Last week, I said I would start sharing interesting pieces of writing for y’all to build your SAT vocab and reading comprehension skills. What better theme to start with than college apps?
5 MUST-READ ARTICLES FOR COLLEGE APPLICANTS
1. “College is a singular opportunity to rummage through and luxuriate in ideas, to realize how very large the world is and to contemplate your desired place in it. And that’s lost in the admissions mania, which sends the message that college is a sanctum to be breached — a border to be crossed — rather than a land to be inhabited and tilled for all that it’s worth.”
— Frank Bruni, “How to Survive the College Admissions Madness”
2. “With so many qualified students, top colleges don’t — as you might expect — look for the very best. They don’t even operate on a single, well-defined notion of what “best” means. Instead, they go for balance. They’re just trying to fill their campus with a diverse cohort of freshmen. Consistency and fairness — whatever that would mean — have nothing to do with it.”
— Ben Orlin, “Why I Won’t Reenlist as a Yale Alumni Interviewer”
3. “Why do I continue to interview? It’s very moving meeting all these bright young people who won’t get into Harvard. Recent news articles make it sound unbearably tragic. Several Ivies, including Harvard, rejected a record number of applicants this year. Actually, meeting the soon-to-be rejected makes me hopeful about young people. They are far more accomplished than I was at their age and without a doubt will do superbly wherever they go.”
— Michael Winerip, “Young, Gifted, and Not Getting Into Harvard”
4. “The good news is that while an increase in applications generally leads to a smaller admit rate at top tier schools, the number of American high school seniors is shrinking, having peaked in 2011. At the same time, according to Noodle’s data, the number of seats at competitive colleges has grown faster than the total pool of qualified applicants—raising a student’s chances of getting into a “selective college,” though not necessarily the one she has her heart set on.”
— Jacoba Urist, “Is College Really Harder to Get Into Than It Used To Be?”
5. “Of my many favorites this year, there were a few who really got to me, and when they didn’t get in, the tears came. Some would call me foolish for getting this wrapped up in the job, but honestly, I couldn’t do this job if I disconnected myself from the human component of it. It’s my job to present you to the committee; if your dream of being at MIT didn’t become my dream on some small level, then really, why am I doing this at all? Others would disagree, but then, others aren’t me.”
— Ben Jones, “It’s More Than a Job”
