Over 150 years have passed since Walt Whitman told us that he contains multitudes. Presumably, so do the rest of us. College applications are both wonderful and maddening because they afford applicants the opportunity to talk about some of those multitudes — not just one, not just two, but potentially many,
If you’re interviewing doctors, do you want to know about a surgeon’s first operation, or about the surgeries they performed last year? If you’re a coach holding tryouts, do you want to know the first time a player made a basket or their points per game last
When I review college application essays, I hunt for clichés: overused and inapt words and phrases that are sure to grate on discerning readers’ ears. I could give you a whole list of the ones I encounter most often. But there’s one cliche that looms over “opened my eyes,
The Common Application’s combination of essays, objective questions, and the option to submit supplemental materials typically provides enough avenues for most students to convey their backgrounds and highlight the qualities they wish colleges to recognize. For years, a critical component of this system has been the Additional Information section:
This year, a surprising preponderance of students have asked me a certain question, each using the same phrasing: should they attempt to “trauma dump” in their application essays? I don’t know exactly what prompted these questions, though I suspect that it may be a meme worming its way through
Among my high school’s roundabout virtues was its unrelenting emphasis on academic research. I’m not kidding. As early as 9th grade, teachers in history and English assigned meaty papers that required us to refer to books, periodicals, scholarly journals, and more. We dove into card catalogs, old-fashioned journal
It seems quaint to think that, just a few decades ago, rock music drew disdain for being sordid, louche, and Satanic. The nation’s kids were being corrupted — introduced to sex, drugs, partying — to the soundtrack of power chords, drumbeats, and the whoosh of hairspray. Tipper Gore and PMRC went
High school students aren’t likely to ask friends or relatives to review their workaday expositions on the causes of the War of 1812, the functions of mitochondria, or the role of memory in Beloved. College essays are different. The stakes are higher than they are for academic essays, they’
The most important book in the world right now is Writing to Learn, by William Zinsser. It is followed closely, in no particular order, by Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman; The Shallows, by Nicholas Carr; and the essay “Politics and the English Language,” by George Orwell. No thinking
Everyday rhetoric, whether it’s in school, on social media, or in edited texts, relies increasingly on cliches — overused words and stale phrases that, to paraphrase George Orwell, invade the mind and obscure genuine meaning. They sit clumsily in their sentences, momentarily catchy but lacking in substance. They are the
I’m not exactly a dinosaur. But I’ll admit that, like most other adults, I don’t keep up with app-based pop culture trends. I’m more into movie theaters and rock stars than I am mobile videos and influencers. I’d dislocate a hip if I attempted a
A student once came to me wanting to write a college essay about her experience learning how to waterski barefoot. Fun, right? She justified this choice on the grounds that it revealed how “unusual” she was. I couldn’t argue with that. The last time I watched anyone waterski, barefoot