Instructions for the new 2013-2014 Common Application Essay prompts read as follows:
“The essay
demonstrates your ability to write clearly and concisely on a selected topic
and helps you distinguish yourself in your own voice. What do you want the readers
of your application to know about you apart from courses, grades, and test
scores? Choose the option that best
helps you answer that question and write an essay of no more than 650 words,
using the prompt to inspire and structure your response. Remember: 650 words is your limit, not your
goal. Use the full range if you need it,
but don't feel obligated to do so. (The
application won't accept a response shorter than 250 words.)”
There are five new prompts:
• Some students have a
background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe
their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then
please share your story.
• Recount an incident
or time when you experienced failure.
How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?
• Reflect on a time
when you challenged a belief or idea.
What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?
• Describe a place or
environment where you are perfectly content.
What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to
you?
• Discuss an
accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from
childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.
(www.commonapp.org)
As an Independent College Counselor
with Selective College Acceptance Counseling, I work with students targeting
highly-selective colleges. In the past,
you may have heard me say that choosing the right essay prompt was about
tailoring your selection to the types of colleges being targeted. In fact, I thought the old essay prompt; “Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or
international concern and its importance to you” was the best choice for most
students applying to Top 40 colleges. I
have been asked, which question I will recommend now. The answer is not so clear.
The new writing prompts are more personal and require a deep
knowledge of your students’ background and experiences. I no longer believe there is a blanket “best
prompt” It depends so much more now on the individual student and his or her
story. Here are my thoughts about the pitfalls
and opportunities contained in these seemingly innocuous questions. I’ll work backwards:
The Rite of Passage Question:
• Discuss an
accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from
childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.
Pitfall: This seems like a question choice fraught
with opportunities for cliché’. I am
picturing hundreds of essays on Bah Mitzvahs and Quinceañeras …thousands more on getting your driver’s license or (dare I
say) prom night. YIKES! As adolescent psychology tells us, the brain
doesn’t reach maturity until somewhere between the ages of 22-24. Empirically, the transition from childhood to
adulthood does not occur until after college.
So, I would caution any 16-18 year-old from proclaiming that they have
reached maturity. This prompt could be
used to point out that even though you had experienced some rite of passage,
you have realized that you are only at the beginning of the journey to
adulthood. For the most part, I would
advise students to avoid this question.
Opportunity: There is an opportunity here for a student who
has been saddled with adult responsibility at a young age to share his or her
story. I, myself, took on the responsibilities
of grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning for my father and brother at the age
of 12 due to my parents’ divorce. At the
time I entered college, most thought of me as mature beyond my years. Of course, once I was freed from those responsibilities,
I went a little wild and failed out of the first college I attended. I believe college admissions representatives
have seen this type of behavior before.
So, the challenge is to prove that once you are free, you won’t lose
your head!
The Zen Question
•
Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why
is it meaningful to you?
Pitfall: Need I
say it….I am seeing thousands of essays about the moments after a sports
victory, or sharing an ice cream cone with your best friend on a beautiful Sunday
afternoon. Again, for the most part,
moments of true contentment occur later in life. Students applying to highly-selective
colleges are driven, motivated, and striving for a larger goal that lies
somewhere in their future. Although we
have all had brief moments of contentment, the hunger to do more, and be more,
and accomplish more soon brings us out of the contented present and into dreaming
about and working towards the future (at least it had better!).
Opportunity: I think there is an opportunity here to write
a future-tense essay about how content you WILL feel when you receive your
acceptance letter from you first choice college, or find the cure for cancer,
or otherwise meet your goals. This would
need to be crafted carefully and written to include a visualization of where
you would be and what you would be feeling in vivid detail. Beyond the scope of most teen writers, but
maybe I’d recommend it for a few with strong prose skills.
The Rebel Question
• Reflect on a time
when you challenged a belief or idea.
What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?
Pitfall: James
Dean need not apply! It is important
that students do not position themselves as “rebels without a cause.” This question does give students a chance to
explain anything reported on his or her disciplinary record. It is an opportunity to demonstrate that you
were standing up for your beliefs or fighting for justice when you received
that three-day suspension! Tell your
story, explain your motivation; give it a positive spin. Not sure this will impress and much as
explain, but that explanation could be crucial for certain students.
Opportunity: In
the absence of the need to explain away a blemish on your record, this is an
opportunity to talk about community activism and can be a way for the civic-minded
student to share what he or she is passionate about. I will advise students to give this question
serious consideration.
The Edison Question
• Recount an incident
or time when you experienced failure.
How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?
Pitfall: I can see many students using this question as
an opportunity to explain away a bad grade; “I earned a” C” in AP Physics and
this is why….” Ok, but what did you
LEARN from that. The danger is in
placing the blame for your failure on anyone besides yourself. My
teacher didn’t teach, or didn’t like me or whatever, but I was able to overcome
it and still pass the class. NO!
Opportunity: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try,
again! It is well-known that Edison
failed thousands of times in his quest to invent the light bulb. His persistence and ability to learn from
each mistake set him apart as a great man.
Students can use this question to do the same. Definitely on my list of questions worth
exploring.
The Breakfast Club Question
• Some students have a
background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe
their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then
please share your story.
Pitfall: Um…… like,
that you will answer this as a character from The Breakfast Club (Hughes).
My parents raised me to be a (fill-in-the-blank) and that is why I am
who I am. In the book, The College Hook, Pam Proctor actually
recommends that students use one of ”The
Top Ten College Hooks” as way to “package” themselves for college admissions. Her hooks are:
·
The Athletic Hook
·
The International Hook
·
The Music hook
·
The Political hook
·
The Technology Hook
·
The Humanitarian Hook
·
The Science Hook
·
The Writing Hook
·
The Drama Hook
·
The Multicultural Hook (Proctor)
I think it is a mistake for students to label or categorize themselves
for college admissions officers. They
are not casting a movie and not looking for “types”. As these new questions highlight, college
admissions reps are looking for unique, mature, articulate students who can
think critically about how their experiences have shaped who they are and
influenced who they will become.
Opportunity: At the end of “The Breakfast Club”, Anthony
Michael Hall’s character reads the letter he wrote in response to a prompt very
similar to this one; “Who are you?” The answer
he gives is brilliant:
“Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to
sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was that we did wrong.
What we did WAS wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write this essay
telling you who we think we are. What do you care? You see us as you want to
see us... in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. You see us
as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. Correct?
That's the way we saw each other at seven o'clock this morning. We were
brainwashed. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, and an
athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your
question?
Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.”
Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.”
The opportunity with this prompt is for students to
demonstrate how they have been able to move beyond the situations or circumstances
which sought to define them to become something unexpected.
Overall, I feel that these new questions are challenging and
require a higher level of eloquence and self-knowledge than in the past. It will be tricky for students to answer
these questions from a unique perspective as there are any number of stock answers
admissions reps are expecting (and dare I say dreading). I love that the instructions guide students
to the question that “helps you
distinguish yourself in your own voice”.
That is the question the BEST question to answer; and the reason my
summer workshop is called “Distinguish Yourself on the Common App”!
Citations:
"Https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/Docs/DownloadForms/2013/EssayAnnouncementFinal.pdf."
The Common Application For Undergraduate College Admission. The Common
Application, 05 Feb. 2013. Web. 05 May 2013.
Hughes, John,
dir. The Breakfast Club. Universal Studios. Hollywood, CA, 1985. Motion
Picture. Screen Play.
Proctor, Pam. The
College Hook: Packaging Yourself to Win the College Admissions Game. New
York, NY: Hachette Book Group USA, 2007. Print.
No comments:
Post a Comment