What *not* to do in your college application

uchicagoalum
Mon, 11 Feb 2008 22:22:23 +0000

On a very practical level, one admissions officer recently posted to her personal blog how she is quite averse to overtly pre-professional applications. Specifically, she noted how too many individuals wrote essays describing the College as but a mere springboard to the Graduate School of Business and medical school.

This aside, part of being a student at a leading university is coming to terms with certain elements of the system / the status quo / existing cultural norms. You are asking to be part of a community where the maturity you will need to exhibit to succeed is far higher than that called for by the average 18-22 year old. Consequently, I do not think it is unreasonable that applicants be required to polish themselves a bit, not insofar as an institution actually thinks its applicants are perfect schoolboys and girls, but to the extent that it needs to be certain you will dot your i’s and cross you t’s socially in the many future endeavors where you will be judged precisely on these grounds.

This is especially salient for the U of C, where oddball personalities have been a small but chronic problem for the school. While their numbers have drastically declined with the improved admissions standards over the last several years, there were many amongst the fourth year class when I was a first year that simply were so non-conventional it was glaringly apparent they would never make it in the real world venues that UChicago graduates historically track into. Unfortunately, many today have either pink-collar type jobs or work as service employees as a result. Frankly, I personally cannot come to terms with the idea that someone would spend four years at the U of C to then work as a projector operator at an art house cinema or a starbucks barrista.