Season 4: Episode 5 Transcript
Let Your Life Speak Through Your College Essay
Lee Coffin:
From Hanover, New Hampshire. I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid. Welcome to the Admissions Beat.
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So everybody, before we start, this is an anniversary. This is the 50th episode of Admission Beat since we launched in the fall of 2021. And I want to bring my producer, Charlotte Albright, on for a sec just to do a little cheer. Hi Charlotte.
Charlotte Albright:
Well, hello there. It's nice to be on.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, Charlotte is sort of the invisible person in all these episodes where she has listened to everyone, every syllable of every episode since we started. And she edits me and sometimes interrupts and says, "Hey, why are you talking about that?" But Charlotte, this is a big deal. We made it to 50.
Charlotte Albright:
It is a big deal. And we both said that we hatched this idea during the pandemic, and a student asked you the other day, "Well, why are you still doing it?", and your answer was, I remember, "Because I love it."
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, yeah.
Charlotte Albright:
I do too.
Lee Coffin:
No, it is. And I've been unexpectedly tickled by my second career as a journalist, if a podcaster can call himself that. But it's been a really wonderful opportunity to tell a story of admissions to an audience that I can't see, but they're definitely listening. And as a funny kind of tie into one of today's guests, I did a visit to her school a couple weeks ago and as I was talking before the program, this mom behind me said, "Oh my God, it's you." And I turned around and she said, "You're the podcast guy." And it's this recurring surprise to me that we do these episodes, we post them, people listen, we don't see them listening, but they are.
And so to listeners, thanks for subscribing and following along through all four Seasons. And Charlotte, thanks for being my editorial sidekick through all of these conversations, and it's been fun and I hope we have 50 more in us.
Charlotte Albright:
I do too. And I've learned a lot by the way, and I pass that on to my friends now. So all of this is up-to-the-minute. Sometimes one week we have advice that we might not have had the week before, so the timeliness of it is not lost on me. And that's why I'm glad the audience is growing and I bet there's a lot of exchange of ideas that they have with each other that we don't even know about that are conversation starters. So keep it up, everybody. Keep talking.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, thanks. And I think that's right, and this episode on storytelling is a good example of a recurring topic that we touch usually every season. But as my guests and I get into it today, think we're going to have a spin on essays that I haven't had to think about before because of current events. So when we come back, Episode 50 will feature friends of the pod, Sherri Geller, the Co-Director of College Counseling at Gann Academy in Waltham, Mass, and Ronnie McKnight, Associate Director of College Counseling at the Paideia School in Atlanta, are the recurring dynamic duo making their fourth appearance on the Admission Beat. So we will be right back.
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There's a Quaker saying, "Let your life speak," and I first saw that saying on the wall of Sidwell Friends School in Washington when I visited several years ago to do a high school visit. And it really struck me as a very elegant and interesting way of thinking about it, life experience and telling your story. And while I'm not Quaker, I have adopted "Let Your Life Speak" as a personal motto in many ways and have used it as an essay prompt when I was at Tufts, and we just reintroduced it here at Dartmouth as a question on our supplement.
And I start with Let Your Life Speak because I think it's an interesting way of framing this topic of the essay as your narrative opportunity in your application, the essay and the writing as personal introduction as storytelling. So my guests, Ronnie and Sherri, welcome back to Admissions Beat.
Sherri Geller:
Thank you. It's great to be here. Thanks for inviting us back.
Lee Coffin:
Of course. No, it's always fun to have you both, but also together. I come to think of you as Lucy and Ethel, this inseparable duo that we have to have.
Ronnie McKnight:
I think I'm Ethel in that arrangement, and I don't know if I like that, Lee.
Lee Coffin:
And for the kids who are saying "What are they talking about?", we're talking about "I Love Lucy" from the 1950s. So if you don't know it, Google it because it is a cultural phenomenon from the mid-20th century that you really should watch some episodes because it's hilarious. But anyway, enough of Lucy. So why don't I just give each of you a little minute to let your life speak? Tell us about how you came to your jobs as college counselors because you were both college admission officers, and I think it's relevant to this conversation about essay writing because you've both been a reader like me, but also someone counseling kids. So Ronnie, let your life speak.
Ronnie McKnight:
I went to Presbyterian College in South Carolina. I was a tour guide, so I was a tour guide in college, worked at Presbyterian, and then at Emory University in about 14 years, and then 12 years ago left. I just joked with Lee before this podcast began that I left the college side because I had read just one too many essays, which I always enjoyed, but also didn't, and have really enjoyed the high school side of the college counseling process at Paideia.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, thanks. Sherri, let your life speak.
Sherri Geller:
So I had a very similar story starting as a tour guide. It was a very common path to this profession. I went to Brandeis University and we also had a program called Chatters, and for anyone that knows me, they know that I was the perfect Chatter. We would sit in the admissions office and chat with our guests about the school as they came in waiting for their interviews and things.
Lee Coffin:
Oh, that was actually a role, a chatter was a role in the admission office?
Sherri Geller:
Yes.
Lee Coffin:
Wow.
Ronnie McKnight:
I love that.
Sherri Geller:
You would give an hour a week sort of like a tour guide. It was a volunteer position and as families came in especially, it was great if students were a little nervous before an interview or parents had questions while their student was on a tour or things like that, we would sit and chat with our guests. So I loved being a Chatter, and then my senior year I was in one of the leadership positions in our office overseeing hosting students that wanted to stay overnight and matching them up and I said, "Wow, how do I get to do this and get paid for it?"
So I went to graduate school for public relations, which is not a common path to admissions, but I feel like I use my PR skills all the time as a college counselor in terms of writing and communicating and helping advocate for our students. So similar to Ronnie, I worked at college admissions at two different institutions, first at my alma mater, Brandeis, and then at Northeastern for a short time. Now I've been at college counselor at two different schools.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. And for listeners, Sherri is the past President of the New England Association of College Admission Counseling, so a regional professional organization. So she brings both a college-based and a school-based perspective, but also more of a profession-wide perspective given that leadership role. So it's great to have you both. Thanks for sharing your life in that quick moment.
So as we talk about essays broadly, it's really about storytelling. One of the things that's come up on every episode this season is the idea that the essay or the task of imagining and starting to write the essay is a source of stress for seniors in this early moment of fall. Do you see that in your two schools as the essay kind of loom over this part of the admission process as kind an onerous chore?
Sherri Geller:
Yes.
Ronnie McKnight:
Yes.
Sherri Geller:
I know a one-word answer on a podcast isn't so helpful, but-
Lee Coffin:
That was very definitive. You put an exclamation point in that. Why?
Sherri Geller:
Well, it's interesting because I always thought when I read applications, even as I work with students now, but the essays were actually the most interesting part both to work on and to read. I think the stress comes because students could have so many stories they can tell and they want to get it right. They want to pick the right topic, they want to use the right language. They feel like they're putting so much into this essay. And what they don't realize when they first start is that 650 words is not that long and they don't have to tell their whole life story. It looms because they're really worried about how they'll be judged, how others will read their story, if they're telling the right story, and if they're using the right language along the way.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, yeah.
Ronnie McKnight:
Such a stressful process, and it's really the one thing in the fall that they still control in that your transcript is set, your activities are already completed for the most part, but the essay in a stressful process, all of that stress is funneled into that one document that's still in progress as opposed to all the other things that are kind of solidified.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Okay, so let's dig into that, so that feels like the news you could use piece of this episode. So there's this kind of question about the essay and how do I tell the right story as Sherri just said. So Sherri, when I visited Gann a couple of weeks ago for your case studies, you passed out a tip sheet to parents and one of the tips was on essay and your sheet said, "Does the essay tell you something about the student beyond the transcript? What did you learn? What qualities or talents does the student reveal? Do you hear the student's voice? Do you get a sense of the student as a person? Does the student tell their story effectively?" And I thought that series of questions that you shared with your senior class was smart. It was a nice summary of here are some questions to ask yourself as you start writing and as a reader, because it was a case study program, some prompts to say, "This sample of writing and should answer some of these questions or not."
But let's talk about why there's an essay. When someone comes into one of your offices and says, "Why does a college ask me to do a writing sample?" what's in your answer about the purpose of this?
Sherri Geller:
So I often start with a version of Ronnie's answer to the last question about the control piece, about the what do you want a college to know? They want to know, the college wants to know, what are your grades, sometimes what are your test scores, what are you doing for activities? They tell you, "This is your chance, even though the college requests it, for you to have pretty free-reign of what you want to tell them." So it's a chance for students to choose what kind of language they're going to use. If they're funny, their essay can be funny, although I always tell them that if they're not funny, then maybe a college essay isn't the right time to try out. But if they're more serious, then the essay can be serious. If they're really into the outdoors, their essay can be about the outdoors. It's really a chance to come off the page and not just be a standard set of grades and scores and things that every other student has.
Lee Coffin:
As seniors are kind of scratching their head and their fingers are poised at the keyboard but they haven't started to type because they're overthinking it perhaps, is the essay being evaluated for the quality of writing or are we more focused on the content, or is it both?
Ronnie McKnight:
All three of us have read essays. I don't think I ever read an essay with a red ink pen, right, and so I never graded an essay within reason. And so you have permission to write the way you speak. It doesn't have to be nearly as formal as something that you may have written for an English class. You want it to sound like a 17-year-old or an 18-year-old depending on I guess most of these kids are 17 at the point when they write. So all of that can be your voice, and it doesn't have to be an academic voice by any means.
Obviously you want to still pay attention to grammar and things like that, so you want to make a good impression. But the tone of it can definitely sound like a 17-year-old when they write that. And I think that's actually important. I think one of the mistakes that students make is to write something and then let it be edited by, I'm pointing at myself, a bunch of 54-year-olds and suddenly it doesn't sound like a 17-year-old. It sounds like a 54-year-old college counselor or English teacher, etc. So-
Sherri Geller:
I was going to say I've developed a word for what Ronnie just said, and it's "adultified." I read an essay, sometimes it's just a sentence, but often it's a whole piece, I say, "This essay sounds over-adultified." And some students, as we know, while they're only 17, they're like 40-year-olds in their daily lives, but most 17 year olds are really 17. And so the students who are mini 40 year olds, I think it's fine when they use more adult sounding language. But many times I read an essay and I say, "Yeah, what adult suggested this word to you?", some examples over time.
Lee Coffin:
I love that. I love that phrase. I'm going to steal it, "adultified."
Sherri Geller:
You're welcome to it.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Years ago I used to be the territory manager for Washington DC and so lots of the applicants had parents who worked in government given where we were. And I was reading an essay and I thought, "This is such an odd topic, it just doesn't sound ..." It wasn't very interesting. It was about microfinancing in Sub-Saharan Africa, and I thought, "Nothing in this file is kind of syncing up with this topic." And I flipped back because it was still a paper file. I flipped back to the parent section and the mom was working for The World Bank. I thought this is mom's essay, she wrote about microfinancing in Sub-Saharan Africa, and it didn't sound like her daughter Anyway, but yeah, so I love that, "adultified."
Sherri Geller:
Yeah, it comes out sometimes even in a word. I read a supplemental piece a few years ago that the question was something about your favorite activity, and the student wrote about being a camp counselor, and it was a great short paragraph kind of essay. But the last sentence was about how much he enjoyed working with these youths. And I said, "Youths?" And after I got over My Cousin Vinny, thinking of the two youths, just thinking about the youths, I said, "Youths?" And he kind of turned red and said, "Oh yeah, my father suggested that word." And I said, "Really?" And he said, "Well, because ..." I said, "What did you want to say?" He said, "Kids. But I can't say kids, it's my college essay." I said, "Well, actually you can say kids because that's what you called these people." But other words, there's children, there's campers, there's teens. We kind of brainstormed all kinds of words that would've felt more like him. But when the father said youths, that was of course an accurate word, but not one that went with the flow of the essay or felt like the student's voice.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. No, and Ronnie said something a minute ago that I wrote down, which was, "It's not an English paper." And I think one of the conundrums of this assignment is we're inviting students to write an essay or a short statement that is personal in nature, but it's not a critical paper. You haven't just read The Great Gatsby and have to dissect it for its thematic content. And I think it's an interesting transition from what they do in high school when the teacher does have a red pen to mark it up and make comments, correct it, to this is something very personal.
And I would say as a takeaway from this point we're making to listeners, you don't want to overthink it. You do want these responses to be authentic in a student's voice and not so formal that ... You want to have a thesis and you want us to learn something about you, but you don't need to be thinking about it as the assignment for your English literature class or your U.S. history class, right?
Sherri Geller:
Yeah. I often tell students that most students in most high schools learn about a five-paragraph essay, and I explain to them that a college essay doesn't have to be a five-paragraph essay. But similarly, it should have a beginning, middle, and end. It should have a well-developed story. It should come to a point at the end that there's a takeaway. And so I feel like the college essay is a good place to use the skills that they've learned in high school, but then adapt and use the ones that feel most relevant to them as they tell their story.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Let me bring the two of you back to your days on my side of the desk when you were reading files and Ronnie was saying, "Oh, another one." We have to summarize the essay, right? I mean the point that I often share when I do a program in a high school is what do you want me to know. When I finish reading it and I'm taking notes, that 650 words gets distilled down to a nugget that helps me introduce you later. And I think that point gets lost too. You want to ask yourself as you write these four, five, six paragraphs, "When I'm done, what do I now know?" I mean what's the takeaway from what you shared? And if it's you were a camp counselor, okay, but a lot of people can say that. What is it about being a camp counselor that adds to my understanding of you as an applicant or a member of the class I'm trying to build?
Ronnie McKnight:
Those two statements that you just made about what do you know and earlier when you talked about what's your thesis, that's really why writing an essay is difficult because when you're 17 and you begin this process, you often think about stories. Because it is so nice to have a really good story to tell, but in reality, the story you tell, you're telling that story because you're making a point. And what you should do first is actually sit down and think about what Lee just said, "What do I want this college to know about me?"
When we help kids brainstorm, we talk about values and about experiences that defined you and about those sort of central core beliefs and worldviews and things like that. And we don't go home after work and sit around and think of, "What are my core values today?" That's not a natural thing that we do on a daily basis, but that's kind of what you have to do before you write. And the nice thing about beginning it with that sort of, "What do I want to tell them that's important to me?", is that once you kind of have those two or three things in mind, then it's a lot easier to think of stories that can kind of highlight those sorts of central values. I think a lot of times kids begin the process and put the cart before the horse or whatever that old saying is that they try to think of stories first before they really think of what am I trying to tell the college about myself?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. And it seems so simple, but what I'm learning as we have these conversations on the pod is that's a harder question than it seems to a high school senior.
Sherri Geller:
I'm thinking about some memorable essays that I've read over time, and sometimes they don't start with that core question, although I agree with Ronnie that that's the best place to start. But I remember an essay that a student once wrote about going on a rollercoaster, and he was really, really scared. And I remember feeling it with him how scared he was, but yet he survived, but as he was going up, up, up, up and dreading coming back down the hill and whatever. And the takeaways from that were about being a risk-taker and trying something new, and there were all sorts of messages in it that I don't think were the original intent of the essay. He really wanted to talk about this time he went on the rollercoaster ride, but in the end, what made the essay so powerful is that there were all these other kinds of things that the reader could take away from it that were really true to who he was, but it wasn't where his starting point.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Does the essay connect to other parts of the file? Is it like a Lego that you could connect to the transcript or to the testing? I mean do admission officers see ties to the other pieces, or does it standalone?
Sherri Geller:
I think it can go either way. I think content-wise, sometimes a student is screaming, "I'm a dancer and I want to be a dancer and I love dance." And so they've done any dance classes that their high school might offer and their activities are filled with dance and they write their essay about something that happened with dance. So sometimes there were themes or patterns, but other times that student who everything is screaming dance says, "But you know what? They're going to know I'm a dancer, so I want to write my essay about a trip to California that I took that just is a whole different story about a different experience."
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, "I want to write about frogs." I was talking to a first year the other day, I bumped into her and she said, "I wrote my essay about playing in the mud." I said, "I know, I remember it." And she framed her story around her emerging interest in archeology, and she said, "I just love the dirt." And I said, "And that sentence was interesting."
So Sherri had said, "Kids worry about are they telling the right story?", so Ronnie, when someone comes into your office and says, "Am I telling the right story?" what's your advice on that one?
Ronnie McKnight:
Lee, don't give me the hard questions. That's a tough question to answer. The essays that I love seem so effortless that it feels like the threshold is very low. It is just an introduction of who you are, and sometimes kids seemingly do that effortlessly. Those kids that sit down and in like 45 minutes they pound out the rollercoaster essay that just works on every level. The litmus test is that someone who knows you well reads it and they're like, "Ronnie, that is So you." You have to think of that sort of so you moment, and for some kids it is pretty effortless. And for others it's agonizing because you have to kind of like, "Who am I?" Sometimes they're sweet and sometimes they're funny and sometimes they're heroic, whatever it happens to be. But I say it knowing that for a lot of kids it's an absolute struggle, and to try to capture yourself is difficult. In 650 words, it feels very difficult.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well if I were diagramming that sentence, I would circle, "right," and say there's not a right story or a wrong story. It's your story and something that feels germane to you as a way of introducing yourself is worth sharing. And I would say stop pondering what's right. And the way this comes to me a lot is, "Well, what do you want to know?" And I say back, "I don't know. Tell me what you want me to know. Don't try and answer the question from the perspective of the reader." What does the reader want to know? The reader wants to know whatever you're typing that gives me some way of understanding.
And I wonder too, Ronnie, I've known you a long time, you and I are both very verbal, we read, we like books, we like to talk. But there are a lot of people who are more science oriented, and I'm wondering for the STEM-y part of our group, if they come to the essay and think, "This is not my place to shine."?
Sherri Geller:
Some of them also did a really cool lab experiment they talk about, they had this great summer opportunity, or I actually read an essay a few years ago about a student who had a summer internship and had never thought about scientists as people who could be out in a pond. He always thought of science as something you do with a white lab coat on that needed an opportunity to learn from someone about environmental science. And it just kind of changed his thinking about science, and that was a pretty cool topic.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, yeah.
Ronnie McKnight:
All you have to do is pick something that you really love, and that sort of excitement always seems to shine through. The other thing, it just struck me that I'm going to call the rollercoaster essay like an action-packed exciting essay. And I'm going to call the playing in the mud, I imagine that essay being about a little kid playing in the mud and then talking about how that grew up into her young adult interest. For all of us who have read literally thousands of essays, thinking about the ones that we still remember years and years later, for every exciting essay that I remember, I also remember just as many of those really kind of human moments with family and with their pet and things that are completely mundane that were just as memorable because they were lovely and they were lovely introductions about who you were. I think sometimes we feel as though it needs to be heroic or exciting or dramatic, but in reality it's such a wide spectrum of stories because humans are that wide spectrum.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Sherri Geller:
I think also related to two things to something that you both alluded to, I think students sometimes overthink or try to guess who their audience is going to be. When you said the "what do I want to hear?"…they have this image of what an admissions counselor looks like. And despite the admissions counselors that we bring in all the time to meet with our students, they have this image probably from a movie that the person is going to have a particular look or interest. And I tell them, "You don't know if you're going to write a essay about meeting a sports hero and they're also going to be a sports fan, or you're going to write an essay about meeting a sports star, and they're going to say, 'I really hate sports, but let me get to know this kid.' Or the person is a theater kid, and so are you that maybe you'll find a point of empathy or common interest in your reader, or maybe not." But it's the reader's job as a professional to have that separation, but the students are often thinking about, when I mention about is it the right topic, is it the topic that the admissions counselor is going to get excited about? And of course they can't know that.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. And the thing that surprises people, friends when they talk about my job and they're like, "So you read all these essays?" And I said, "It is interesting, and I've learned things from high school seniors." I remember one last year I was reading, the was writing about mushrooms, and she was a biology-oriented student, and mycology, which I had to look it up, was her area of focus. And I was like, "This kid is legit." This interest in mushrooms, in fungi more broadly, I learned a lot and I thought she's really smart and she's telling me something I didn't know. And I think to your point, Sherri, I don't need to the topic or understand the topic to appreciate its content and to be able to make the ... I mean the other way I would say an essay sits in this file is there's data, which I think most people think about grades and testing when they think about college admission, that data piece leads the parade, and the story or the voice is to me, equally important, especially when you work in a place like the one where I am where most of the people have the data that tells me they could do the work.
And the art of my job is less about being an accountant running a bunch of numbers, and more about the shaping of a community based on the narratives that pop out of a file. And I think to the students who are kind of starting to think about this part of their file, give it some thought. The way you put a spotlight on something, you don't have to be gimmicky, you have to represent yourself. Am my wordsmithing too much or does that distinction make sense Ronnie?
Ronnie McKnight:
I agree.
Lee Coffin:
You agree? He says, "I agree. I agree."
Ronnie McKnight:
Yes, Lee.
Lee Coffin:
Okay. So let's just be nitty-gritty for a sec. So the writing lives in the personal statements. So whether you're on the Common app, the Coalition app, a QuestBridge app, kind of the institutional app, you're applying to Georgetown and they have their own, you have to write a long form 500, 600, 700 word piece, and then there's often supplements that go along with it. So let's guide our listeners through the distinction between those two things. So the long form essay that someone's writing, which I think gets all of the angst-y attention, one piece of writing goes everywhere, right? What's your advice to your seniors about the long form?
Ronnie McKnight:
I want to first reiterate the joy of the Common application. Not that I don't find joy in school specific applications, but if a school has signed onto the Common app, first and foremost, this is a stressful process. And write your personal statement loaded into the Common app. And unless you find some egregious typo, let it live there as you apply to your reasonable list of schools. In a stressful process, sometimes that stress bubbles out into like, "Maybe I should change my essay according to the school," and I don't like that sort of added anxiety in a process that's already very anxious. And so write your long essay, load it into your personal statement and send it to all of the schools because that's the whole point of the Common application.
In addition to that personal introduction that you've given to all of those schools, schools will often ask supplemental questions that are specific to them. Those vary widely. They tend to be in kind of broad categories. Sometimes a common question is about an activity that you've been involved in, and so it allows you to elaborate something that you've listed in your activities grid. Often it's a question about why are you interested in me? And so I'm a university or college, and I'd like to know how you found me and why you're interested in me.
And then the other questions are just additional questions about your interests and curiosities and experiences. And so everything from five words to describe you or the books that you've read or your top 10 list, whatever it happens to be, those are all just additional questions about getting to know you. And I think colleges, Lee, you can tell us, you guys must brainstorm every spring like, "What good question can we ask these kids to get some good, interesting sort of insights into them?" And we see that. We understand that colleges are trying to pry into their lives and get more information that they wouldn't get out of just the Common application. And sometimes schools have none, and sometimes schools have 20 of those sort of additional questions.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. We have three. We have the "Why Dartmouth?" question that you alluded to. We have an identity-themed question about what perspective do you bring to this campus we're trying to build? And then we have a question where we said, "Of these six, pick one and answer it in 250 words." So we'll come back to word count in a sec. But to your question about interesting questions, one of them this year is, "Celebrate your nerdy side." Wherever that goes, it goes.
Ronnie McKnight:
"Let me tell you about my love of mushrooms."
Lee Coffin:
Mushrooms, exactly. We had one a couple years ago is, "What makes you happy?" And someone said to me, "That's such a simple question." I said, "It's a very complicated question, but it puts a spotlight on happiness as a quality we are trying to amplify as we go through this admission process."
Sherri Geller:
I think what's key there also is really following what the question is, following the directions, but really answering the question because what makes you happy, the answer couldn't be mushrooms, because I already wrote this other essay on mushrooms and trying to reconfigure and make it fit. "Why do I want to go to this school? Oh, because I heard there's some mushrooms out in the neighboring field." I think students sometimes try in the interest of stress and speed and other things to make things fit. But when I read answers to supplemental questions especially, I am really looking to make sure that they've answered the question specifically to what that school has asked, rather than writing a generic thing or a common thing, if you will, they're trying to make fit.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Yeah. I would frame these two things as you've got the Common app as the universal writing prompts, so everyone gets the same thing and you've told your story and there it is. And then the supp is the local version. So for the 900-plus of us on the Common app, it's a way of saying, "Here's some questions tailored more specifically to this campus and the class we're trying to build."
Years ago I worked at Connecticut College and on our supplement there was a question about the honor code because it was a college governed by a self-governing honor code, and we asked students to reflect on what that honor code represented as they imagined their undergraduate experience. And that was a really Conn-specific question that gave us insight into that conceptual framing of the campus. And so these questions can do lots of different things. Are there any topics that are off limits?
Sherri Geller:
There used to be, what was it, the five Ds? I don't know if I can remember them.
Lee Coffin:
The five Ds.
Sherri Geller:
But death, divorce, destruction. Ronnie, do you remember them?
Lee Coffin:
Drugs?
Sherri Geller:
Drugs, probably. Yeah, we could probably come up with some other Ds also. Some of those topics actually can be okay, but I think to think of those categories in general that are really, really personal, might not belong in a college essay, and also something that's maybe a little too provocative. I read an essay when I worked in college admissions about a student's first relationship, let's say, and I really didn't need to know too much detail about that student's first relationship. I also remember reading one about a public bathroom that I really didn't need to read about it. And maybe there was some good content in them about growth experiences and overcoming challenges and things like that, but the content and topics themselves were really not appropriate for an adult audience making a decision about college admission.
Ronnie McKnight:
I want to tell a really quick story, and I'm looking at Charlotte because I know this is going to get edited out of the podcast because it's going to be too long. But I literally used it last week, and as I told it to the student, I wondered if it was inappropriate, and now I'm going to tell it to the entire nation.
Lee Coffin:
To the world, yeah, yeah.
Ronnie McKnight:
To the entire world. So really fast, years and years ago, unfortunately too many years ago when I was in my 20s, my best friend was on a dating app and she had this series of first dates, many of which ended in disaster. They were just disastrous. But on one of her first dates, she had matched with a person. They had met in public. They were at a restaurant and within about 15 or 20 minutes, their initial first meeting, the guy lifts his T-shirt up and says something along the lines of ... so he has a little bit of a belly… he says something along the lines of, "If this is going to work, you have to accept me for who I am."
So I use that story with one of my advisees because let's unpack that really fast. So my friend, beautiful woman, but her expectations were reasonable. Most men in America don't have six-pack abs. It wasn't a deal breaker that he might've had a bit of a beer gut, right? But what was so weird is in the first 15 minutes, they just met, they're in public, and he lifts his shirt to say, "If you can't accept me for who I am, then this is not going to work." Now what he said is true, we all have to accept people for their pros and cons. But in the very first introduction, you don't want to lift your shirt and show your belly. It's just weird. It's just inappropriate and way too much personal information about yourself in the introduction. You've just met. There's just no need to do that.
Lee Coffin:
With that in mind, I want to pivot to two topics that are in the news that connect back to storytelling. So the first is the Supreme Court. So in June, the Supreme Court ruled that the use of race in college admission was unconstitutional. So the ruling said, "The court expressly recognized the legitimacy of considering an applicant's skills, knowledge, or character related qualities that arise from 'experiences as an individual' that may or may not be associated with their racial identity." So as we go into this cycle where a student of color or from an underrepresented background may want to share their identity and its life experience, how does that play through an essay now Ronnie? How are you counseling students to use the writing prompt, short or long, to bring this really essential part of their identity into their storytelling?
Ronnie McKnight:
In many ways, I think you just answered it, Lee. I think it is often an essential part of your identity, and it has shaped many, not all, but certainly has shaped some of the experiences in your life. And I think that's fair to share. It's part of who you are. And I was in a session, we just came back from a professional conference, I was in a session, and I want to repeat something that someone said. Sometimes when we think about identity in America, it's often thought about as a struggle or as ... Because there are struggles, that's legitimate, but it can also be a celebration, right? There are beautiful things about your identity that are amazing and wonderful, and just as central to who you are and your experiences and the values that shape you.
And so relaying that to a college I think is completely fair. The college may not be able to ask you that, but you can absolutely share that sort of background and experience. Colleges collect a variety of interests and people and backgrounds and love diversity in every way, and so explaining to a college your specific background, regardless of what that happens to be, is completely fair. That's part of your introduction of who you are.
Lee Coffin:
Yep.
Sherri Geller:
Well, this topic has been in the news a lot, but for many years before the Supreme Court decision, there was a question on the Common app. One of the prompts said, "Some students have a background identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful, they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story." So in a lot of ways, this isn't a new prompt or a new idea. It's possible that how colleges may use it might take a turn, and Lee, maybe you could comment on that, but the idea of sharing something about identity and background is not a new one. That question's been on here for quite some time.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, I think that's right. And to me, it goes back to the Quaker saying, "Let your life speak," and you alone know what your life is saying. So how do you share that? And I think in light of the new legal guidelines, this is your lane to introduce yourself in whatever way feels relevant to the way we get to meet you.
Connected to that also in the news, there's been a lot of conversation about artificial intelligence. And this is a topic I think we're going to come back to in a future episode, but since students are writing essays right now, I'm wondering about AI as a writing tool. And in early September, the New York Times had two stories pondering artificial intelligence and its application in the college application process. And the article said, "Some students say they're using the tools to suggest personal essay topics or help structure their writing. Others are prompting the AI tools to generate rough drafts for their application essays or to edit their pieces." College counselors, is this a good idea?
Sherri Geller:
I was at the same professional conference that Ronnie alluded to before from the National Association for College Admission Counseling, and I sat in on an excellent and thought-provoking session about the use of AI. It made me think a little bit about when in the '80s, let's say, or '90s, students started using word processors and all of a sudden it was spell check and it was, "Oh, no, no, no. You have to look up the word in the dictionary and you have to check your own spelling. You can't let the computer do it for you." And now of course, that's part of what's acceptable and even very appropriate and expected behavior. And I felt in listening to the session that that's where we're going to get with AI. The speakers talked about how even right now if you're typing an email in a lot of systems, the computer will suggest how you want to finish the email, and that's a form of using AI that we don't really think about because that's become more natural.
The part that gets me is that at the end of the Common application and many other applications, there's a question that says to students, "Is this your own work?" And right now, I think some of the ways that we think about AI lend themselves to not truly being the student's own work, and that gives me some hesitancy. So that's kind of where I sit on it.
There was an interesting question that one of the presenters posed of, "We think about having the computer start. What about if a student wrote an essay that was 800 words and said to AI, 'Hey, cut this to 650,' so it's still the student's original words. What about doing it that way?" The good news is the person actually tried it and the computer couldn't do it or couldn't do it well, so maybe for now there's some hope, but there are just so many directions in which this new technology is going to go. I just keep coming back to the student's voice, the authenticity of both the writing and the language and the content, and feel that probably we're not yet at a point where students should be relying on it.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, what's my southern writer friend say?
Ronnie McKnight:
Well, it's an amazing tool. And to pretend as though they're not going to use it is naive, it's spell-check as Sherri just said. And so the examples that you gave, if it's a brainstorming tool or if it's to help you proof, I don't actually have any problems with that. The problem is that we're asking for a personal introduction to you and AI is only as good as the content that you give it. And unless you've written your autobiography and can feed it to AI and then say, "Hey, read about me and then give me a great 650 word essay about this amazing person who I am," it's just not going to be the introduction of who you are because you're just not going to be able to give it enough information to produce an essay that's an introduction to you. And if you are, then just write your essay. If you're that talented, just write 650 words about yourself.
So you don't want AI to generate an essay about someone other than you. You want it to be your introduction, and out of fairness to who you are and your lived experiences, you need to write it, right? And if you use AI as a brainstorming tool or as an editing tool, fine. But it's a disservice to yourself if you allow AI to create a person that you're not.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, and I think back to the question I posed why do we ask for writing? I mean it's a form of introduction, but it's also a proof point as students come into a college environment that you're able to write. That's a skill that humans have had and need to continue to develop and celebrate, and it's that talent of putting your thoughts into words to me remains something essential. And I wrote in my journal the other day, because I keep a journal of course. I wrote, "I don't know that I want to outsource the way I think and write to a computer." But then I think maybe I'm just like all of us, I'm a refugee from the 20th century, and maybe I just need to rethink the tool. And I think the spell-check example is a really thoughtful one that hadn't occurred to me before, and I think this is right.
All right, so all in summary as we wrap this episode, any final thoughts from either of you to our seniors or to parents as they're looking over the keyboard at kid who is doing something? Any final thoughts about how to navigate the art of narrative in college admission process?
Sherri Geller:
Something that comes up a lot for my students is they love that there's an open question about sharing an essay on the topic of your choice. And I have found that most essays are better when a student actually has a topic, whether they follow one of the prompts the Common app suggests, which is usually what I suggest they do, or if they want to do a topic of your choice, to actually write out a prompt for themselves of what is the topic, those tend to make stronger essays. Several years ago, the Common app eliminated that question for a few years, and I thought overall the essays were better because the prompts give you some structure and framing for where are you going and help you set it up.
Ronnie McKnight:
If you're a senior, then you're already on a timeline with deadlines that will approach in November and January, etc. But if you happen to be listening and you are either the parent of a junior or a junior or younger, one of my favorite things for students to do isn't necessarily to spend their entire summer between their junior and senior year working on their applications. They can if they'd like to get a head start. But I think it's really wise at the very end of your junior year to kind of read those prompts that Sherri just mentioned and kind of start the brainstorming process and then give yourself over the summer, when you're not in class probably and when you have some downtime, you lay in bed at night before you fall asleep and you ponder those big questions that we're asking of you. Who are you? What is important to you? What are the values that have shaped you?
And not do that under the time crunch of an application that's about to be due in a week, but to give yourself weeks, months to kind of ponder that. And then when you have some good ideas, then sit down at a keyboard and actually type. Another litmus test is that if I'm attempting to tell you a story and I pound it out in an hour, that's a good sign as opposed to I'm staring at my computer and I'd like to tell you this story and I really don't have that much to say. And so giving yourself that sort of time to ponder and wonder and think is the gift of the summer between your junior and senior year.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Sherri Geller:
Yeah, and I thought of one more thing as you were saying that, and that's that the essay is only 650 words. I think sometimes students hear about this college essay and they think they're writing a dissertation. And most high school students, perhaps all high school students that are in the application process, have written a page and a half paper before. And although it takes on a different level of importance, the questions and prompts are really not that difficult. They're things that 17 year olds could answer. And if they were given this as an assignment in an English class for an in-class essay and just told to sit and write it without the pressures of, "Is this going to affect my college admission decision?", I think they really wouldn't find it to be that hard. So to maybe think about the topics in that way of just, "If I had this prompt, what was the topic? What would I say?", and often that can lead to a really great college essay with a lot less stress.
Lee Coffin:
Well, as always, so fun to have the two of you on Admissions Beat again, I hope you'll come back in season five for some new topic I will imagine to keep the two of you chatting with me. Next week, we will return to this topic of storytelling in the admission process as we welcome author Emi Nietfeld to Admissions Beat for a conversation based on her book Acceptance and her reflections of storytelling as a homeless teenager in Minnesota who was looking to college as her safety space. Fascinating book, fascinating conversation. I hope you join us next week for that.
For now, this is Lee Coffin signing off from our 50th episode of Admission Beat. Thanks so much for listening. See you next week.