Word: essay
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David and Harvey were approached to be part of a photo essay in the Christian Science Monitor. The piece was intended to show a typical weekend in the Ivy League. But confronted with this challenge, the duo decided they would be anything but typical...
...were initially not too impressed by a student with good test scores but whose grades were all over the map. Then a reader noticed that she came from a family with no higher education and worked up to 40 hours a week as a cashier. But it was her essay that really swayed the committee, as she described being derisively called "white girl" by some other blacks and related how a classmate told her that he "looked forward to seeing me 'flipping burgers' after graduation...
Before you go crafting your sob story, it bears noting that college admissions officers are among the world's finest b.s. detectors. A case in point: a student's Cornell essay about a relative's homosexuality struck an admissions reader as gratuitous: "This has got shock value written all over...
...resorted to some almost comical end-runs around the spirit of the law. The university used to award a yearly scholarship to a Mexican-American student; now it goes to a student who speaks Spanish really well. Admissions officers no longer know an applicant's race. But a new essay question asks about each student's "background" and "cultural traditions." When Rice officials read applications, they look for "diverse life experiences" and what they awkwardly call "overcome students," who have triumphed over hardship...
Last spring, admissions readers came across a student whose SAT score was lower than 1,200 and who did not rank in the top 10% of her class. Numerically speaking, she lagged far behind most accepted applicants. But her essay and recommendations indicated a strong interest in civil rights and personal experience with racial discrimination. She was admitted. "All the newspapers say affirmative action is done," says a veteran counselor at a large New York City high school. "But nothing has changed. I have a [minority] kid at Yale with an SAT score in the high 900s...