Monday, August 10, 2020

Is Every College Essay Read? How Many Admissions Officers Read Them?

Is Every College Essay Read? How Many Admissions Officers Read Them? My preference (and admissions officers’) would be that parents are minimally involved in the essay. In most cases, your essay isn’t the factor that determines your admission to college. It’s meant to be a deeper dive into who you are beyond the numbers and accolades. As we mentioned earlier, you don’t know who is reading your essay or how they feel about these subjects. It’s best not to offend them or make them feel uncomfortable. We would expect a nursing applicant to have had academic training and extracurricular choices that support a desire to help others. A student who highlights their love of community service but has only one or two short-term service opportunities is probably not as committed as he or she wants to claim. Editing is vastly different from original writing so this needs to be clarified first, as it has to be the voice and personal memories of the applicant not the parent. The sooner the family treats this as a team effort it will be much easier for the 12th grader to feel as though they are not alone in this process. Exhibit #2 is the Operation Varsity Blues scandal. As we enter a new admissions cycle one, of the challenges for our profession is mitigating the damage done by that criminal conspiracy and trying to restore public confidence in the college admissions process. However, an offensive, off-putting, or forgettable essay can hurt your chances. By avoiding the topics listed above, you’ll ensure that your essay helps â€" instead of hurts â€" your chances of admission. If you really want to make an impression, let your personality shine through. The essay is supposed to reveal information that you haven’t had a chance to discuss elsewhere in the application. Make sure that your essay is more than a recitation of the accomplishments, activities, and experiences already hashed out in the application. If your essay doesn’t present any new information, it will be dull and forgettable. He has been at St. Christopher's since 1990 and was previously an admissions officer, women's basketball coach and philosophy professor at the college level. Jim is a past president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. Last year's Operation Varsity Blues scandal means that college admissions can't return to business as usual. We need to ensure that the admissions process is fair and equitable, that we don't allow those with money to cut in line and that we don't reward those who make things up or embellish their credentials. We shouldn't abandon a process based on trust, but we also need to make decisions based on information that is verifiable. I responding by suggesting that he call the dean of admissions at his first-choice college and ask him the same question. His reluctance to do so showed that he already knew the answer. I hammered home the point that misrepresenting himself was wrong and an honor offense, and that colleges are interested in authenticity rather than heroism. I told him that any college admissions officer would detect instantly that the story was not genuine. Editing for grammatical errors and spelling mistakes is fine, but don’t change the voice of the essay. If an essay is too “polished” it may seem inauthentic, creating confusion in the reader. Make sure that you are confident in your essay and accept feedback, but don’t allow others to change your essay in any way that will cause it to lose its original message. Parents should always help their child in a positive way as long as they are not writing the ideas for the student.

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