College Applications: Never Ending Confusion
Fall of senior year-- the season of Friday night football games and constant stress over college applications. One minute, I as 17 year old girl worry about the perfect dress for homecoming whereas the next minute, I’m being forced to choose the rest of my life-- a major, career, new city to live in, and the amount of debt I tolerate acquiring... all for a school which demands that I expose every detail of my existence to its admissions officers. College acceptance is not only based on merit, even though it once was. Instead, acceptance or rejection is determined through “four dimensions [of performance]: personal, academic, extracurricular, and athletic,” according to Malcolm Gladwell. All of the branches coexist, but an application can’t even be submitted for consideration without a 650 word personal essay where admissions officers ‘graciously’ allow you to choose a narrative about your unique background, the seemingly impossible overcoming of a challenge, or a previous failure you supposedly learned from.
An applicant’s application can also be directly influenced by temporary conditions and permanent characteristics that are completely irrelevant to their ability to comprehend new information. Admissions officers seem to enjoy fueling competition among applicants of a certain race through an established quota, because only a concrete number of applicants of one racial group can be accepted-- so all Pacific Islander applicants are trying to sell themselves as better than other Pacific Islanders to reach the top percentiles. Even if a Pacific Islander may be less qualified than a Caucasian and there’s only one spot available, that Pacific Islander will still be accepted to promote diversity. In scenarios as the one just described, the personal dimension trumps the academic dimension. In regards to athletes, a star football lineman with a 3.0 weighted G.P.A., no extracurricular activities, a poor personal essay, and of the most competitive race (meaning there were lots of applications submitted) is be more likely to be admitted rather than a student with a 4.0 unweighted G.P.A. who acts as the President of four service organizations and composed a flawless personal essay that made the admissions officers tear-- solely due to their potential ability to increase revenue and the popularity of the sports team. There isn’t a distinct rubric of standards for acceptance or rejection.
Yet to even further increase the inequality among students, not every applicant has an equal opportunity of answering the personal essay prompts. Although the prompts are straightforward at the surface level, admissions officers expect future acceptees to delve deeper to find an underlying meaning and overwhelm them with a strong sense of community, determination to overcome obstacles, or philosophical approach after being unsuccessful. Applicants specifically from low-income families tend to not have the resources to acquire such tips to answer an unstated aspect of the prompt, given that guidance counsellors provide the same information about average and common schools to the entire student body, leading to what Paul Fain characterizes as a “paradox where the top students actually get worse guidance than average ones”. Students of high-income households will not depend on poor guidance, but will instead ensure college admission by hiring their own professional writers for essays and private tutors for standardized tests.
A key portion of CommonApp, the personal essay, must be a “compelling narrative, highly dramatic...moving” and ultimately argumentative text, according to James Warren. The goal is to give up any sense of privacy and share with that officer every significant and insignificant detail of the event you will describe; yet you must incorporate a retrospective analysis on the event and cannot heavily rely on sensuous imagery. Similarly to content, the manner in which the information is delivered also perplexes applicants. The essay must remain formal, while maintaining the seventeen year old’s voice and persona. But what happens when an African American student who speaks June Jordan’s definition of “Black English” at home and feels connected to his ethnic community through its use decides to implement the dialect-- a form of English language that is considered informal among admissions officers? There are so many unofficial and contradicting rules that I don’t wonder why someone engulfed by desperation would hire a professional to write their essay for them.
Despite the numerous societal ‘goals’ to educate young Americans, admissions officers continue to expect unreasonable standards that the majority of applicants are unable to meet, especially for Ivy Leagues where the admission rates commonly vary under 10%. Some students will be academically gifted yet not have the proper understanding of the prompts or resources to apply successfully, while others do not qualify based on merit yet learn the ‘tricks of the trade’ to substantiate their applications full of meaningless after-school clubs. The personal essay, which continues to baffle seniors by its deceiving difficulty, plays a crucial make-it-or-break-it role in most final decisions-- separating potential students from immediate denials.
College undoubtedly is not easy, but nor is the application.