Part 4: Importance of the college-admissions essay

Originally published Jan. 11, 2009.

High school senior Kirby Dixon took a deep breath and began reading to her guidance counselor the essay she had pondered all summer - the one she hoped would help get her into the college of her dreams.

As I looked around, I observed the vast array of students in the lunch room. There was a table for the drama kids, the football players, the African American kids, the divas, the out-there kids, the so-called losers, and the kids who did not seem to fit in anywhere.

My observation caused me to ask myself the question, Where do I fit in?

Kirby, 18, had chosen to tackle one of her biggest challenges at William Penn Charter School in East Falls. Would she limit her circle of friends to African American students like herself? Or would the track-team high and long jumper hang with the athletes? Or, with an engineering interest, would she befriend the geeks?

Her counselor, Erin Hughes, loved what she had written.

"This is a great introduction," she told Kirby. "It has a clever opening. Your thesis is clear, and you also raise this interesting question."

But would it intrigue Penn, Georgetown, or any one of the eight other schools to which Kirby was applying?

To many students, the essay is among the most terrifying aspects of the admissions process, and growing numbers of students are paying consultants hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars for help to conceive and polish it.

Some students, such as Kirby, can get essay coaching at school. Those at less affluent schools may get little or none.

So how important is the essay, anyway?

"I sort of think of the essay as the deal breaker," said Hughes, a former English teacher. "All things being equal . . . the writing sample can make or break you."

Some college admissions officials downplay its importance, especially given the vastly different levels of support in preparing it.

About 40 percent of four-year colleges require an essay.

"It's of dubious value in the process of assessment," said Rick DiFeliciantonio, an admissions executive at Ursinus College in Collegeville. "Some kids work on it for six weeks in a highly structured English class. Other kids send in an unedited piece.

"It's just not fair."

The essay, he said, may be of use to highly selective schools looking for fine distinctions among competitive candidates, but "90 percent of schools just aren't that selective."

Some schools, including the University of Pennsylvania, require students to sign statements that their essays and other admissions materials are their own work.

If an essay seems too polished, colleges may compare it with the student's writing portion of the SAT and grades in English.

"Fortunately," said Lou Hirsh, director of admissions at the University of Delaware, "there are ways of cross-checking."

Since the 1870s, when English composition supplanted Latin at selective colleges, the essay has gained in importance.

While trailing grades, strength of curriculum and test scores, the essay was given "considerable importance" by 28 percent of colleges surveyed by the National Association for College Admission Counseling in 2006. That was double the 14 percent in 1993.

Private colleges and smaller schools value the essay more than larger, public schools do. More than half of the most selective colleges in the survey ranked it of "considerable importance."

"It's only through the essay that I can flesh out a three-dimensional character," said Nancy Thaler, senior assistant director of admissions at Bryn Mawr College.

"I will remember an essay where the student tells a story about herself."

Of 19 Philadelphia-area universities that responded to an Inquirer survey, nine require essays of all students, and three others mandate them for certain programs, including Pennsylvania State University for its honors college.

John Haller, associate provost for enrollment management at St. Joseph's University, said, "We want to understand how students have made an impact in their high school and communities and how they would impact [our] community inside and outside of the classroom."

La Salle University gives the essay a twist by also asking parents to write about their children. One father began, "He's a good kid, but he's lazy," then argued how La Salle's structure would benefit his son - and the school admitted him.

Said James Plunkett, executive director of admissions: "No one knows more about our prospective students than our prospective students' parents."

Admissions officers don't want to see cliche topics or "McEssays," as some experts call them: How we won the big game or how my trip to another country broadened my horizons. The essay should be something only that student could write.

"Own your story," advises Alex Weiner of CollegeWise, a consulting company in White Plains, N.Y.

Several of the students The Inquirer is following through the admissions process are trying to do just that.

Ali Derassouyan, a senior at private Nazareth Academy in Northeast Philadelphia, tied her relatives' bouts with illnesses to her interest in becoming a physician.

"Ever since experiencing the tough times my family members went through, I feel compelled to become part of the medical field."

Samuel Gorelick, a Cherry Hill High School West senior, compared his zest for new challenges - editing the school paper, working in a lab, singing Brahms' German Requiem - to Mexican food.

"I would rather have everything in my life be different and unique, just like a bowl of green, orange and yellow salsa."

Sitting by Hughes in her counseling office in November, Kirby said she worried that her piece was too long.

"If it reads easily and it flows, you're better to leave it," Hughes said, encouraging her to continue reading.

I feel the most pressure trying to fit in with those who look most like me. . . .

At the African American table, sometimes I have to act differently, speak differently, and even be interested in different subject matters than I would at others' tables.

Is this not similar to what a chameleon does all of the time?

Although originally sitting at the African American table made me somewhat uncomfortable, I've come to realize the part of me that identifies with the color of my skin and my ethnic background was not lost.

Hughes stopped her.

"This is the one place where I thought it needed work," she said. "Do you specifically sit at the African American table, or do you float?"

"I float," Kirby answered.

"In floating, you are true to yourself," Hughes said. "It's hard to float gracefully. Some people can't do it. That's really a skill."

Kirby entered Penn Charter in seventh grade after attending Meadowbrook, a small private school in Jenkintown.

It was hard at first to negotiate the larger cliques at Penn Charter, but she has made good friends with various groups, including black and nonblack students.

The track-team captain with a 3.75 grade point average took nearly two weeks to write and polish her essay. What she has found more difficult are the supplemental essays from some schools that ask: Why Georgetown? or Why Tufts?

"I've had in the past two weeks two breakdowns" - including a good cry, she said. "It's a lot on top of all my schoolwork."

But she learned that she was accepted on early action to Spelman College, a historically black women's college in Atlanta, and Albright College in Reading, lifting her optimism. She also is applying to Penn State, Penn, Princeton, Tufts, Brandeis, George Washington, Georgetown and Harvard, with thoughts of going into medicine, architecture, art direction or engineering.

Several weeks later, Kirby had finished her essay and, having reflected on her conversation with Hughes, added a phrase about floating.

Floating gracefully among tables, I have been able to easily communicate with a variety of people, a skill that other students often struggle with. . . .

Every day as I look at this separation of groups in our cafeteria, despite my initial hesitations, I have come to realize that my chameleonlike personality is ultimately advantageous.

Although it may seem as though the football player has nothing in common with the "drama nerd," or the so-called "geek" has nothing in common with the "it" girls, I have discovered that they all, we all, have a great deal more in common with each other than not and that our differences only serve to enrich us individually and collectively.

1. How we won the big game.

2. How community service taught me the importance of helping others.

3. How I overcame hardship, such as a death in the family or divorce.

4. How my trip to another country broadened my horizons.

5. How something taught me the importance of something in life.

SOURCE: Alex Weiner of CollegeWise, a consulting company in White Plains, N.Y.

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For video of the students, their essays, and previous articles in this series, and to join an online chat with the University of Pennsylvania's admissions' dean at noon tomorrow, go to http://go.philly.com/gettinginEndText