By Jacques Steinberg
High school counselors and admissions officers are always reaching for analogies to convey to students (and parents) the purpose of a college admissions essay. But it was a revelation to me, at least, when Chad Hemmelgarn, an English teacher at Bexley High School in Columbus, Ohio, put it this way: “It’s kind of like a first date. You’re telling us the stuff that makes you special.”
Mr. Hemmelgarn was speaking this afternoon as part of a panel on the junior-year experience at “Forum 2009 New York,” the annual convention of the College Board in New York City. Over the next two and a half days, hundreds of counselors and admissions officers will attend dozens of sessions on all aspects of the high school and college-admissions experience.
In a series of posts on The Choice, several Times colleagues and I will attempt to pass on tips and perspectives from those meetings that we think will be useful to applicants and parents, as well as counselors and admissions officers.
For example, at the panel on the junior year, Mr. Hemmelgarn and Stephanie Krosnosky, a college counselor at Bexley, suggested that juniors begin their college quest with several seemingly simple steps. These included using a single sheet of paper to collect the dates of all the standardized tests they intended to take, which they would then post on the family refrigerator so that “mom and dad” would make sure they didn’t oversleep that day.
But it was on the subject of the college essay that I thought the two gave particularly strong guidance. For example, Mr. Hemmelgarn requires his juniors to write 25 sample college essays — using actual questions from the University of Chicago and Ohio State, among others — in 25 weeks, at home. His mantra? “Practice makes better.”
Mr. Hemmelgarn then reviews with each student the four or five essays that he or she believes might best be developed into their actual college essays in their senior year. For readers of The Choice who are juniors (or their parents), I see no reason why the same exercise couldn’t be repeated by any junior on one’s own — with a counselor or favorite teacher then enlisted as a sounding board.
Mr. Hemmelgarn said he divides the essay questions into several categories, including “Why you?” and “Why us?”
As an example of “Why you?” — or why might a particular college want you — he referred to an actual prompt on the Common Application that directs an applicant to “evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.”
Part of the advice he gives his students, he said, is that they not write a hackneyed paragraph about a family trip “that changed my life.” Unless, of course, it did.
One counselor in the audience immediately raised her hand to say that one of her high school students was in the process of writing just such an essay — about learning Flamenco in Spain — that promised to be unique and memorable. The boy’s theme (and yes, it was a boy)? “When am I ever going to do that again?”
Mr. Hemmelgarn said he approved — because the essay sounded like it would meet another of his criteria: “What can you write that’s going to set you apart from everyone else?”
As an example of the question of “Why us?” Mr. Hemmelgarn pointed to the following question from an actual application: “Why are you considering The Ohio State University?”
In counseling his students on how to approach their answer, Mr. Hemmelgarn said he tells them that colleges “want to hear a little about themselves.” And that, he said, usually requires some research.
One other tip from Mr. Hemmelgarn: When an applicant is asked a question like, “Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you,” as appears on the Common Application, what the college is really seeking is something about you (as in how you are similar to the person, or different.)
“The college is not accepting grandpa,” Mr. Hemmelgarn said. “They want to know what qualities of grandpa do you have.”
