<p>What ideas a student has, and how effectively he expresses them, is what is meant by the phrase “how a student writes” in an academic context. It’s not about style (or not much), it’s about content and delivery, thought process. If you have an idea, and you are communicating it so that it can be understood by the reader, you are writing well. You may not get a Nobel Prize for Literature or a Booker, but you are writing well.</p>
<p>Very true, but a lot of more innocuous essay prompts yield the same results. I loved the essay my S produced for Stanford in which he connected math to friendship.</p>
<p>Epiphany, there may be holistic processes at other colleges, but many are much more stat driven than Chicago. Chicago ranks the same as Columbia on US News, and I’ve posted above that I think its a fair equivalency – but I doubt that Columbia would have looked at my d. with her test scores. Chicago would, and did. </p>
<p>Since I was the parent of a smart, articulate, capable student with unremarkable test scores, coming from a public school not known for academic or academic challenge… then it was in my interest as a parent to help my kid by looking at the application process for various schools, and helping in identifying those whose admission practices would give her an opportunity to highlight her strengths. Chicago was one of those. Chicago was one of only two colleges that I recall her applying to that made clear that it welcomed submissions of supplemental material. That was important to her because she also wanted to share her history as a dancer, even though she did not plan to pursue the study of dance in college or write essays about it. </p>
<p>I still don’t understand the resentment. The REALITY is that Chicago weights essays more significantly in its application process than many other schools. It doesn’t make Chicago better or worse than its peer institutions, but it does make their application and selection process different than many. And a different application process may mean that some smart, quirky students have a good chance at admissions at Chicago whereas they might not make the cut at a school that places more emphasis on numbers. </p>
<p>What Chicago is doing with its application procedures is stirring the pot. The fact that they discourage some strong applicants from applying is a good thing – it ensures that Chicago will be able to evaluate a somewhat different applicant pool based on a somewhat different set of criteria. It may be that some kid applies to Yale with hokey essays and doesn’t get accepted, but gets accepted to Chicago precisely because the Chicago application led him to ditch the hokey essay in favor of something else. And it may be that the kid gets accepted to Yale and turned down by Chicago, or accepted to both. </p>
<p>But the bottom line is that it is not in Chicago’s interest to have an applicant pool consisting largely of the same students who are also applying to HYP, and then set things up to evaluate those students by identical criteria.</p>
<p>I’d add that I think a lot of posters are making the mistake of evaluating the essays from the perspective of the student-applicants, rather than from the viewpoint of the admissions committee. It is in the interest of the admissions department to attract a strong applicant pool of students who are highly likely to attend Chicago; it is not in their interest to accept a lot of students who are likely to have attractive offers of admission from peer institutions. </p>
<p>Again, very few students will choose Chicago over HYP if that is their final choice – so the last thing Chicago wants is cross-admits with HYP. Cross-applicants are fine – students who are rejected or waitlisted at HYP very often accept spots at Chicago. But there are certain things that Chicago can do to help ensure that they don’t end up accepting an unworkably high number of cross-admits, and I think they are doing it very well. </p>
<p>I still don’t understand why anyone would feel angry or upset because Chicago’s application isn’t their cup of tea. I sense an undertone of resentment that Chicago happens to be a high-prestige school that has made it harder for high stakes players to add Chicago to the set of cards they have to choose from in the spring – but no sense whatsoever that any of these students would have opted for Chicago over the schools they ended up attending.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Here we go again with the romantic views and idle speculation!</p>
<p>There is no CONCRETE way to establish the “REALITY” that Chicago weights essays more significantly in its application process than many other schools. What should we use as criteria to distinguish among the “many other schools?” Schools that are more selective? Less selective? Only include state schools or schools that do not require essays?</p>
<p>Are you suggesting that the admissions officers and readers at Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, or Stanford are simply looking at the essays submitted by students as placeholders? Have you ever heard about the DIRECT commentaries placed by a Dean of Admission onto the admission letter? How about a personal email discussing one, if you’d believe the tone in this thread, of the “vacuous” or “unimportant” essays requested by the “others?” It is one thing to proclaim that the essays are part of the admission equation at Chicago, and quite another to advance that it is MORE important! </p>
<p>Last but not least, since the essays are supposedly THAT important, have you thought for a second that the essays are the most prone to be ABUSED by cheaters and gamers! Or do you subscribe to the theory that the extremely well-paid and extremely competent (that is sarcastic) readers and adcoms are able to smell a rat from a mile away as they spent the usual 45 seconds reading an essay? After all, it must so easy to separate the voice of a gangly teenager from that of a mature and superior … intellectual.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That seems to imply that Chicago does not aim to peel off HYP admits but is happy with HYP rejects! that strikes me as an odd argument. </p>
<p>Resentment is different from dislike. I don’t like certain foods. I do not resent certain foods (see how weird that would sound?) Dislike is just that. I do not have to have a reason other than the prompts themselves to dislike them; I have absolutely no horse in that particular race.</p>
<p>I have several reasons to think that Chicago may weight the essay more than many other schools. First is that their acceptance letter (the generic one) says that one of the reasons they accept students is for their “strong voice”. (I didn’t see similar language in any school my older son applied to.) The second is that my son had a B+ unweighted GPA and a bunch of B-'s. He’s taken a demanding schedule, I think he had some great recs, but yes, I think the essay pushed him over the edge. Third, is that he got a second card (all the EA admits did) specifically mentioning something they had liked about the essay.</p>
<p>Xiggi, you miss the point. At Chicago essays and other subjective criteria are MORE important than test scores – Chicago considers applicants who would not make the cut at many other schools because of scores. </p>
<p>But your reaction about “cheaters and gamers” is rather telling, given the number of applicants who make their way into top schools by riding on artificially inflated test scores, that reflect their ability to study and prep for multiple-choice testing and not much else. If anything, Chicago’s “uncommon” application is a significant deterrent to students relying on outside help for essays, precisely because of the quirky and unpredictable nature of the essays. The students who rely on outside help for everything, including essays as well as test prep, will find that they have a shortened time frame to “prep” for the Chicago app – much easier to arrange to plan to write using the common app prompts that haven’t changed in more than a decade.</p>
<p>
Doesn’t Harvard have something like an 80% yield? Don’t the Ivies offer financial aid packages that are attractive even to families with incomes above $100K? A HYP admitted student who found it too bothersome to think about and answer a separate, different set of essays isn’t going to attend Chicago. If that student decides to apply to Chicago using a recycled common app essay – and is thereafter accepted – that student isn’t going to be “peeled away” – except in the very narrow circumstances where Chicago is able to offer a full tuition merit scholarship. (But Chicago probably wants to be careful as to where it targets those scholarship offers as well — I’m sure that the depth of thought and quality of expression in the essays is a significant factor for deciding where to direct their limited merit aid as well).</p>
<p>All the schools report on the CDS how they weigh various criteria. Chicago SAYS that they weigh the essay very strongly, and that such factors are MORE important than class rank and GPA, and that test scores are way down on the bottom of their priority list:</p>
<p>Chicago:</p>
<p>Very important admission factors:</p>
<p>Character/Personal Qualities
Application Essay
Recommendations
Rigor of secondary school record
Talent/Ability</p>
<p>Important admission factors:</p>
<p>Class Rank
Extracurricular Activities
Volunteer Work
Academic GPA</p>
<p>Considered:</p>
<p>Alumni Relation
Interview
Racial/Ethnic Status
Standardized Test Scores
Work Experience
First generation college student
Level of Applicant’s Interest</p>
<p>See: [College</a> Search - University of Chicago - Chicago - Admission](<a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board)</p>
<p>I don’t think you can find any Ivy that reports that it values essays as being in a category that is more important to admissions than test scores and GPA. </p>
<p>I do think that Chicago values critical thinking skills, including the ability to look at what its stated criteria for admission are and to apply that criteria to the application process.</p>
<p>Oh Calmom, I believe you are the one missing the point here. </p>
<p>When it gets to help, especially mercenary or parental help, the assumptions is that this help should be provided by an adult with a degree of expertise. Which essays do you think fit better the “voice” of an adult? Simple and personal ones or … intellectual ones?</p>
<p>Feel free to disagree with this, but you should know that it is immensely more difficuly to pen a compelling asnwer to simplistic essays such as the note to a roommate at Stanford, or to the page 217 at Penn than to some of the “intellectual” baldersdash that has adorned recent applications at Chicago? The hardest part of college application essays is to delve into your deep self and express it concisely in 250 to 500 words; writing an “intellectual,” analytical, or expository essay is really not that hard. </p>
<p>For a parent or a hired gun with creative writing skills, the essays proposed by Chicago do not amount to much of a challenge. This might explain the relentless and spirited defense of their greatness and value.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You have seen Chicago’s Common Data Set? I’ll start looking for you at Mt. Olympus!</p>
<p>
Without a doubt it would be much easier for an adult to feign the “voice” of a teenage applicant with a simple and personal essay than with an intellectual essay.</p>
<p>
No. I’m smart enough to have figured out that the information published about Chicago on the College Board web site and similar sites is drawn from the Common Data Set, section C7 to be exact.</p>
<p>Calmom:</p>
<p>Chicago does get a lot of students whose first choice was HYP. But that’s different from stating, as you implied, that it does so as a matter of <em>strategy,</em> because “the last thing Chicago wants is cross-admits with HYP.” Why should it not try to fight for those cross-admits? Why should it be satisfied with only 39% yield?
Edit: Actually, the yield last year was 36%. Chicago’s explanation for the dip?</p>
<p>
<a href=“Delays keep Proof from silver screen – Chicago Maroon”>Delays keep Proof from silver screen – Chicago Maroon;
<p>Is it because adults have more experience trying to sound like teenagers than trying to sound like intellectuals? </p>
<p>Would it really be easier for you to pretend to write about how a teenager sees the world than to write about a legal, a business, or a simply a current affair? </p>
<p>Weren’t the essays submitted to Chicago supposed to be smarter, more intellectual, more … more everything for that matter!</p>
<p>I disagree. Even very mature teenagers are inexperienced by virtue of their youth. While a student hailing from a war-torn, underdeveloped country might view life from a much more jaded perspective than the average affluent American teenager, there is a process of psychological and emotional development that cannot be circumvented or hurried overly much. This youthfulness will surface more easily in a personal essay than an intellectual one, because students of elite university caliber can match many adults in their powers of reasoning and academic expresssion.</p>
<p>However, some thirty years later have you ever found a journal or diary you’d written in your teens? Don’t you chuckle at what you thought and wrote about? How silly, naive, or self-absorbed you were? I think a simple, personal essay is harder to game because most (I’d agree maybe not all) teenagers think and express themselves differently than adults do when talking about how they view themselves and their own lives. I can’t prove this is true, but it’s what I believe.</p>
<p>Most teenagers and young adults also express themselves very differently when attempting to write scholarly pieces as well, but the differences are harder to imitate, in part because it is an immaturity related to the the substantive content of what they write as opposed to tone and phrasing. To try to effect a youthful voice in that context is a lot harder than to simply tell a story from the vantage point of a youngster, where a less formal tone of writing would be the norm in any case. </p>
<p>In any case, its a straw man argument. There’s no evidence that Chicago applicants get more help on their essays than anywhere else. What I do see is evidence that some individuals are very insecure about Chicago and its essays. Some applicants apply to Chicago in any event, despite their insecurity – some get in, others don’t. Some people express that insecurity in a very hostile way.</p>
<p>Marite, why would Chicago want to admit students who were also accepted by HYP when it would have a much better yield from students who are NOT admitted to schools that have higher ranking and prestige? </p>
<p>I can see why people who are interested in economics choose to go to Chicago. Obviously other schools don’t do a very good job of educating people about simple market concepts.</p>
<p>I didn’t write my son’s essays, but I did make a lot of suggestions to help him get down to the required word limit without eliminating any substance. I viewed it as an opportunity to teach him how to write concisely. Is this likely to change the tone of his essays so much that they will no longer be his “voice”?</p>