Collegewise

What Do Those Essay Prompts Really Mean?

College essay prompts often reflect the personality of the school and its students.  That’s why, if a certain essay topic inspires you to write a 10-page thesis, well, you might have found your perfect match.  Below are five actual essay questions from this year’s applications, along with some insight into how these questions reflect the schools and their students.  The names of the colleges who posed the questions have been withheld..

Essay topic #1
“You have just completed your 300-page autobiography. Please submit page 217.”
Did you hatch a 10 year plan on your 10th birthday that detailed your academic rise, summer internships, and college plans? Then this school might just fit the bill for you. The college that poses this essay question seeks out candidates who have definite plans for the future. These are highly motivated students who want to use this university’s resources to attain those goals that they probably set at age ten.

University of Wisconsin at Madison

Madison, Wisconsin

I’m a Michigan native.  I have what some may call a “Fargo-esque accent.”  I know the University of Michigan fight song by heart, even though none of my family members attended that institution.  And I was bred to instantly dislike anyone from the other Big Ten conference schools.  So my fellow Michiganders may not appreciate this glowing review of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Calvin College

Grand Rapids, Michigan

You could call us Collegewisers pack rats for college paraphernalia.  We jones for any trinkets emblazoned with college logos—pennants, hats, clocks, trash cans…even shot glasses!  So when a representative from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan visited our Irvine, California office the other day bearing gifts of sleekly designed "Calvin College" coffee mugs, it was love at first sight.  And after an hour of conversation, we were officially smitten with this small Christian college in the mid-west.

Texas Christian University

Fort Worth, TX

Two words: Horned Frogs.

There are some colleges where the mascot is just the poor sap in a smelly suit. But for others, the mascot is a central part of the school's identity. Take the TCU (Texas Christian University) "Horned Frog," for example.

From the stadium chants of "Go Horned Frogs!" to the "Frog Family Homecoming" for alumni in October, TCU's Horned Frog is a part of their campus culture. Nowhere is this more apparent than at home football games, a staple of TCU's student spirit. In fact, all TCU students recently received a letter from second-year Chancellor Victor J. Boschini welcoming them back to school and inviting them to the Horned Frogs' nationally televised opening home football game against Northwestern. It probably wasn't hard to garner support. The Frogs were coming off an 11-win season and a top 25 post-season ranking in 2003.

He signed off his letter with the following: "So be prepared to study like your future depends on it (it does!), and play safely - for the same reason. Indeed, that's what Horned Frogs do!"

University of Vermont

Burlington, Vermont

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a city person. I’m perfectly at home jockeying for position on a crowded subway and falling asleep to the din of honking taxi cabs. But underneath my cosmopolitan exterior, there lies a wilderness junkie. The thought of trekking through knee high snow drifts, clutching a hot chocolate, and planning the weekend’s ski excursion makes me feel all warm inside. And that’s why I know I would have loved attending the University of Vermont, where, yes, the winters are snowy and cold, but the people love the outdoors just as much as I (secretly) do.

Start Out on The Right Foot...

All the admissions officers we've met are good people who would much rather admit than deny kids. But during the pressures of admissions season, some applicants' actions can drive the admissions folks crazy. Here are five tips to make sure you don't inadvertently start out on the wrong foot.

1.  Follow directions.
You can avoid most common mistakes in college applications by reading and following the directions.  For example, if a college asks you to list your activities in the space provided, and you send them a resume instead, you just showed them that you couldn’t follow a pretty simple direction.  So read the directions and do exactly as they instruct you to do. No matter how much you think you might be helping your case by doing things your own way, you’re always better served following directions.

2.  Make sure you read the admissions websites carefully.
When is the application deadline?  How many letters of recommendation are required?  When is the last date you can take the SAT?  You can find answers to these and many other common questions from applicants on the admissions websites.

Just Being Yourself Can Help You Get Into College

I’m not Arun Ponnusamy, the former Caltech and University of Chicago Assistant Director of Admissions and the usual contributor to this “Inside the Admissions Office” column. I’ve never even worked in an admissions office. But I think I can teach you a little something about college admissions by sharing some things Arun might not tell you.

Arun wears a lot of pink. I don’t know many men who can wear pink and really pull it off, but I swear Arun can do it. He’s actually got what some people might call a pretty well developed fashion sense, which is interesting considering he was raised in rural Ohio. Think small town. Think farms. Think of a situation where his dad wasn’t a surgeon in his small town. His father was the surgeon in his small town. To watch Arun coolly navigate the hippest areas of Los Angeles, all decked out in his silky pink shirts, hip-hop music playing in his grey Scion, you’d never know that instead of a paper route or a job in retail, his part time job during high school summers was shoveling cow poop.