My S24 went against advice and wrote about his main EC, but he did it in a way that showed how the EC changed him and his relationship with his brother. It was a very very good essay and certainly helped him get into his ED school.
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My S24 also wrote about his main EC, and it was a great essay and really complemented the rest of his application to give lots of color and insight into his personality.
I think this is precisely the misunderstanding that creates confusion with students. It is great to write about your ECs, or anything that you feel is important. But this should not be a rehash of information already presented elsewhere in the application.
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Itâs hard to be reflective if youâve âalways been right/done everything rightâ. Successful completion of the application is doomed from the start.
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I had brunch with friends today, always interesting to listen to my girlfriend who is a professor at our public ivy share her views. She teaches nursing students and often shares how much her students have changed since the pandemic. She said she rarely sees go-getters anymore and itâs contentment with just enough. I wonder if this is healthcare related burnout or what.
On a side note, she has 3 kids and youngest will go through college applications next year. I feel like I know more than her on college admissions topics and all the current insanity. Thanks fellow CCers!
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And worse - theyâve usually been rewarded for it. Often to the highest level available (easy A+!)
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I think itâs a mistake to chalk up disappointing results to bad essays or some glaring weakness in an applicantâs package. In some instances (like the one you mentioned) that will be the case, but more often itâs just a numbers game. Too many great applicants and too few spots (and institutional priorities we know nothing about).
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No kidding. I have a sort of mental list of things you can frequently find on âwhat we look forâ admissions pages that are most commonly ignored in certain circles. High on that list is taking risks, including actually failing (because if you never fail, you really never took any risks).
Embracing the idea that failures, important failures, should be a part of their childhood is apparently unthinkable for some of these families. And I think you are right that they then get to this stage and are completely lost on how to write some of these essays, where that way of thinking about the role of risk/failure in childhood development is operating in the background.
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FWIW I didnât take @Curium245 's comment to be a definitive statement for 100% of these cases (and in my case why I mentioned that itâs one of âmanyâ reasons).
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Every time a straight A student gets a B or C - even in a hard high school or cc class - the teacher was just really bad.
Or if they get a B - are my college dreams over.
My god, what if they make a mistake at work.
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So agree on the failure, some of my favorite S24 supplementals have been about failure learnings. Also find this has been a very well received topic in interviews.
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Absolutely agree! It is absolutely a numbers game and no student should think that the acceptance/rejection is because they did something wrong.
However, I do think that if the results at several safeties is consistently negative, then it is good to get someone to look over the application.
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I personally find this one of the hardest topics to discuss because I think both things are true and important.
On the one hand, institutional priorities that are completely outside of your control are sometimes going to determine your outcome. This is really the whole premise behind why you need a robust application list.
On the other, I think you can shade the odds in your favor by spending some time reflecting on why highly selective residential colleges might value different things, studying what they say they value in their admissions material, choosing colleges where you are in fact a particularly good fit for what they are looking for, and then writing applications that enthusiastically reflect your sense of that fit. Which is the really the whole premise behind having a carefully-chosen application list.
And then sometimes it will not work anyway, because of those other institutional priorities you simply cannot control. But I think if you can sort of embrace all of this, you can end up with good choices in the end. It just wonât be predictable exactly which good choices.
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Absolutely. Rejections at true safeties should be taken seriously. There is probably a red flag in that case.
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I am experiencing the same thing when trying to hire new employees.
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My kid wrote 3/4 of the UC PIQs about ECs and followed the advice from the UC admission officers of answering straight to the point. If a kid is really into something they need more than the tiny space on the activity list to tell the how and why.
There are thousands of kids getting in to each university each year and thousands of ways to write it that can be different for each person.
The common essay was much more creative and showed much more personality partly because we saw the recommendation letters which did a great job of showcasing leadership and academics. Hopefully that essay got more to the âfitâ of the school.
Most kids donât have a college counselor or informed parents and arenât going to have perfect essays.
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I think this falls into the category that no one wants to say no to a child (even a 17 year old senior). No one wants to be the bad guy and tell a student that their subject matter is wrong and/or the tone is really off. Teachers will certainly fix commas or a sentence structure, but they likely donât want to open a can of worms telling the student (and his parents) that the essay comes off poorly.
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And none of us know whether the writer was given substantive feedback that was ignored.
Iâve given feedback on essays Iâm reviewing and sometimes the student pushes back or flat out ignores my suggestions. Which is obviously completely ok - it is their essay. But Iâve seen students put things back into their essays that I think will make the essay not great and at a certain point - you have to allow people to make those kinds of choices.
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I find it refreshing. The young people Iâm hiring these days are kind, smart, and thoughtfulâŠand they have boundaries. They take vacations and donât work outside of normal hours (but are responsive and on-task while on the clock). They are empathetic and respectful of difference. They are generally delightful, and I think they will be happier in the long run for it.
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Iâve had positive experiences with my college interns as well. Perhaps itâs just the subset of kids who apply, but they have all been eager to work.
I do find many young people are more focused on doing meaningful work rather than settling for a good office job that pays the bills.
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I want to make sure no student is discouraged to write about their ECs in their essay if that is where their passion lies. Below is the evolution of an essay about an EC that I think ended up being a really good essay.
One of the kids I was helping wrote her first draft about a knitting club that she founded and then expanded in school. Her first draft of the essay mentioned the date the club was founded, how many students she was supervising, and the number of items they made to donate to a hospital. She described all her responsibilities, organizing the meetings and recruiting members. All of this was mentioned in her activities section.
I advised her to put down in writing everything she could think of regarding her knitting - just free flow writing. We then talked about all her experiences and thoughts several times which pulled more and more information to the forefront.
The final version of the essay talked about her learning knitting during Covid because it was a way to connect with her Grandma over zoom when they could not see each other. She described how knitting helped her feel in control, physically and emotionally, and the pride that she felt in being a creator/maker. She described her thought process as she chose colors/patterns for gifts and donations she created. One of my favorite parts was her recreating a hat from a photograph of her teenage grandma that she loves to wear.
The most important thing was that the student loved her essay and was so happy with it. I really felt like the essay gave an authentic glimpse of this wonderful young lady. Was it what the AOs were looking for? Who knows? She was accepted into her ED at a highly selective school. But the rest of her application was very strong too. What role the essay played is anyoneâs guess. But I am confident that her essay did not subtract from her application.
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