leaning admissions officers as a tool to toss applications from kids deemed to have enjoyed too many “unearned privileges.”

LMAO, you are contradicting yourself.

Small handful of elite universities are not the ticket to a successful life, however it's a ticket for the poor people.

make up your mind.

No contradiction, pea brain.

One the one hand, the elite institutions have an exalted sense of their own worth and think they can effect social change by spreading their magic pixie dust far more widely.

Yet they ultimately undermine their own standing by increasingly being seen as politically driven rather than academically elite.

This is already happening and the demands for applicants to manufacture narratives of hardship and deprivation under the guise of writing essays about their “lived experiences” seems but another step in the same direction.