admission essays
Dec. 30th, 2003 09:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinThese discussions of good/bad/scary college admission essay questions have me realizing that I have no memory at all of what my admission essay questions were. Many were probably the stupid "tell us about a significant experience in your life and how it changed you" business, and I have no idea what I'd have said at the time. The "give us page 217 of your 300-page autobiography" is in practice almost the same question, but phrased in a less restrictive manner, and that's enough to make it a relative hit with the people having this discussion.
It's interesting that most of the commenters like the cute and weird questions designed to push the limits of the students' creative ability, but a few people despise them. I'd bet that there are more intelligent and academically qualified people out there who despise these but aren't inclined to spend their time writing blog comments. I agree with the guy who said that it would be hard to avoid writing porn for that U of Chicago "I had no idea they could do that with ordinary string" question (though my 18-year-old self would have been traumatized by the very thought), and am also amused by the person who had had no significant life events. I think I actually had a similar problem; by that point I had gone through life events that were significant to me, but no major drama that fell into the traditional young-adult-novel/Afterschool Special categories, having been a Good Kid.
The one I vividly remember doing was actually the essay on the Advanced Placement French language exam-- I don't exactly remember what the question was, but it was one of those life-experience things; and I figured, what the hell, some anonymous test grader is going to read this, and poured out pages of anguish about a brain-damaging high-school crush in my mangled and circumlocutory classroom French. They probably got about a million of those.
It's interesting that most of the commenters like the cute and weird questions designed to push the limits of the students' creative ability, but a few people despise them. I'd bet that there are more intelligent and academically qualified people out there who despise these but aren't inclined to spend their time writing blog comments. I agree with the guy who said that it would be hard to avoid writing porn for that U of Chicago "I had no idea they could do that with ordinary string" question (though my 18-year-old self would have been traumatized by the very thought), and am also amused by the person who had had no significant life events. I think I actually had a similar problem; by that point I had gone through life events that were significant to me, but no major drama that fell into the traditional young-adult-novel/Afterschool Special categories, having been a Good Kid.
The one I vividly remember doing was actually the essay on the Advanced Placement French language exam-- I don't exactly remember what the question was, but it was one of those life-experience things; and I figured, what the hell, some anonymous test grader is going to read this, and poured out pages of anguish about a brain-damaging high-school crush in my mangled and circumlocutory classroom French. They probably got about a million of those.
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Date: 2003-12-30 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-31 03:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-31 05:03 am (UTC)It was my senior year of high school and I was thinking of what schools to apply to. I visited a few places, like Brown and MIT and Wesleyen, because such is the way of my people.
I should note that the set of glasses I had at the time were not very satisfactory -- they had been obtained at one of those one-hour glasses places, and they had very thin frames, and I think one of the lenses was just a little bit too big. The screws holding the frame together were constantly falling out, and by the time the glasses finally broke altogether I was heartily sick of the whole experience.
I was therefore determined that the next set of glasses I got would have the sturdiest frames known to man. They were big and thick and you could sit on them and they wouldn't break and they had extra reinforcing around the nose and earpiece areas and it was clear that these were frames that were never going to fall apart and I would have them for a long, long time.
When I got home with my new glasses, my sister looked at them and said,
At that moment, I knew that I would never buy a pair of thick-framed glasses again.
Is this the kind of thing you're thinking of?
no subject
Date: 2003-12-31 05:07 am (UTC)