Reply to Duke University Admissions: Does having a strong interest in literary criticism help or hurt?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What 16/17yo has been interested "for years" in literary criticism?[/quote]

Mine, obviously.  They used to spend a lot of time finding and reading theorists' writing about the books they were reading, which is when their interest started, and when they noticed that everyone had been or was currently a professor at Duke.  [/quote]

That's pretty cool.  Good for them.

Totally use this in that application.[/quote]

I agree.  Maybe I'm naive, but simply saying this,and providing some specific examples of theorists' writings they read and what they thought and also explaining why it is meaningful to them if they can be articulate about that woudl be perfect fora "why duke?" type of essay.

Most schools are trying to keep up their humanities departments these days. Someone with an authetnic interest in the subject for a good reason is a great pick for them.[/quote]

It really is amazing that the elite universities have to fight so much to preserve their humanities programs.  I was surprised to discover that it seems that Yale students primarily major in STEM type subjects now.  [/quote]
Even Liberal arts colleges have become majority or top 3 majors in STEM subjects. It partially has to do with humanities departments refusing to update curriculums- do you really expect modern humanities students are more interested in analyzing Shakespeare or Yeats over Alice Walker, Sandra Cisneros, or Jhumpa Lahiri or that history students want to agonize over the Peloponnesian war versus Cold War ethics or bioweapons across periods.  Humanities have also failed to defend why they matter-"it's about being a whole person," is a shit justification for a $360k degree and doesn't really mean much when the curriculum suggests being a whole person is being a snob about "old dead white men." Humanities departments have really isolated themselves off and not made it clear why the average student would have any reason to choose them over social science departments like Anthropology or Econ, who will teach you statistics and sometimes code along with the research/soft skills.[/quote]

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