Should College Application Essays Be Banned? (substack.com)
- Reference: 0177073745
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/04/21/0215254/should-college-application-essays-be-banned
- Source link: https://yaschamounk.substack.com/p/the-college-essay-is-everything-thats
> The college essay wrongly encourages students to cast themselves as victims, to exaggerate the adversity they've faced, and to turn genuinely upsetting experiences into the focal point of their self-understanding. The college essay, dear reader, should be banned and banished and burned to the ground.
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> There are many tangible, "objective" reasons to oppose making personal statements a key part of the admissions process. Perhaps the most obvious is that they have always been the easiest part of the system to game. While rich parents can hire SAT tutors they can't sit the standardized test in the stead of their offspring; they can, however, easily write the admissions essay for their kid or hire a "college consultant" who "works with" the applicant to "improve" that essay. Even if rich parents don't cheat in those ways, their class position gives rich kids a huge advantage in the exercise... [W]riting a good admissions essay is to a large extent an exercise in demonstrating one's good taste — and the ability to do so has always depended on being fluent in the unspoken norms of an elite community...
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> Many on the left oppose standardized tests on the grounds that they have a class bias, and that hiring a tutor can make you perform better at them. But studies on the subject consistently suggest that the class bias of personal essays is far stronger than the class bias of standardized tests.... But the thing I truly hate about the college essay is not that it is part of a system that keeps deserving kids out of top colleges while rewarding privileged kids who (to add insult to injury) get to flatter themselves that they have been selected for showcasing such superior personality in their 750-word statements composed by their college consultant or ghostwritten by ChatGPT... [W]hat I truly hate about the college essay is the way in which it shapes the lives of high school students and encourages the whole elite stratum of society — including some of its most affluent, privileged and sheltered members — to conceive of themselves in terms of the hardships they have supposedly suffered...
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> [I]t is the bizarre spectacle of those kids from comparatively privileged backgrounds being effectively coerced by the admissions system to self-exoticize as products of great hardship which I find to be truly unseemly... And this is why I suspect that the seemingly innocuous institution of the college essay is more deeply damaging — to the high school experience, to the self-conception of millions of Americans, and even to the country's ability to sustain a trusted elite — than it appears... [I]t drains the souls of teenagers and encourages a deeply pernicious brand of fakery and breeds widespread mistrust in social elites.
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> The college essay is absurd and unfair and — ironically — unforgivably cringe. It's time to put an end to its strange hold over American society, and liberate us all from its tyranny.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yascha_Mounk
[2] https://yaschamounk.substack.com/p/the-college-essay-is-everything-thats
Wharton Admissions Faculty, (Score:1)
I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.
I woo women with my sensuous and god-like trombone playing. I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in 20 minu
Re: (Score:3)
I'm your president, Donald J Trump.
Let my boy in if you want to keep your funding.
FTFY.
Re: (Score:2)
Not enough "victim" sentiment conveyed by that. How about:
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off (the) shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."
So, do I get the scholarship?
Re: (Score:2)
okay, man. +1 for that reference. (I've no mod points, sadly.)
Ok, boomer (Score:2)
Yes. Let's blame the kids and their parents for writing towards what their audience wants.
I, too, can't imagine it's possible to write an essay without "conceiving of (yourself)" as a victim. I was victimized just by having to respond to such limited reasoning.
No. (Score:2)
Unsympathetic start with the sob story of a Zach Yadegari who could not find two more points on the ACT to get into an Ivy league college. Nor could he afford to spend part of the $30 million a year his start-up earns on a proof read of his essay. Maybe he is better off without the Ivy leagues, maybe they are better off without him. But at least now he has a victim story to write when he reapplies next year.
The whole argument that the affluent have an advantage, so lets throw it out, is silly. Sorry the aff
A math test instead. (Score:2)
Then give them a math test, ten word problems with answers in paragraph form.
The traditional purpose (Score:2)
... was to assure you you are literate enough to fill a few pages with reasonably crafted text. You need that in basically everything that you can study at college and if you did not get the skill before, college cannot give it to you.
The problem (and unfairness) is the modus. Instead have people come to a room, have them stay in there for 4-6h without Internet and use only provided computers and materials and produce that essay. Or do what some universtities in Europe do: Talk to the prospective applicants
Hear hear! (Score:2)
> I]t is the bizarre spectacle of those kids from comparatively privileged backgrounds being effectively coerced by the admissions system to self-exoticize as products of great hardship which I find to be truly unseemly.
I found it just as bizarre and unseemly when I was writing my admissions essay 20+ years ago. As I recall I didn't play. I flat out told them I was a kid who stood on the shoulders of giants named Mom and Dad who'd done most of the heavy lifting. Not to say that there were points up to then when I could have elected to fall flat on my face into a pile of sex, drugs, and rock and roll rather than walk thr straight and narrow to good SAT scores and AP scores, but I when I was 17 years old I never had to provi
I disagree (Score:2)
If you can't write a short essay about yourself, aspirations, plans, and what makes you.. you... at this point in life you don't deserve to be in college. Further, we should make these kids write their essays in exam rooms without external influence, let them explain how they really see themselves.
Sounds Fitting (Score:2)
> The college essay wrongly encourages students to cast themselves as victims, to exaggerate the adversity they've faced, and to turn genuinely upsetting experiences into the focal point of their self-understanding.
You could have just removed the word "essay" from that sentence.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, news at 11 - people usually grow when dealing with adversity.
So when there's none, they invent some.
Like, "being persecuted", "being discriminated against", being "overflown by pet-eating immigrants" and in general "being treated very unfairly".
Even when they were born with a silver spoon made of gold in their mouths and haven't done a day of effort in their lives.
silver spoon made of gold ? (Score:2)
"Even when they were born with a silver spoon made of gold in their mouths"
What AI wrote that?
Re: (Score:2)
> "Even when they were born with a silver spoon made of gold in their mouths"
> What AI wrote that?
I interpreted that as "they're so rich even a silver spoon made from silver is not good enough". If a LLM came up with that, bravo. It's actually kind of amusing how sometimes the algorithms hit on a metaphor that somehow... actually works. We've come a long way from Data's cat poem.