It's worth noting that the college essay teaches the prospective student nothing. It may or may not get them a place in an elite university, but there is no feedback mechanism from the school to tell the student what worked and did not work about their writing. They might improve if they are self-directed and the act of writing taught them something. But writing is sterile in the absence of feedback.
In fairness, the college essay is not supposed to be educational. It is meant to be an evaluation of their writing ability. Granted, knowing what you scored on an exam is usually helpful, but knowing which question you got wrong on the final doesn't change the outcome of whether you pass or not. Giving feedback to admissions essays is like giving feedback to writers submitting work to an open publishers call. Just not feasible. The task of going through them all to begin with is daunting, providing useful feedback to each and every one just would not work.
Of course you're technically correct. I'm just upset that more and more of education has other priorities than being educational. There doesn't appear to be any part of our educational system where students are made to write essays on their own, be graded on what they've written, and not advance further until they can accomplish this task.
With the college essay process teaches students is either failure, or how to buy their way into college by paying a writing coach to tell them what ideologically coded language has been most successful in recent years. It's a test not in writing, but how to game the system.
Agreed. I am personally a big fan of (though not a product of) homeschooling. Which I believe also adds a barrier to college admissions, but at this point, I am not sure that college is really functional enough to be worth saving on it's current form.
That delves into a whole essay on college reform, financial aid, etc. etc. (as well as the worship or credentials) so I will ramble off into the sunset now... (My phone typo'd that as sinset and it seems oddly appropos).
It reinforces my own perception of US colleges at their open, liberal, meritocratic peak in the 1980s and 90s. The decline since then is difficult to ignore.
The college essay actually goes back further, to Harvard's first attempt at meritocracy in the 1880s. However, at the time of WWI and afterwards, the arrival of non-WASP candidates for admissions prompted college administrators to reintroduce essays to judge WASP identity and conformity, not exceptional thinking.
Furthermore, the beginnings of standardized measures of intelligence and achievement in the 1920s made it clear there was no way to hide the exceptional quality of candidates from non-WASP backgrounds on the basis of more objective criteria. So the essay--not objective or quantitative--become a powerful tool for reducing the importance of objective measures. This is the historical truth, but it runs counter to decades of mythology spread by people who should have known better.
The Big Three Ivies--Harvard, Princeton, and Yale--had different histories with this. Harvard began quietly dropping anti-Jewish quotas in the 1950s. Princeton never rejected top Jewish faculty, but kept anti-Jewish quotas on students until the early 60s. Yale was last, in 1964, admitting to the extistence of an unspoken system even as it was dropping it.
The other Ivies were never as consistent. Penn as a Quaker school never had quotas. Cornell and Dartmouth were only sporadic. Columbia did have anti-Jewish quotas on students, but not faculty.
Colleges have become instruments to enforce conformity to left-wing ideals, replacing critical thinking skills with DEI - in other words, teaching students WHAT to think, not HOW to think
I found this to be a profound case for why, to become good writers, we should delegate certain writing to AI. Some demands for text require us to stultify and immiserate our intellects and creativity. Best we save ourselves by handing those off to a machine; after all, it’s unlikely they will ever be much read by anyone other than a machine, or at best, perhaps, by a human determined to reduce themselves to a mechanical process of conformation.
This is so accurate, but college essays are really only the beginning. These ridiculous questions were basically the prompts for every discussion we had at my college, especially any course in literature. We would read a piece of writing, analyze it using some highly flawed literary theories, and then discuss how societal structures not only impacted that particular narrative, but how those same structures put constraints on our own identities and right to self-determination. These courses were blatantly formulaic and contrived, pushing students to predetermined conclusions that fit the professors' political agenda. If anyone tried to point out the flaws in the course's methodology are questioned the professor's agenda it was pure social and academic suicide. And then you left without a degree and tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
Interestingly I have several decades of “Best American Essays”, and the last I have of the series has been fading. 2025 has one or two quite good ones but one about a Palestinian who had an airport delay was an eye roll. I could hardly believe I paid for the damn thing.
The problem is not just “College” - why do people read the stuff? It’s like eating nothing but gummy bears days on end. Cloying.
I can’t remember my college application essay, since at least 44 years have passed since I wrote it. But I do remember thinking something like, “This is where I show what I can do more than what I have done.” It worked then, whatever I said. Sometimes I wonder if it is still stored in the bowels of the “Becky” Crown Administration building, but I doubt it. If I’d have faced the prompts you describe, I’d have probably just joined the Navy first and then explored college.
Remove the word ‘the’ and ‘essay’ and you’ve got the deeper truth.
This is exactly right. Thanknyou so much!
It's worth noting that the college essay teaches the prospective student nothing. It may or may not get them a place in an elite university, but there is no feedback mechanism from the school to tell the student what worked and did not work about their writing. They might improve if they are self-directed and the act of writing taught them something. But writing is sterile in the absence of feedback.
In fairness, the college essay is not supposed to be educational. It is meant to be an evaluation of their writing ability. Granted, knowing what you scored on an exam is usually helpful, but knowing which question you got wrong on the final doesn't change the outcome of whether you pass or not. Giving feedback to admissions essays is like giving feedback to writers submitting work to an open publishers call. Just not feasible. The task of going through them all to begin with is daunting, providing useful feedback to each and every one just would not work.
It sucks, but it makes sense in context.
Of course you're technically correct. I'm just upset that more and more of education has other priorities than being educational. There doesn't appear to be any part of our educational system where students are made to write essays on their own, be graded on what they've written, and not advance further until they can accomplish this task.
With the college essay process teaches students is either failure, or how to buy their way into college by paying a writing coach to tell them what ideologically coded language has been most successful in recent years. It's a test not in writing, but how to game the system.
Agreed. I am personally a big fan of (though not a product of) homeschooling. Which I believe also adds a barrier to college admissions, but at this point, I am not sure that college is really functional enough to be worth saving on it's current form.
That delves into a whole essay on college reform, financial aid, etc. etc. (as well as the worship or credentials) so I will ramble off into the sunset now... (My phone typo'd that as sinset and it seems oddly appropos).
It reinforces my own perception of US colleges at their open, liberal, meritocratic peak in the 1980s and 90s. The decline since then is difficult to ignore.
The college essay actually goes back further, to Harvard's first attempt at meritocracy in the 1880s. However, at the time of WWI and afterwards, the arrival of non-WASP candidates for admissions prompted college administrators to reintroduce essays to judge WASP identity and conformity, not exceptional thinking.
Furthermore, the beginnings of standardized measures of intelligence and achievement in the 1920s made it clear there was no way to hide the exceptional quality of candidates from non-WASP backgrounds on the basis of more objective criteria. So the essay--not objective or quantitative--become a powerful tool for reducing the importance of objective measures. This is the historical truth, but it runs counter to decades of mythology spread by people who should have known better.
The Big Three Ivies--Harvard, Princeton, and Yale--had different histories with this. Harvard began quietly dropping anti-Jewish quotas in the 1950s. Princeton never rejected top Jewish faculty, but kept anti-Jewish quotas on students until the early 60s. Yale was last, in 1964, admitting to the extistence of an unspoken system even as it was dropping it.
The other Ivies were never as consistent. Penn as a Quaker school never had quotas. Cornell and Dartmouth were only sporadic. Columbia did have anti-Jewish quotas on students, but not faculty.
Colleges have become instruments to enforce conformity to left-wing ideals, replacing critical thinking skills with DEI - in other words, teaching students WHAT to think, not HOW to think
I found this to be a profound case for why, to become good writers, we should delegate certain writing to AI. Some demands for text require us to stultify and immiserate our intellects and creativity. Best we save ourselves by handing those off to a machine; after all, it’s unlikely they will ever be much read by anyone other than a machine, or at best, perhaps, by a human determined to reduce themselves to a mechanical process of conformation.
This is so accurate, but college essays are really only the beginning. These ridiculous questions were basically the prompts for every discussion we had at my college, especially any course in literature. We would read a piece of writing, analyze it using some highly flawed literary theories, and then discuss how societal structures not only impacted that particular narrative, but how those same structures put constraints on our own identities and right to self-determination. These courses were blatantly formulaic and contrived, pushing students to predetermined conclusions that fit the professors' political agenda. If anyone tried to point out the flaws in the course's methodology are questioned the professor's agenda it was pure social and academic suicide. And then you left without a degree and tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
Interestingly I have several decades of “Best American Essays”, and the last I have of the series has been fading. 2025 has one or two quite good ones but one about a Palestinian who had an airport delay was an eye roll. I could hardly believe I paid for the damn thing.
The problem is not just “College” - why do people read the stuff? It’s like eating nothing but gummy bears days on end. Cloying.
It takes two to make a bad essay.
Good read - as always!
I can’t remember my college application essay, since at least 44 years have passed since I wrote it. But I do remember thinking something like, “This is where I show what I can do more than what I have done.” It worked then, whatever I said. Sometimes I wonder if it is still stored in the bowels of the “Becky” Crown Administration building, but I doubt it. If I’d have faced the prompts you describe, I’d have probably just joined the Navy first and then explored college.
Haha, I do the same!