How sad is it that affluent American students feel the need to attend a camp to learn how to write a simple essay? Don't their schools teach them anything?
If 15-year-old Anna Zvagelskaya were a shoe, she writes, she would be pink, with a very pointy toe, a flared heel, straps and a diamond buckle.It's five months before the application deadline at most elite colleges, and a year and five months before Ms. Zvagelskaya's application is due at Harvard, her top choice. But on a summer day here at Tufts University, the San Francisco high-school junior and a dozen other teenagers are enrolled in a two-week college-application camp, spending two hours a day in class -- and hours more each night -- crafting the essays that they hope will vault them to the head of the college queue.
"There are so many kids with perfect grades out there," says Ms. Zvagelskaya, who frets over "a few B's" on her transcript. "Your essay gives you an extra push, a chance to shine"...All this is happening because the competition to get into elite schools is getting ferocious. Colleges are expecting 2.1 million new high-school graduates to enroll this fall -- 300,000 more than just eight years ago. The most prestigious colleges haven't added many extra seats to meet demand, though.
Ah, that's it. These students aren't writing simple, well-crafted essays; they're writing artsy, confabulated crap in an attempt to avoid having to suffer the ignominy of a state school. Sheesh.
Such self-promotion is possible because few colleges ask direct questions in their essay prompts. The University of Chicago, which prides itself on being an exception, is asking this year's applicants for their observations on "the power of string." The university offers string cheese and Theseus's escape route from Labyrinth as possible places to start. Chicago's admissions dean, Theodore O'Neill, says the school is really asking "how does this person handle ideas?"
Does Chicago really want students who have to pay Kaplan to teach them "how to handle ideas"?
Other critics worry that expensive essay coaching gives rich kids yet another advantage over poor kids. Responds Mr. Hughes, the writing coach: "We're addressing the demands that have been put out there by the universities. It's easy for the [admissions] deans to frown on it, but it's part of a process they helped create."
Critics, fear not. One could argue that if even the rich kids have to attend a ritzy camp to learn how to write an essay comparing themselves to a shoe, then they don't have much of an intellectual advantage over the poor kids, do they? Sounds like everybody was equally failed by their high school writing classes.
(Via Joanne Jacobs.)
Posted by kswygert at July 13, 2005 11:50 AM