This Post Has Not Been Proofread Very Good

Uh-oh. Someone hasn't read Eats, Shoots & Leaves. (H/T Depravda.com for image.)

The fall months alway bring emails like a swarm of locusts from well-intentioned friends sharing articles they came across regarding college essays. Occasionally, one does stand out for the exceptional advice it offers. However, most are filled with the most trite cliches passed off as wisdom. Some goes as far as to offer terrible advice.  Case in point, this bit from this morning’s Huffington Post which shared “advice” on why the personal statement might not actually matter:

1. I recall a public university representative confessing on a tour that the admissions people only read the full apps of seniors whose scores and GPAs were above a certain threshold. Below that line, essays worthy of fill in your favorite writer here went unread.

2. As many professional writers and lots of seniors will tell you, 500 words is a tough length; too long for glib, too short for substance.

3. The standard supportive advice is “be yourself” – but you are competing with applicants whose parents enhance “self” with the extracurricular equivalent of ‘roids, everything from international community service to a networked internship for a child whose most remarkable trait may well be his parents’ connections.

Wow. Every one of her points while perhaps true on occasion, hardly represent the essence of how this process works. Let’s break it down…

1. Argh. I read applications for UCLA for two years. The admissions standards are high. The applicant pool is also the largest in the country at over 55,000 applications last year. Over 75% of those kids won’t get in. Yet, as a reader, I took the kid with even a UC-ineligible GPA of 2.9 just as seriously as the kid with the clinching 4.7 GPA. Why? Because it was my job and I owed it to that kid and the process. This student took the time (if not a great deal of thought) and paid his application fee. Sure, I read that kid with 2.9 with a slightly different eye. One that mostly searched for extenuating circumstances explaining a GPA so out of sync with the rest of the pool. And while most of the time, I got nothing, every so often, there were would be that kid who shared a compelling story. I have no reason to believe that my colleagues at UCLA weren’t doing their job either. It’s rather cynical to suggest otherwise. (Though, as I allow, there are always exceptions to the rule. But like most things in life, it’s just silly to make the exceptions the rule.) And that’s how a kid a with 3.2 occasionally every so often find their way in UCLA or schools of its caliber.

2.  Ugh. Who said essays have to be 500 words? The great majority are not.  The Common Application has no upper limit although it does have a lower bound of 250 words. As such, it’s not entirely unreasonable to have a kid write 750 words.  (The limit for the UCs is 750 words.)  It’s a length which certainly allows students to overcome concerns of being “glib” and share plenty about themselves.

3.  Lame.  This kind of nonsense just fuels the hysteria of the process.  Responsible adults who care about education need to be careful when they throw around suggestions like this.  Are there inequities in the process?  Yes.  So much so that one should throw their hands in the air and say, “Fuggedaboutit!”

Anyways, the article wasn’t all bad as the writer does open noting that even the most well-written essay won’t supersede a profile not in line with who a college is typically admitting.  And as a writer, she does offer up some excellent advice in terms of writing.  Advice that seems inanely basic but can never be undervalued:

1. Never – ever – use the passive tense. It’s not “The huts in Fiji were built by myself and four other volunteers.” It’s “I worked with four other volunteers to build six huts in Fiji.”

2. Make sure your senior knows the difference between “it’s,” a contraction that means “it is,” and “its”, which is possessive, as in the dog ate its bone. Honest. Lots of them still don’t.

3. One adjective per noun will probably do it.

Yet, when reading her advice, I still laughed thinking, “Well, thanks.  That was obvious.”  The joke was on me when an hour later a friend sent me the ad above.  It’s from last week’s New Yorker backpage.  Apparently, even the folks on Madison Street could use a little bit of “obvious.”