How To Write A College Application Essay Or Personal Statement
NYMag: You've Got Mail: Inside a top college's admissions room. That college is Sarah Lawrence. Ring a bell? Some of you silly people will remember that Blair on Gossip Girl got rejected from there, but anyone over 30 will no doubt remember The Simpsons:
Mr. Thai [Thai restaurant owner] to Bart: Put flyers on doorknobs. Then I get more business. Send daughters to small liberal arts college. Swarthmore. Maybe Sarah Lawrence. Call professors by first name. Dynamite!
Bart later tosses them in the dumpster, and when the restaurant owner finds out:
Mr. Thai: You a quitta! Quitta boy! Now restaurant fail. Children go to state college. Serious students powerless against drunken jockocracy. Baseball hats everywhere.
Sarah Lawrence evaluates a student's performance in three spheres: academics, writing, and "personal", defined as extracurriculars and "other background." I'll leave the merits of "other background" to The Weekly Standard. The issue for us here is the college essay.
Read this:
Standardized tests are supposed to correct for the ways high-school grading systems vary, so to make up for that, Sarah Lawrence's committee uses a sample essay graded by a high-school teacher to determine the curriculum's rigor. But the samples also tell something about the readers. "I had one essay that said how awful Twilight was"--the essay was about damaging themes of female submissiveness in the series--"and I was like, 'Admit her!' " says Melissa Faulner, a 2006 grad on the committee. Whereas what the readers wryly call TCML essays--"theater changed my life"--are looked at more skeptically.
No doubt, NO DOUBT, critics of higher education and multiculturalism will jump on the implication that the committee leans left, way left, and will favor those applicants with similar predilections. WRONGINGONTHEFLOORLAUGHINGMYASSOFF. Read it again, you've missed something crucial.
'Admit her!' " says Melissa Faulner, a 2006 grad on the committee.Still don't see it? There's a very good chance that the only person who will ever read your college essay is 25 years old.
II.
In every college admissions website, they are referred to as "Admissions Officers." While I didn't assume they were in the military, I suppose I did assume they were... old. er.
And some are, I guess, there's got to be an Admissions Dean in the building somewhere. But the average applicant is writing an essay that he thinks an adult with a suit and three kids would want to read. Instead, it's probably being read by someone who can't wait for the new iphone and still bites their nails. Ten grand says they think Jon Stewart is "a freakin' political genius."
But surely there are some adults on the committee? The article focuses on Tom Marlitt, director of West Coast Admissions. They don't give his age, they give a physical description. Media-- and The New Yorker is probably the wost offender of this-- offers a physical description of their subject as a code about their character in exactly the way the media would never allow a regular person to do. If they profiled me it woudl start, "Wearing a disheveled undershirt clutching a rock..." and leave it to you to make an objective assessment (="drunkard, likely unbalanced.") What they say about Marlitt is: "a spiky-haired man in all beige." That's media code 50 year old acting like a 25 year old.
Look, nobody likes 25 year olds more than me, especially ones that are too pretty to get into Sarah Lawrence. And there's little sense in arguing the merits of college admissions being determined by a 25 year old vs. a 50 year old when the whole college game is a carny act that works only because we agree to pretend it does, runs FIFO, and is subsidized by the government. It is what it is.
But if 85% of the applicants have already been weeded out before it gets to the committee, and they have been weeded out by a 25 year old, or a 50 year old who thinks he's a 25 year old, it would make more sense to write an essay for a 25 year old. Not for a 50 year old, which is what most people do, employing the maxim, "What essay would make my Dad happy?" So you get: quote from some uncontroversial famous person; affirmation of one's heritage/parents; generic sycophantic praise of the school; vague promises of changing the world.
Admit him!
Before you write your essay, profile your Admissions committee members. They, not "the school", are the ones accepting you, and writing an essay for a theoretical "Admissions Officer" is like having sex with a theoretical "vagina." Yes, it means you'll be submitting different essays to different places, but this kind of information may save you from describing how much you admire Kissinger's foreign policy:
If you're targeting a(n actual) 25 year old, i.e. someone who through no fault of their own has been conditioned to prefer brevity, appeals to emotion, and branding, here are the words you want to include in your essay: "sex"
(as self-expression, not conquest), individuality, curiosity, hypocrisy, naked. 25 year olds have hypertrophied BS detectors, so nothing contrived. Bonus if you can include some dialogue in your essay, everyone loves a supporting cast. Triple points if it can be read ironically, or if it is funny, especially in a self-deprecating way. 
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May 16, 2011 5:56 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Poor undergrad edu majors paying for the priveledge to labor for the school for a degree.
Score: 0 (4 votes cast)
May 16, 2011 7:11 PM | Posted by : | Reply
You do know this is precisely the most useless time of year to make this post, don't you?
Score: 14 (24 votes cast)
May 16, 2011 8:02 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Love it. Kids with 80% cognitive empathy and 20% affective empathy = "only a little bit" antisocial.
Score: 2 (6 votes cast)
May 16, 2011 10:12 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Don't you suspect that by the time most admissions officers at competitive schools reach 30, they've moved on to becoming admissions consultants - shadow writing counter-culture essays for $120/hour while the kids they were hired to shepherd are standing in line opening night to see Twilight?
Score: 14 (14 votes cast)
May 16, 2011 10:23 PM | Posted by : | Reply
At my school, almost all of the admissions counselors were people who, upon being unable to decide how else to apply their sociology or communications degrees, decided that the best course of action was to hang around at college for a few more years. Is it really so wrong of me to think badly of people in their mid 20s who want to hang out with teenagers?
(I actually looked: all but the two people in charge are under 30.)
Score: 17 (23 votes cast)
May 16, 2011 11:11 PM | Posted by : | Reply
"...the whole college game is a carny act that works only because we agree to pretend it does, runs FIFO, and is subsidized by the government."
hear hear!
Score: 22 (24 votes cast)
May 17, 2011 4:25 AM | Posted by : | Reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0bmsWkZ4dc
Score: -5 (7 votes cast)
May 17, 2011 10:23 AM | Posted by : | Reply
"Look, nobody likes 25 year olds more than me, especially ones that are too pretty to get into Sarah Lawrence."
---
It's funny because it's true. For all their good points, liberal arts colleges aren't exactly teeming with babes.
I sometimes wonder why that is. What's the difference between state colleges that have drop-dead gorgeous stunners every which way you look and places like Sarah Lawrence?
I doubt it's the courses available or that the girls at the liberal arts colleges are more intelligent. I don't hear of many electrical engineers coming out of those places.
Score: 4 (40 votes cast)
May 17, 2011 12:27 PM | Posted by : | Reply
After that, Alone's only chance of getting an invite to deliver the commencement address at Sarah Lawrence is for a sultry SL student to seriously hit upon Alone, while he is bussing tables in the Betty Friedan Memorial Dining Hall.
Score: -5 (11 votes cast)
May 17, 2011 12:59 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
"...almost all of the admissions counselors were people who, upon being unable to decide how else to apply their sociology or communications degrees, decided that the best course of action was to hang around at college for a few more years."
True. I'd go so far as to say that the admissions section of a university tends to be staffed by graduates who are, in comparison with the rest of the student body, failures.
The money's not great and I've always thought that the mark of successful students/universities/parents is that they/their students/their progeny can't wait to go on into the big, bad world.
Score: 10 (20 votes cast)
May 17, 2011 3:42 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Just curious, does this entry exist because, after the whole C-team thing, you thought "There goes the soccer scholarship fantasy" and immediately began researching the general admissions process?
Score: 4 (6 votes cast)
May 17, 2011 4:49 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I was just getting over the trauma of reading that exact admissions essay 100 times.
Why would a 20-something from India quote Vince Lombardi? Why?
And why provide generic sycophantic praise of our school, when you can google our ranking and actually put a number to how great we are? Is google too slow?
Score: 14 (16 votes cast)
May 17, 2011 7:20 PM | Posted by : | Reply
whelp, looks like it's suicide again for me
Score: 6 (8 votes cast)
May 17, 2011 10:10 PM | Posted by : | Reply
You confirmed my suspicions. I didn't expect it to be this bad. The whole enterprise is a shell game.
Score: 2 (4 votes cast)
May 18, 2011 11:30 AM | Posted by : | Reply
who says egg crates are just for chickens?
Score: 2 (2 votes cast)
May 18, 2011 3:39 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I graduated 15 years ago from a Jesuit school. The admissions committee was comprised entirely of Jesuits. Not one of them was under 55. I shudder to think who's reading them today at my alma mater.
Score: 5 (5 votes cast)
May 18, 2011 10:41 PM | Posted by : | Reply
"here are the words you want to include in your essay: "sex" (as self-expression, not conquest), individuality, curiosity, hypocrisy, naked"
How about "Facebook"? Your post makes me laugh and as well as think about the reality of admission on college. Whew!
Score: 7 (7 votes cast)
May 19, 2011 12:17 AM | Posted by : | Reply
I'm an avid tlp reader and a current student at Sarah Lawrence, and I have some comments:
1. I think you're underestimating our recently-graduated admissions officers. I have one friend who stuck around to do that, and he definitely doesn't bite his nails, and prefers Noam Chomsky to Jon Stewart. I trust my peers to populate my campus far more than I would adults; they know intimately what is expected in the classroom, and they know what kind of people are interesting and enjoyable with which to be in class - a really important factor at SLC, where most classes are small seminars.
2. Seriously, spend 10 minutes there and then tell me if you still think there's such a thing as women too pretty to be accepted. You're probably just jealous that most of them are sleeping with each other.
3. It has been my experience that an appreciation of irony just comes with the liberal arts territory. My 50+ year old professors enjoy it just as much as my peers and I do. You of all people should know you can't deconstruct without irony.
Score: -35 (57 votes cast)
May 19, 2011 1:25 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
in your attempts to counter the post you reaffirmed all of its points. so there's that.
Score: 44 (44 votes cast)
May 19, 2011 1:36 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
I wasn't really trying to counter anything; I agree that it's mostly recent graduates reading college admissions essays and therefore applicants will be more successful if they gear them as such. In my second point I was more or less just cracking a joke, and in the other two I was just pointing out a little bias on The Last Psychiatrist's part (read: agism). It's definitely happening. I don't think it's a bad thing. My school is progressive and confident enough to trust the young people it trains, and I'm proud of that. I also don't think they're trying to fool anyone into thinking it's old, uptight academics reading the essays.
Score: -19 (29 votes cast)
May 19, 2011 3:01 AM | Posted by : | Reply
@Moriel
I just looked through the Sarah Lawrence website. Lol, just count yourself lucky that those girls are your sexual competition rather than, say, the sorority crews at places like USC.
Score: 2 (16 votes cast)
May 19, 2011 3:05 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
I'm telling you, not a fair sampling!
Score: 0 (6 votes cast)
May 19, 2011 5:41 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Its because pretty girls are social and want to party with their friends at state college, meanwhile ugmos with emo hair and glasses want to study their useless liberal arts bullcrap at private schools.
Score: 2 (22 votes cast)
May 19, 2011 5:44 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
You're kind of an asshole.
Women are worth more than sex and looks. I bet you're a ripped bodied brad pitt looking type, right? Oh, no, you're pasty and skinny with a paradoxical beer gut, but thats okay because your a man and men are better than women and don't have to be vessels for sex in order to matter.
The dumb whores in sororities do nothing and are worth nothing except ensure that date rape rates remain high.
Score: -20 (40 votes cast)
May 19, 2011 2:32 PM | Posted by : | Reply
"Chomsky" + "deconstruction" = marxist.
"Chomsky" + "deconstruction" + liberal education later than 1979 = unaware marxist.
Score: 22 (24 votes cast)
May 19, 2011 3:24 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
If you're knowledgeable enough to make the assessment, i've got to assume you're one of us. Or actually, more likely, a bitter, aging faculty member.
Score: -10 (12 votes cast)
May 19, 2011 8:14 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Good advice. If only my ex had been lucky enough to receive such input prior to writing about his dad flipping out, abandoning him, his bipolar mother and siblings to become a woman in his application essay. I did warn him. Oh well.
Score: 3 (7 votes cast)
May 19, 2011 8:22 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I happen to think that the best college admissions essay is one that exists in some middle ground, tackling real challenges, but doing so with a sense of humor. People of all ages can appreciate that.
Score: 4 (6 votes cast)
May 19, 2011 11:57 PM | Posted by : | Reply
does anyone know how Florida Bright Futures Scholarship is funded? i'll give you two guesses.
Score: 3 (3 votes cast)
May 20, 2011 1:56 AM | Posted by : | Reply
I have one friend who stuck around to do that, and he definitely doesn't bite his nails, and prefers Noam Chomsky to Jon Stewart.
He used to, but biting was too difficult with the thick-rimmed black glasses that make him smart.
Wait, did you actually say he prefers Chomsky's opinions? On what? I thought Noam left us back in '68; or maybe that's when he left the world of science and ventured off into the political hinterlands without his clozapine. I forget. Too much tequila, limes and gonorrhea in state schools.
- V
Score: 12 (12 votes cast)
May 20, 2011 8:16 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Otherwise, after you finally receive your degree, don't stop in your endeavors. You can be just as disingenuous while writing your resume.
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