PSA: Don't write your essay about building huts in Africa!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These essays are such a joke. My BIL wrote his daughter's (he won't admit it but it's obvious) and she got into a school she had no business going to. I have to assume this happens all the time. How do you expect a 17 year old to write anything meaningful? They're all told what "good" beliefs are, and haven't had the experiences that will lead them to anything authentic. And then they're told to avoid writing about genuinely meaningful experiences because they show privilege. For all the people saying "don't write about this"--well, that's probably what their experience is. So we're asking them to lie and second guess themselves. It's just nasty, like everything else in higher ed. Burn it all down and go back to admits on quantifiable, non-cheatable ability only.

So agree with this. One popular college counselor strongly advocates NOT writing about any extra curriculars or activities, food, exotic travel, COVID. My 17 year old has mostly studied and done ECs for the past few years (and count in the pandemic). What else can he write about? Esp. as part of immigrant family with no 'grandparent' story.

What's wrong with writing about meaningful ECs? Obviously, don't write about being president of a made up school club, but talking about a sustained commitment and what it means.

I agree an EC can be a great essay. But one thing to look at is we found a lot of the supplements DD had were some variety of "elaborate on an extracurricular" and it could feel repetitive if she'd covered that in her main easy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DD's writing about how she unexpectedly found herself watching the Taylor Swift ERAs concert from the VIP tent.
I'll let you know how it goes.

Just make sure she doesn't identify as a woman and is a POC and she'll do just great.

[Anonymous]

A problem with writing about an EC, is that it’s already on your app somewhere. The purpose of the essay is not to understand how well an applicant can write. The purpose of the essay is for them to understand something about the applicant…remember “ Holistic admissions”.

Example I was given was, a student won many awards in soccer, the student had a part-time job refereeing soccer games, the student’s extracurricular activity is soccer. the student has the opportunity to write a 600 word essay so that the admissions officers at the college can understand more about them and they write “I sure love soccer. “

Maybe write about how the EC affected you or how you’ve changed or grown because of the EC, although they do see a lot of these.

The best advice I was given, is the essay should say something about the student that is nowhere else on the application. And Harvard’s virtual open house session the AO said, “if the essay was printed and left on a printer, and another student at your school read it up they would know exactly who wrote it.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD's writing about how she unexpectedly found herself watching the Taylor Swift ERAs concert from the VIP tent.
I'll let you know how it goes.

Just make sure she doesn't identify as a woman and is a POC and she'll do just great.

DS told us that a couple boys asked and were permitted to keep their phones on during class while they were in the queue for fan verification and whatnot for TS concert tickets - the teachers at the all boys schools did not want to be their anti-hero. I thought that experience could work its way around to an essay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These essays are such a joke. My BIL wrote his daughter's (he won't admit it but it's obvious) and she got into a school she had no business going to. I have to assume this happens all the time. How do you expect a 17 year old to write anything meaningful? They're all told what "good" beliefs are, and haven't had the experiences that will lead them to anything authentic. And then they're told to avoid writing about genuinely meaningful experiences because they show privilege. For all the people saying "don't write about this"--well, that's probably what their experience is. So we're asking them to lie and second guess themselves. It's just nasty, like everything else in higher ed. Burn it all down and go back to admits on quantifiable, non-cheatable ability only.

that is...not how it works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These private counselors often offer terrible advice.

Also, "how the pandemic affected me" can be a great topic if it's sincere, interesting, and sounds authentically like an 18yo.

99% likely aren’t that interesting…the pandemic literally affected everyone so I doubt the kid is writing anything that hasn’t been written about a 1000 times.

[Anonymous]

Topic doesn’t matter for college essays. The content of the essay is what matters. A kid could write a very compelling essay about a very mundane topic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

"how my sport changed my life."

My high stats (3.98 GPA/4.53 wGPA/35 ACT, full IB) class of 22 wrote an essay like this (and his sport really did change his life), which I thought was pretty good, and he did not get into most of the selective schools he applied to (Yale, Harvard, Williams (legacy, but didn't apply ED), Amherst, Duke, UVa, MIT). Obviously not getting in to any of those could just be luck of the draw, but I wonder if his essay ended up hurting him.

Unfortunately, I bet it did. In the case of my nephew though, we are talking about the top schools, but also schools a level below that, like Emory, Tulane, etc

Have you had a Dc go through the admissions process yet? Your expectations may be out of date. I wouldn’t assume it was your nephew’s essay. Even your “schools a level below” (Emory and Tulane) have very low admissions rates. Most kids don’t get in. For 2023, Emory was a 15% admit rate and Tulane was 13%.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD's writing about how she unexpectedly found herself watching the Taylor Swift ERAs concert from the VIP tent.
I'll let you know how it goes.

Just make sure she doesn't identify as a woman and is a POC and she'll do just great.

DS told us that a couple boys asked and were permitted to keep their phones on during class while they were in the queue for fan verification and whatnot for TS concert tickets - the teachers at the all boys schools did not want to be their anti-hero. I thought that experience could work its way around to an essay.

Ha! I agree. Could be an exploration of gender relations, pure love of music, allyship within an all-boys school ...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These essays are such a joke. My BIL wrote his daughter's (he won't admit it but it's obvious) and she got into a school she had no business going to. I have to assume this happens all the time. How do you expect a 17 year old to write anything meaningful? They're all told what "good" beliefs are, and haven't had the experiences that will lead them to anything authentic. And then they're told to avoid writing about genuinely meaningful experiences because they show privilege. For all the people saying "don't write about this"--well, that's probably what their experience is. So we're asking them to lie and second guess themselves. It's just nasty, like everything else in higher ed. Burn it all down and go back to admits on quantifiable, non-cheatable ability only.

So agree with this. One popular college counselor strongly advocates NOT writing about any extra curriculars or activities, food, exotic travel, COVID. My 17 year old has mostly studied and done ECs for the past few years (and count in the pandemic). What else can he write about? Esp. as part of immigrant family with no 'grandparent' story.

What's wrong with writing about meaningful ECs? Obviously, don't write about being president of a made up school club, but talking about a sustained commitment and what it means.

Yes, this sounds like terrible advice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD's writing about how she unexpectedly found herself watching the Taylor Swift ERAs concert from the VIP tent.
I'll let you know how it goes.

Just make sure she doesn't identify as a woman and is a POC and she'll do just great.

DS told us that a couple boys asked and were permitted to keep their phones on during class while they were in the queue for fan verification and whatnot for TS concert tickets - the teachers at the all boys schools did not want to be their anti-hero. I thought that experience could work its way around to an essay.

Ha! I agree. Could be an exploration of gender relations, pure love of music, allyship within an all-boys school ...

It just writes itself …. and DS looks at me like I’m nuts again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These private counselors often offer terrible advice.

Also, "how the pandemic affected me" can be a great topic if it's sincere, interesting, and sounds authentically like an 18yo.

99% likely aren’t that interesting…the pandemic literally affected everyone so I doubt the kid is writing anything that hasn’t been written about a 1000 times.

Some kids had drastically different experiences than others.

Some kids got to stay home in large, comfortable houses with parents who were safely working remotely. Or with SAHMs. Their only hardship was listening to their parents complain about how awful it was to be around their kids all day.

Other kids were in smaller places, or had limited internet, or had parents who were risking their lives by working in person all day, or had to take care of younger siblings. Some kids had parents or grandparents die.

[Anonymous]

My guess the essays that are not successful don't say enough about the person instead it becomes a litany of the activities they have done.

My kids at Ivies wrote about a charity they started but it wasn't about the activity, it was about themselves and what they learned from the activity about themselves. It was congruent with the theme in the essay about service as manifested by several points of empirical evidence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These private counselors often offer terrible advice.

Also, "how the pandemic affected me" can be a great topic if it's sincere, interesting, and sounds authentically like an 18yo.

99% likely aren’t that interesting…the pandemic literally affected everyone so I doubt the kid is writing anything that hasn’t been written about a 1000 times.

Some kids had drastically different experiences than others.

Some kids got to stay home in large, comfortable houses with parents who were safely working remotely. Or with SAHMs. Their only hardship was listening to their parents complain about how awful it was to be around their kids all day.

Other kids were in smaller places, or had limited internet, or had parents who were risking their lives by working in person all day, or had to take care of younger siblings. Some kids had parents or grandparents die.

there is a separate space in the common app to share how you were impacted by covid so I'd share those details there rather than making the main essay about it.

[Anonymous]

If you think flying to Africa to build huts on a "service" trip is a good use of your time and money , you absolutely should write your essay about it. Fly your hyperprivilege flag proudly!