But if I could try again, if I could back and set my sights higher than the local state colleges where the pretty girls from my high school were going - who I never saw again! - I'd start like this:
Dear College Leaders:
You don't know me. But I'm a regular high school student. I smell like pot and listen to a lot of Metallica. I read comic books. I eat bad food and don't brush my teeth. I would like to do more of all of that, but about 250 miles away from my parent's house. What do you say?
Your pal,
Fab
Q: What Would Your Adult Self Write in a College Essay Now?
I was already a globe-trotting, real-life Jonny Quest when I was in high school, so an essay like that wouldn’t have done for me. No kidding: when I was 12 I was already flying all over Europe by myself to visit my parents in Spain and Italy, something that no helicopter parent today would have allowed. It was the perfect background for teaching at a place as diverse as Fresno State, particularly in these difficult days, in how it gave me a thorough grounding in checking my privilege.
ReplyDeleteSince in the manner of a more-usual high-schooler, not to mention Fab, I thought the whole exercise of a college essay about myself was stupid, and also since I did realize the usefulness to a college of having a sample of how well I could write, I sent in a science-fiction story I'd written, even though I knew it wasn’t what they were asking for. That's right, I took a risk, in a way no modern helicopter parent would allow. Another reason I sent it was that it was one of the best things I’d ever written, before or since. It was a time-travel story, in which a guy picks up a newspaper and realizes it's a year early. He invests all his money on what's on the stock market page and this causes him to starve to death: too bad he hadn’t looked at the obit page, since he was featured on it.
I got into Northwestern (which I attended), U. of Chicago, UC Irvine (which I hadn’t applied to), and the honors college of U. of Florida, the state where I went to high school. I didn’t get into Caltech, UC Berkeley, or UCLA, which were my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices. I only applied to five universities (with the three UC universities counting as one), because my Mom would have had to pay extra to ETS to have my SAT scores sent to more universities. I know, this seems comical in the context of what college-bound high-school students do today.
At the time, colleges never told you exactly why you were rejected, a problem that became much worse during my postdoc-to-faculty struggle, but my SAT scores were good enough for the Ivies. I didn’t apply to any because I had a high-school guidance counselor who literally told us, “No one from our high school ever gets into the Ivies”: again, this seems comical today. So, sending in a sci-fi story instead of an actual college essay may or may not have helped me: I’ll never know. I might have gotten those rejections because of a typo in the wrong place: yes, I’m old enough to have typed my college applications on a manual typewriter, and the concept of your helicopter parents doing that for you was mercifully far in the future.
To answer your question: I probably would write an actual college essay now, although one that was appropriate for me, as a real-life Jonny Quest. This is because I'd have a better sense that I had so much good material to work with. I wouldn't have felt obliged to downplay it, in the manner of a high-school student, in the days before the mad burnishing of the persona normative for ambitious high-school students today. Typing it also would be much easier.
ReplyDeleteIf I were to write one today, my college essay would be more like this, which I didn't write, but came anonymously out of the internet in 1995. I know, humanities majors at places like NYU (the setting for "The Freshman," starring Matthew Broderick and Marlon Brando) go for this kind of thing:
ReplyDeleteThis is an actual essay written by a college applicant to NYU. The author was accepted and is now attending NYU.
3A. IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU, THE APPLICANT, BETTER, WE ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION: ARE THERE ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU HAVE REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE YOU AS A PERSON?
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 godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook
Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.
Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On
Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.
I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie.
Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat .400.
My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me.
I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations with the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.
I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven.
I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.
But I have not yet gone to college.
I thought, "Frod is somewhat prolific this morning. I bet it's cloudy in Fresno." Lo and behold, the weather channel confirms it. Also, that funny application essay reminded me of another clever teenager from around that time. I was neither as bold nor as imaginative as either of them (or Frod) back then.
DeleteI also remember an urban legend (?) of a kid who said, "I will be at this medical school next year, either as a student or a corpse."
DeleteCome to think of it, don't we DO write what amounts to an updated college essay these days, every time we apply for a grant?
DeleteYou want to read this as much as I want to write it so I'll keep this short. State funding for your school is drying up so you're lowering the admissions requirements to make up the difference in tuition. I'm willing to be taught by faculty who have no formal training in teaching. Why? Because there's no easier place to get laid and buy pot than a college campus. I'm applying to a lot of schools so, to be honest, you need me more than I need you. Just click the Approve box on your little admissions website so my mom will get off my back about these damn applications.
ReplyDeleteDear San Diego State:
ReplyDeleteI am invincible. And I'd like to test the limits.
Cal
Dear Penthouse, I never believed the letters I read in your magazine before, but then I enrolled at....
ReplyDelete@Frod: I'd call Northwestern and Chicago Ivy equivalents, easily; if you got into both of those, you had nothing to prove to anyone. But I'm with you on the uselessness of the advice from high-school guidance counselors back in those days (I suspect we're from roughly the same era). I went to my own Ivy equivalent because the mother of a friend practically shamed me into applying there. If I'd listened to guidance counselors, I would have ended up at the same teachers' college they'd all graduated from themselves. Nothing at all against teachers' colleges, but I didn't want to be a teacher, and the place where I did end up turned out to suit me perfectly.
ReplyDeleteI have absolutely no recollection of what kind of essay I wrote. However, I can still recite all my SAT scores—for English, math, and three subject tests.
Sometimes, it's nice to know that things that fouled you up in your youth no longer can be a problem for kids today. Even though I was clearly and vocally college-bound, my junior-high guidance counselor told me, "Oh, no: boys don't take typing. Boys take wood shop!" (And I learned almost nothing I hadn't already done in my Dad's workshop.) Never having taken typing was a serious problem for me, until I turned 31 and got a copy of the Mac software "Typing Tutor," and within 1.5 weeks I was finally really typing. Nowadays, of course, kids learn “keyboarding” seemingly at birth.
DeleteOn the other hand, it’s not nice to find out that things that benefited you in your youth are no longer options to kids today. Now you know why I worry about helicopter parenting: it can’t possibly be good for creativity. My niece does allow her son to fly the model rockets I give him, but he’ll never build any himself, because he simply isn’t allowed the free time. The kid wants to be an engineer: lots of luck if he’s never allowed to build things.
And what will he and his age-mates write *their* college essays about, when they've led such scheduled childhoods that none of them has a single unique, did-it-myself experience to report?
DeleteYou're right about typing, too: it isn't at all hard to learn once you sit down to it, and boys are just as good at it as girls. (And need it just as much.) Although I did earn some tidy pocket money in college, typing papers for boys who couldn't be bothered to decode their own horrible handwriting.
This is easy. His mom will write (and type) his college essay, just like with all his age-mates. They will therefore all be exactly the same, just like the kids who were supposed to have written them.
DeleteThe adult me, if seeking admission, would still tell crazy, stupid, cliche lies. So the only thoughts, unique to my adult self, that I have to share with my college, would be from the alumni side. And they would go something like this:
ReplyDeleteDear Letter Receiver of the Seven Sisters,
I know I told you I wanted to cure cancer, and I meant it at the time, but thank you for letting me build a laser. If I had known the joys of shooting things with lasers when I was in high school, I never would have wanted to do anything practical.
I also appreciate your essentially non-existent “distribution requirements”. In fact, they were the reason I didn’t go to Land-Grant-Ivy. They allowed me to avoid almost anything that wasn’t math or science, which is what I wanted, because I’m an anxiety plagued Aspie and I would have transferred to the State College back home if I had to debate anything soft or grey with people as smart as the friends I made in your tree-hugging wonderland.
That said, I do recommend an addition to your graduation requirements. Not another writing course, no Western-Civ, not even a gym class – something much more critical for achieving life satisfaction.
You produce a lot of academics. You know that. You brag about it. You put our works in a glass case in the lobby by the Admissions office. You use it as a selling point, but you only display half-truths in that case. You never show our photos. You never show what happens to us, other than we get the jobs and write the books. You never let them see what really happens to us. If you had to let them see, you would do something about it. So please, please, my sweet Alma Mater, please make “How to not look like a crazy cat lady when you have to wear a cardigan” a graduation requirement.
Love,
WotC (’9X, nee WotLaser)
I was such a hippie. I applied to art school, no less. I played the dulcimer at my interview. I don't recall that I wrote an essay, but I suppose I must have.
ReplyDelete