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What to remember when applying to college:
- Admissions policies at every institution aim at fairness. Life, however, is not fair.
- Many folks get into college because their mothers or fathers attended that particular institution, making them "legacies," a sort of in-ground swimming pool of privilege. This imbalance is not acknowledged fully enough by university admissions departments or overworked guidance counselors in secondary public schools.
- Private secondary schools have professionals hired specifically to capitalize on what they know about the detailed needs of particular institutions - they know that a certain college prides itself on admitting lots of women into their science and math programs while another wants those already bilingual.
- If you attended a public school, that might mean you will have to make your own luck.
- Some students are admitted because they play a certain position in baseball, or because they play trumpet in the marching band, or because they're from a particular ethnic or socioeconomic background. This is good. Who wants a campus populated by the Stepford Students so that eventually everyone in a position of power would look and think the same way? That would be bad. It would also be way too familiar; we need to make changes in the world. Education should be neither an inheritance nor a secondary sex characteristic.
- Even if you THINK you know exactly why you were rejected (you are far too cool) or admitted (your father, after his own graduation, donated a building in the family name), you don't.
- Colleges and universities have a job: Their job is to admit students and educate the hell out of them. Why shouldn't you use the unfairness of life to imagine the best as well as prepare for the worst? The fact that life isn't fair might mean that you'll get luckier than you thought. Work at it.
- Since universities need students, they would like to grab those who are energetic, intriguing, and mature, as well as getting first dibs on those few brave souls who are not going to represent themselves by handing in a pre-processed, over-written, self-congratulatory letter of application. If the most interesting thing about you is that you memorized the entire script of Goodfellas verbatim when your sixth-grade class was told to memorize a piece of literature, then mention that in your admissions essay. Seriously. If you worked at a kid's camp for the last three summers but hated every minute of it, write about that.
- Don't use an essay off the Internet. Better you should ask one of the six-year-olds you hated from camp to write an essay on your behalf.
- Don't make yourself all goody-two-shoes unless you genuinely are - and even if you are, you still need to make an intelligent case for yourself.
- Yes, you are complex and unique. So is everybody else. (Note that you are not VERY unique, a state which does not exist - nothing can be "very" unique because "unique" implies that there is only one of its kind.)
- If you have an edge, a sense of humor, a built-in bilge detector (as you do) make sure your essay reflects it.
- Don't whine. Don't get defensive. Don't plead.
- Don't include a $20.
- Take the time to read up on the places you might spend the next several years. Receiving catalogs in the mail or printing out information from a Web site might make you sigh, as if you are doing just TONS of research, but unless you read these you are merely adding to world's recycling. These are not talismanic objects, the collegiate version of a lucky rabbit's foot. You simply can't bring yourself to sit down and go through them? Ummm - how, then, do you expect to go through college?
- Reading these documents in the car on the way to the official campus visit (made in your name by one of your long-suffering parents who figures that if she or he doesn't act for you, you'll be 35 years old and living in a crawl space under the house) is not the best time to get the details straight. But it is better than nothing.
- Colleges and universities want to admit students who will thrive, learn, participate, and enjoy their experience; they also want students who will complete their degrees in a timely fashion. Show that you are one of them.
- When you're seriously feeling low, take a look at some of those folks you know who graduated from college, then ask yourself this question: Can it be so terribly hard to get in? I mean, really.
