Should You Come Out in Your College App Essay?

A very interesting Q/A-style article in the New York Times that offers more questions than answers on the issue of whether students should come out in their college application essays. Here's the question. To read the answer, and reader comments, click here.

""Q. Dear Civil Behavior: Our daughter is a senior in high school and quite comfortable with her lesbian identity. We support her 100 percent, but we know the world is not always so tolerant. As she’s writing her college application essays this fall, she’s “coming out” in them — and we think that’s a bad idea. You just never know who’s reading these essays, so why risk revealing your orientation to someone who might be biased against you? We’ve strongly suggested she think over the ramifications of what she’s doing, but she doesn’t seem to have any doubt about it. Deadlines are approaching and we are at an impasse. How can we persuade her to keep some things private if they might hurt her chances of admission?” — Anonymous  READ MORE

JFK's Harvard College Application Essay

I guess it helped to be the son of the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, I mean, applying to Harvard in 1935, when John F. Kennedy applied. His grades at Choate were kind of grim - 62 and French and Latin - and his essay wasn't earth shattering. I can say with confidence that if you want to get into Harvard these days, you need something a little stronger than this. JFK's Harvard application and accompanying documents, including a priceless letter from his father, are now available on-line from the Kennedy Library right here. Fascinating stuff. 

This is his hand-written essay in its entirety:

"The reasons that I have for wishing to go Harvard are several. I feel that Harvard can give me a better background and a better liberal education than any other university. I have always wanted to go there, as I have felt that it is not just another college, but is a university with something definitive [cd be "definite"] to offer. Then too, I would like to go to the same college as my father. To be a 'Harvard man' is an enviable destination, and one that I sincerely hope I shall attain."  April 23, 1935

Girls & Women Just Wanna Be Engineers

It's been thrilling for me to work with several young women this semester who are applying to college to become engineers. I thought of them when I watched this video and read this article in the New York Times. Take a read. Have a look at the delightful video when you click on the NYT link. 

"Who said girls want to dress in pink and play with dolls, especially when they could be building Rube Goldberg machines instead?

"That is the message of a video that has gone viral since it was posted on YouTube this week — an ad for GoldieBlox, a start-up toy company that sells games and books to encourage girls to become engineers.

"In the video, three girls are bored watching princesses in pink on TV. So they grab a tool kit, goggles and a hard hat and set to work building a Rube Goldberg machine that sends pink teacups and baby dolls flying through the house, using umbrellas, ladders and, of course, GoldieBlox toys." READ MORE-WATCH THE VIDEO

Tweeting & FB Posts Might Mess with Your College Chances....

If you have any kind of on-line presence and you're applying to college, read this piece in The New York Times, "They Loved Your GPA. Then They Saw Your Tweets."  Here are some highlights:

"In an effort to help high school students avoid self-sabotage online, guidance counselors are tutoring them in scrubbing their digital identities. At Brookline High School in Massachusetts, juniors are taught to delete alcohol-related posts or photographs and to create socially acceptable email addresses. One junior’s original email address was “bleedingjesus,” said Lenny Libenzon, the school’s guidance department chairman. That changed.

“They imagine admissions officers are old professors,” he said. “But we tell them a lot of admissions officers are very young and technology-savvy.”

"Likewise, high school students seem to be growing more shrewd, changing their searchable names on Facebook or untagging themselves in pictures to obscure their digital footprints during the college admission process.

“We know that some students maintain two Facebook accounts,” says Wes K. Waggoner, the dean of undergraduate admission at Southern Methodist University in Dallas." READ MORE 

"Positive helicoptering" or the Twilight Zone?

Just when you thought it was time to leave home and be on your own, colleges - and parents - are finding new ways to keep parents in the loop. Some say it's using parents as cheap labor, to promote the colleges. One says it's "positive helicoptering." A shrink says it's a bad idea. An educator says it's a way to keep up a school's prestige. Your thoughts? From the New York Times article on Nov. 1.

"Colleges have long sought parents’ help with job placement and networking. But now many small and medium private colleges and some large public universities (West Virginia University, University of Pittsburgh) call on parents of enrolled students to volunteer with the admissions office. They promote the school at fairs, share their experiences on parent-to-parent panels, reach out to local parents and even conduct admissions interviews.

"With assistance from a generation of devoted P.T.A.-goers accustomed to playing an active part in their children’s education, smaller colleges can maintain a wider presence and cover more fairs, attracting more and better applicants. “It is a question of resource allocation,” Stephanie Balmer, dean of admissions at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., told me. “We can’t hire enough staff to expand our reach and be present in all those places.” READ MORE

More Schools Extend Early Deadlines & The Continuing Mess...

All of us can thank Nancy Griesemer and Tara Anne Dowling for keeping the list of schools extending their early application deadlines up to date and Nancy for her reporting on the ongoing mess with the Common Application. The takeaway seems to be that if you have successfully submitted your applications, do not assume they have been received at your schools. If you have submitted applications, wait several days to contact the schools and find out if they have been received. 

FOR THE UPDATED LIST OF COLLEGES CLICK HERE (and scroll down once you get to the article):

The opening of Nancy Griesemer's latest article:

"As the Common Application calls in a support team from Amazon to help sort out problems with server overloads and explain why the system isn’t working the way it should, member colleges are throwing in the towel and extending early admission deadlines. 

"From the college standpoint, the Common Application poses a complicated series of problems. At the most basic level, colleges are worried about their continued inability to access and read submitted applications through online enrollment management systems.

"As of this writing, the Common App reports that about half of those colleges using a daily automated process to retrieve files are either testing or waiting to go live with a software fix rolled out just last Thursday. But for those with functioning retrieval systems, there are still reports of applications and documents showing up as empty files or blank pages." READ MORE 

10 Tips Before You Submit Common App

Take a look at this article just posted on the Student Advisor Blog:

Written by Purvi Mody for StudentAdvisor

There has been quite a bit of grumbling in the media about the new version of the Common Application, the main application system for more than 500 colleges and universities.

Admissions officers, high school counselors, and admissions experts around the country have all weighed in on the Common Application's improvements and the new bugs that it introduced. If you are a high school senior trying to use the Common App, don’t get distracted by the commotion.

Use these 10 Tips that I share with my students, and you too will be able to maneuver the Common Application like a pro:

    1.         Paste your essays into Notepad or TextEdit first and format them properly before pasting them into the actual application.

I recommend a format with line breaks and spaces between paragraphs and no paragraph indentations. I think it looks the cleanest. In the application, those line spaces will not appear, but they should appear when you view the PDF version of your application.

    2.         By far, the worst change to the Common Application is that you cannot Print Preview your Common Application and Writing Supplement together. 

Since there are no plans to change that functionality, you have to work around it. First, complete the Common Application and the questions specific to one school. Print out the PDF version of your application and scour it thoroughly for mistakes. Once you are happy with it, submit your Common Application to that one school. Do the same for the Common App Writing Supplement next. Skipping the PDF version may cause you to miss some errors. READ MORE