Don't be too polished. Pick inspiring essay topics. Don't stalk the dean.
These are but a few applicant recommendations from college gatekeepers across the country. In a Wall Street Journal article, Sue Shellenbarger writes about behind-the-scene experiences of admissions deans at a dozen top-tier colleges and universities when evaluating prospective student applicants.
The bottom line?
Too many students are submitting "professionalized" applications rendered all too slick by misguided attempts at perfection, parental meddling and what one admissions dean describes as the robotlike approach teens are taking in presenting themselves.
Examples include:
- Have Mom sign your application. Admissions offices are getting applications signed by parents instead of students; Mom occasionally slips up and adds her own Social Security number too. At Kenyon College, one mother even called the admissions office and, after asking a lot of questions, explained, “I’ve never done the Common Application before,” says Jennifer Delahunty, Kenyon’s dean of admissions.
- Praise the wrong school. In answering the question, “Why do you want to attend our college?” some students absent-mindedly name the wrong college, telling Emory University why they want to attend Duke, says Jean Jordan, Emory’s dean of admission.
- Hit the “Submit” button too soon. In drafting a response to the question, “Why do you want to attend Barnard College?” one applicant wrote, “it’s in New York City … ya-da-ya-da-ya-da,” then failed to complete the answer before sending the form. Not surprisingly, Barnard officials took a dim view of the response.
- Don’t tell your teacher you’re applying to a single-sex school. Barnard, which enrolls only women, sometimes receives recommendation letters from teachers who “write about Suzy, then say ‘he’ everywhere” in referring to Suzy, suggesting the teacher is plugging the student’s name into a form letter, says Jennifer Fondiller, Barnard’s dean of admissions.
- Enclose your personal marketing plan. One Vanderbilt University applicant accidentally sent the admissions office a hand-written, point-by-point list detailing his family’s “strategy to get the child admitted,” says Doug Christiansen, dean of admissions — “who would call whom,” what alumni to contact, and so on.
- Send along that Post-It to Mom. Barnard received one application with a sticky note attached saying, “Mom, do you think this sounds good?”
- Expound on sex in the personal essay. One Kenyon applicant spent several hundred words explaining why “Dance is Greater than Sex.” That, says Ms. Delahunty, “is what I call a suicide essay. You really just don’t want to go there.”
- Upon receiving a rejection letter, load the whole family into the car, drive several hundred miles to the admissions office, and demand to see the dean. While Christoph Guttentag, dean of admissions at Duke University, graciously agreed to meet with a family of four from Ohio who did this, he says, “they left disappointed.”
In the spirit of fairness, here are a few comments submitted by readers:
- I went to college (more than 20 years ago now) and they made things like applications and registration a pain under the theory that (1) it taught you to keep you cool when faced with stupidity, (2) it taught you to follow directions, and (3) it taught you to realize life wasn’t fair or easy. Sounds like rather than stuff I put up with like standing in lines and treking back and forth for signatures, it’s electronic hell now.
- Why are colleges so into ‘personal essays’ anyway? I can’t believe that the best way to find out if a student’s intelligent and has an enquiring mind is to make them invent an ersatz ‘experience’ by tossing together a couple of anecdotes and reflections. Aren’t colleges after students who are interested in politics, culture or history, for example? If so, why ask little Timmy about how band camp changed his life? It’s not going to produce high-school kids who are reading Kafka or are excited about the Lollards. Shouldn’t they be asked to write about something grown up?
- Just reading this gets me irritated. Considering how much money these schools charge for tuition, it’s ridiculous that you even have to fill out an application at all. It’s like you are begging for the privilege of paying them for the opportunity to live away from home, get trashed on a regular basis, and cram for finals for two weeks out of the year. Give me a break.
Read Sue Shellenbargers weekly in the Wall Street Journal's Work & Family column.
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