Slashdot Mirror
MIT Axes the 500-Word Application Essay
netbuzz writes "No longer will those applying to MIT have to write the storied 'long' essay — long as in 500 words. 'We wanted to remove that larger-than-life quality to that one essay and take away a bit of the high-stakes nature of that one piece,' says the dean of admissions. Not everyone agrees with the bow to brevity, including a current MIT student who penned a scathing critique in The Tech and offers up her own essay as an example of what the form can provide to both MIT and the applicant." [125 words, including these.]
It's not like you're going for a liberal arts degree there - grades and standardized testing scores are what matter at MIT. What you wrote in an essay's hardly going to influence what you do in a technical environment like that.
Save that space for things that are important - research abstracts, statements of interest, letters of recommendation, etc. Don't bitch around with the admission committees' time with a stupid creative essay.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
Because real applications should be measured in characters
Has anyone considered that requiring a minimum length for an essay does not improve the quality of the essay? If a student can't create a convincing and well thought out essay without such a restriction, then I would think that it shows a flaw in their writing ability.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
"Frist post!"
You can write something meaningful in 250 words, but it takes a lot more skill than doing it in 500 words. Every word has to count for so much more. Give me a 500 word essay to write any day, because it is so much more arduous than writing a 250 word essay.
I'm ambivalent. On one side, it's true that this essay can show a lot about yourself, maybe even give insight to both the evaluators and to yourself. It's also true that 500 words is actually rather short in and of itself. I think it's enough to write something if you're succinct and after a lot of rewriting and synthesizing.
On the other hand, however, what they're trying to do here is to downplay the whole thing a bit. It might have been a nice tradition, but as a student who stresses a lot over somewhat negligible things, I can honestly say that doing this 500-word essay would be nerve-wracking. By shortening it and spacing it out in multiple bursts, you reduce overall tension. I can't tell how many times my stress has penalized my grades; maybe the MIT has realized that they could've been losing potential geniuses over simple things like that (I'm growing things out of proportions I know, but small things do stack up eventually) and they're trying to correct the course.
In any case, I just hope this doesn't announce a lowering of the MIT's standards.
Word count was NEVER indicative of writing skill.
I have seen 15 page reports that were an eyesore to read through. On the other hand, some of the most touching and enjoyable writing I've had the pleasure of coming across were only a few words.
With that said, this change could be looked at from two angles. The first is more acute, in that essays will now be judged on a much higher level than previous ones. MIT was always known as the creative school, and its students are largely responsible for that title. Therefore, they should be able to meet this challenge, which really isn't any more challenging than a longer essay would be.
Conversely, it can be argued that MIT is lowering their standards to appeal to a more "fleeting" generation. "The kids" now have Twitter, and AIM is pretty well-saturated in their environment. 500 words in a world where txtspk (that's textspeak to you old farts :-p) rules the roost? Are you mad? Think of the children!!!
Either way, if a prospective student really wants to get into MIT (or any other prestigious institution, for that matter), they will find the way. This is hardly the deterrant to that.
By the way, 500 words is HARDLY lengthy. For some essays, that's a warmup. For some research reports, that's the introductory statement. Talk to me when we're at six page minimums, mmkay?
... axe me about my high school diploma.
How hard is it to get into a US university program as an international student, say for Computer science or Astronomy master/PhD?
(aside the paying-a-lot part, and English test)
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
The world I come from is full of oak trees and rain, warm cats on cold nights, and raucous college parties across the street. The sky over my home matches the grey in my eyes; the barbed wire fence around Lake Sequoyah is commemorated eternally by the disfiguration of my left hip.
Am i the only one who puked at that?
Good night. I just read the example essay and I think I puked in my mouth a little bit there. So much banal "I love life and I'm nerdy, tee hee" drivel, piled layer upon layer, with no coherent structure. Why is this student proud of it at all?
If anything, I would say it justifies the decision to remove the essay quite well.
It's ironic that in her essay Ms. Bayley states, "As fuzzy logic becomes more and more obsolete (in humans, at least), boolean values have come to rule all. Precision, accuracy, the Styrofoam cup holding your coffee, and the microprocessor in your toaster oven are all a product of infinitely many zeros and ones, a concept I find both irresistibly ridiculous and intriguing." An essay, used as a factor in deciding admissions, is quite 'fuzzy' when compared to grades and SAT scores.
As for the essay itself, meh. It's not all that bad, but the wit sounded a bit forced and also a little too self-aware. I also get the feeling that she read and was influenced by the infamous I have not yet gone to college essay.
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
Per tradition, I carefully avoided reading the fine article. And then you come along and toss that nauseous paragraph at me anyway.
Application denied!
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
It wasn't creative writing, it was about what you wanted to do with your life, and how MIT might help.
And no, the numbers are not all that matter. The Institute is trying to turn out better rounded alums
than that, hence the numerous humanities and writing requirements.
Were that I say, pancakes?
I read that essay, and I can't see what would a better examle for removing the essay requirement than that essay itself.
Full of artificial, decorative use of language, presenting trivial details as meaningful by using way too many words to describe them, expressing unoriginal, standardized opinions in a supposedly creative way. It's bad enough when a journalist pads his writing with such nonsense, I certainly don't want to work with another engineer whose primary outstanding skill is writing of such garbage.
If I was asked to write an essay on such a topic, my answer would be:
I was a nigger.
Fortunately where I studied the school has a proper admission procedure -- that is, a sequence of tests with complex problems in varios areas of Math and Physics, interview, and if I remember correctly, minimal essay designed to test applicant's ability to express things. That was, of course, not in US.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
500 words? The whole essay, or just before the \0 character?
Oh wait...
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Atleast they're leaving something left besides SAT scores and GPA. I can see people asking for all subjective material removed from applications. Then it would come down to pure SAT scores and GPAs. Now highschools are going to have to be more focused on improving their ranking compared to some other school. Additionally, the old adages of schools looking for well rounded applicants would head out the window.
{rant} /. poster puts more effort into their 'All your bases belong...' comments than some engineers put into their documentation.
As a side note since we're on the topic of removing some form of written material, I'm sick of working with engineers who write procedures, functional specs, test plans, white papers that are as if they never even bothered to read it over after writing it. I bet the average
I've even worked with consultants who charged us $350k for a datacenter design; and while technically solid, the quality of the writing was on par with my 10year old and was about 2 steps away from the short hand notation one might use in an email, SMS or tweet.
{/rant}
Here's what the writer said. Note that she got into MIT.
"I still feel that it's one of the most creative, introspective, and thoughtful pieces I have ever written, and I sure couldn't have done it in 250 words."
WTF.
my neighbor's dog gave me a hatred of anything smaller than a mailbox that can bark,
If I can eat what you call a dog at one sitting, it isn't a dog.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
and all I can say is I believe this is a terrible idea. With most of the top tier schools in the nation getting upwards of 20k applications for roughly 1500~ spots in most cases, I don't see how making the application less unique is a good idea. You can hardly say anything in 250 words, let alone something of substance.
If places like MIT only looked at grades and test scores, they'd have cut off points to ridiculous levels or make the application process even more of a shot in the dark.
Although, this change does further my theory on the current college admissions system: a bottle of scotch and some darts.
seriously, 140 chars should b enouf 4 ne1!
Who did they axe about this?
Students face a distinctly un-level playing field when it comes to the admissions essay. I don't mean to be cynical, but I've noticed that these essays often read like professionally written short stories. If anything, schools need to impose greater transparency on the essay-writing process. Otherwise, those who come from families that can afford to spend inordinate amounts on outside "help" will have a significant and unfair advantage over everyone else.
My father told me that as a graduating high-school student (Canadian) back in the 50's, a voluntary test was provided to all students to test your science and mathematics prowess. The intention was to draw attention to your knowledge in order to get a scholarship or admittance into a Canadian or US ivy-league school.
Questions on the test included "How would you land on Earth's Moon?" The answer they were looking for was totally open since it was intended to test your real knowledge of math and science.
One could probably just answer .... build a rocket, once it leaves Earth, position it to fly to the moon and wait a few days for it to get there. But, you won't attract much attention.
My dad recalled that one year - and he knew the student quite well - had probably gone as far as to detail the amount of fuel (and type of) to be used, some basic designs of the shuttle, accounting for the Van Allen Radiation belts, etc etc - all with the calculus equations/work to go with. I believe the kids' dad was an engineer but it went above and beyond what other HS students would know and showed the depths of his knowledge + his grades.
This was without calculators. And without computers/Internet back then, he would probably have spent some serious time reading books on the side - in the sciences/math naturally, to have explained his answers in as much detail.
I don't know all the details but he apparently had one of the best scores on the tests and had been accepted at Harvard or MIT.
At the least, it beats explaining how a 477 word essay in part discussing your eye color, provided enough information about your academic abilities to be admitted to an engineering program at MIT.
Does anyone consider length an indicator of good writing? In many cases, no. Technical writing is already too long. As Mark Twain once said, "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."
"Me? Oui!" Mohammed Ali.
Anyone modding the parent insightful needs to go back to college, if they haven't been there in the first place.
What you wrote in an essay's hardly going to influence what you do in a technical environment like that.
I would assert that one's ability to craft a finely-tuned essay can directly correlate with how one writes code, expresses technical information, and pays attention to detail in the work that he or she does.
Save that space for things that are important - research abstracts, statements of interest, letters of recommendation, etc.
All easily bullshitted. Personally, I believe that any admissions counselor would be able to determine with a pretty good degree of accuracy how much effort a student would make in their collegiate studies based on how much effort they put into an essay. Letters of recommendation? Please. They are only what get your foot in the door, but otherwise have as much worth as the paper you wipe your ass with. Any college recruiting students with the hope that they eventually become successful academics whose works in turn inflate the reputation of the college should expect from them deep, well-reasoned thought, articulate with meaningful expression, and pay strong attention to detail. The best method to meter these characteristics is through creative essay.
Do you get extra points if your essay begins with the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night."?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
In my career of twenty years as a software developer I have yet to be asked to write an essay. The closest I have come to that is a few comment blocks is source code that nobody reads. I'm not saying that reading and writing skill aren't useful, just not applicable to my job.
If the scores are all the same, then it really doesn't matter who gets in. An essay is a shitty way to select engineering students and doesn't gauge anything other than their ability to make up 500 words of bullshit.
If there's any reason why these kinds of things tend to be bullshit, it has nothing to do with the fact that these are engineering students, or that engineers can't or shouldn't learn to use language as a tool (or, for that matter, that they shouldn't learn to bullshit).
The problem comes in the intersection of the purpose of the essay and the formation of the questions. It's an admissions essay, which means that whatever you're asked to say or whatever you're ostensibly saying, the purpose is to say whatever impresses admissions officers and get admitted to the college. Everybody knows this, and it reduces the ability of most people to speak authentically (and increases their tendency to bullshit). Particularly with essays that ask people to talk about themselves, because no matter how many distinct things there are about individual people, even smart people, there's an awful lot of sameness running through the human condition. Meanwhile, admissions officers are looking for distinction. Talk about cross-purposes.
Clare Bayley's suggestion "change the prompts, not the length" is some clear thinking. Prompt the applicant away from a self-focus and you untangle the better part of the tension I describe above, while still allowing applicants to reveal expressiveness and distinctive thinking.
Tweet, tweet.
Only that won't fly. I have to agree, at the end of the day, you need objective criteria (if only to stave off lawsuits).
However, I am saying, frankly, there really isn't anything all that wrong with the "because I said so" school of thought.
Picking a good candidate for for a school or a job or whatever, is a lot like porn or literature - I can't tell you, a priori, what "it" is, but I can tell you when I see it.
In my personal life, I am a cs major, and I have been married to a psychologist for many years. She tests children for special learning needs. Since we both work at home, I often see fleeting glimpses of her clients, and make snap judgments about them. Later, I'll say "there is something not quite right about that kid", or "you had a gifted one today, right?".
I am also not shy about my observations of "civilians" in general situations.
My wife is not too happy about my opinionated views, but, she does admit I am "always right". She is genuinely befuddled about this ability of mine, and I admit it is not of any commercial use, but it serves me well. So, I guess the only practical use would be to have a panel of judges to pick, based on "because". If you had a majority rules, and did longitudinal studies on picks, you could eventually weed out the "bad" judges... But I am just rambling now.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I went to MIT back in the late 70s early '80s and got a BSEE. One of the instructors in course 6 was well known for his opinion that engineering was too limited in scope and that in order to understand how to be useful in the world, students needed a much stronger liberal arts background. He argued for a 6-year undergrad program, the first 2 years of which were to be essentially non-technical.
At the time I thought I was some smart kid. Now I am in my 50s and I agree with him 100%. Honestly, the technical stuff was easy, and the people who really made an impact understood the human and emotional dimensions alongside the technical. Engineers dismiss this, and I believe they are poorer for it.
The little known fact is that the 500 word essay has been replaced by the much smaller and more efficient 100 word essay- in the spirit of Moore's Law.
As compared to a 500 word essay that you probably wrote with outside assistance?
Arguably, the ability to seek good outside assistance says as much about your likelihood of success in a University context as any other ability you might have.
The problem with subjective examinations is that they depend on the mindset of the marker, so you could well be marked down if they're having a bad day, or up if they're feeling generous. This is the very definition of unfair.
If you depend entirely on standardized metrics, you're also going to be unfair: your metrics won't correlate perfectly and perhaps not even well with what you're trying to measure (particularly intelligence, the measure of which is itself somewhat subjective). And even to the extent they do, at some point, they will fail to distinguish between applicants, at which point you're back to using subjective or random criteria. And this is to say nothing about those with the resources to game any known system of metrics.
This doesn't mean that standardized metrics have no merit; there's a reason why higher education continues to use them even though everyone knows they have real limits. There's also a reason why there tends to a point in the process for subjective human judgments: it offers a chance to make distinctions where the metrics can't, it offers a chance for amelioration the the metrics may have blind spots, and finally, since at the end of the day it's pretty much unavoidable there will be some subjective and potentially unfair element, you may as well try to make the subjective part of the decision as refined and plain as possible.
Tweet, tweet.
Suddenly I understand why so much sci fi written by engineers reads like someone reciting the minutes of that last IEEE meeting.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
... the scathing critique took the form of... AN ESSAY!!!
The questions on average would need to be very hard, but with varying degrees of difficulty to distinguish accurately whether someone is IQ 135, 140, 145, 150, 155, 160... etc.
Meh. You can successfully distinguish levels of domain knowledge well, who knows their computer science or mathematics better, maybe you can successfully make distinctions about someone's logical thinking capacity and vague distinctions about their problem solving approach.
But the question of which hard questions distinguish high levels of intelligence -- particularly intelligence necessary to create a good product? That itself is going to be subjective.
Tweet, tweet.
jesus christ. if it eliminates people like you due to sheer lack of writing ability, then maybe they shouldn't have eliminated it.
I had no idea what I was writing at 16. No clue as to why it made any difference. Got in I suspect on the basis of 5 APs, the SAT and performances in some competition. The body of work far outweighed any 500 word essay that you whip up in a couple of nights. Loved the place but saw many who were destroy by it.
That's how many words ice's comment was, for anyone who thingk that 500 words is long.
An O(500 word) essay is really not any more difficult than a post on slashdot. A well-reasoned essay should probably take roughly that long just to get enough supporting points in, depending on what you want to say. That's five freakin' paragraphs. Three, really, after you subtract the opening and closing paragraphs of a formal essay.
500 words is easy to write without even thinking about it.
Now what I don't understand is how Clare can be proud of that essay after five years. Or how her advisor let her put that in the application package. Or how she managed to get in to MIT with it. I'm not saying my applications were any better, but there's no way in hell I'm going to go trying to find them and read them again. Let alone post publicly.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
"My inner cynic wants to say 'tough, it's their fault if they produce some bland over-processed generic drivel,'" says the woman who wrote this bland, over-processed, generic drivel for her own essay. "Word count: 447. Couldn't have done it in less." What an amazing coincidence that her essay needed 447 out of 500 words. It didn't need 505 and she had to make it worse by cutting good stuff, and she didn't need 200 but felt obligated to pad it out. Truly amazing.
College admission essays are bullshit. Ones that ask for biography are doubly so. Like the interview question, "What is your greatest weakness?", responding with honesty is usually the wrong policy. Instead you build up a carefully honed lie designed to impress the interviewer. There is no benefit to this for anyone involved.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
"You fail it"
The best indication of success is really how others see you. If your teachers and whomever else you ask to write a recommendation can find a way to describe just how special you are, then it's a pretty good sign that you have potential (given all your activities and grades). When it comes down to it, most of the people I knew from MIT who were successful had a succinct summary of the pivotal moment when they knew they loved engineering. They could share it with you in a few words over a beer; you'd see in their eyes that they were really passionate about it. Maybe they'll shift the focus more toward the interview component. In my time, they told me that the interview wasn't that important, but we all know that the first impression you can make today is likely to be as good as the first impression you can make 10 years from now. Unfortunately, no school can teach that and it matters far more in terms of the impact you can make.
I am a tester.
It is not that easy to do. Something like the SAT needs to be able to ascertain the level of a very broad population of users. That is done by targeting items at examinees of a certain ability, using item response theory difficulty estimates acquired in pilot. Yes, you could add more difficult questions, but those are going to render very little information about most people who take them, because they won't get them right. Because the edges of the bell curve are so thin, throwing a bunch of hard questions at the top end will water down the results for the majority of users. Ideally, you want most of your items that are very close to the level of the examinees, so you get nice "high-resolution" (although no one uses that term but me, since I came in from IT and explain everything as though it were a computer) discriminations of ability for the most people possible.
The workaround for this problem is to tailor the test to the examinee, real-time, with computer-adaptive testing. So let's say you get an item with a difficulty estimate of 1 correct; now the computer will hit you with one at 1.2, for example, and keep ramping up until you kind of level off at getting 50/50 right, which is where it decides you belong. Once it has you figured out, it either just throws easy ones at you so you feel good about yourself, or starts serving up items still undergoing pilot testing. Either way, what you do after that point will not affect your score.
This sounds great, and it would be great, if it worked reliably. The problem is that the thing has to kick in somewhere at the beginning of the test, and define a broad range that you belong in, and then a narrower range, and then a narrower range, etc. What this basically does is unfairly "weight" the first few items of the test, because they are the ones that will determine what large band of scores you will be eligible for. Once the machine has pegged you at the lower half, say, there is no way for you to break out of that, because it's never going to give you those harder questions. If that's not where you belong, you won't be able to demonstrate that, and you'll just get the top score of that band. So if you start the thing out and you're nervous and you just make a dumb mistake, that mistake can really cost you--much more than it would later in the test. All these models are probabilistic, so guessing and just making dumb mistakes are accounted for. But the moment you go adaptive, the beauty of the model is trashed at the beginning and doesn't come into effect until later.
Many of the tests which moved to computer-adaptive methods have gone back to just serving a range of items, but one, the GRE, is still adaptive, even though ETS (the company that makes it and the SAT and the TOEFL) knows it doesn't work reliably (people taking the test over and over can get very different scores). Evidently there are financial/political reasons they can't get rid of it (rumor). And I have to take it again here in a few months to start applying for PhD programs. One of the drawbacks of researching psychometrics is that at some point you'll have to take one of these tests, knowing what the problems are.
So there you go. Yes, adding harder questions would indeed get you better discrimination among the top examinees, but at the cost of discrimination for the bulk of them. Ideally, you could just have the examinee come back and take the next-hardest test, but no one would go for that. Or perhaps the tests could be tiered, with linking items/anchoring, and the examinee could choose what level they wanted to take. I don't know of any major tests that do that, though, and having disjoint populations might cause a problem...
Anyway, there's more testing minutiae than you require.
When I applied for college, I wrote a snarky essay about how school is pointless and how I was already a better coder than 90% of their graduates. Needless to say, I got offered a full ride to every school I applied to.
Of course, that might have had something to do with blowing the bell curve and still only applying to state universities.. I wish I hadn't aimed so low back then.
tl;dr
This article cannot be left to stand with out a link to one of the most entertaining essays I've ever read. Now, unfortunately, it's not an MIT essay (instead, it's for NYU), but it's at least hosted at MIT, and therefore I feel that it is contextually meaningful.
Kid-proof tablet..
140 is enough lol
Chicken chicken chicken, chicken chicken!, chicken chicken.
Chicken, chicken chicken, chicken. Chicken chicken chicken,
chicken. Chicken chicken. [...]
Along the lines of Doug Zongker's "Chicken chicken chicken".
No idea why to make such fuss about a simple essay.
Ah, the old "It's not what you know, but who you know" trick.
To the extent you're referring to the meaning behind the adage which roughly translates "personal connections count for more than talent does when it comes time to select for social/economic advancement" .... no, I don't mean that at all.
I mean knowing where and when to ask for help with a concept or a problem.
If you're a developer, you know the drill. You get stuck on a bug, and you can spend a few hours or even days pounding your head against the way. Or, after you've done basic personal diligence, you can poke your head over to the next cube, or IM a buddy, or find a good forum on the internet and save days.
If you're a student, you can certainly plug away by yourself on an assignment. But a student who uses faculty office hours, goes to the labs, and works with other students while doing their own basic diligent study is going to learn more with their time.
Who you know? Yeah. It makes a big difference. You should know who else is good at thinking about the kinds of problems you're working on, and you should get to know them well enough that you can collaborate with them sometimes.
Tweet, tweet.
After reading these arguments about how important the essay is, why it shouldn't be, and how much potential it has to encourage a well-rounded student body, I would really like to hear from someone who has been on the receiving end. Out of 1000 essays written, how many get read? 10? Is it given a grade that gets weighted and merged with SAT scores, high school rankings, and handwriting analysis results for everyone; or is it used as a tie-breaker for the marginal cases?
My suspicion is that almost none of them get read, but they are still given a mystical importance by the applicants. It sounds like the admissions department is just trying to match the appearance to the practice, and saving a lot of headache all around.
that no one seems to have reposted, yet : I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row. I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru. Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I?m bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge. I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don?t perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat .400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles.
Children trust me.
I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me. I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven.
I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.
But I have not yet gone to college.
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
The essay should be axed as should be pretty much all essays for all major colleges.
The problem with essays is not that they are a negative or a positive indicator of whatever they are supposed to be indicating, its that they cannot be graded properly they are not graded properly so presently they are a cruel joke perpetrated on poor applicants that work their asses off to write an essay that will be read for 4 minutes by some professional grader and graded on some completely random basis.
Essays are a relic from the time when classes are small the applicants were few and a single person could read all the essays and at least attempt to grade them on a common basis. Right now colleges receive tens of thousands of essays that are graded by multiple professional graders that can only spend minimal time reading each essay and there is really no way to ensure that the same standards are kept from grader to grader.
So even if the essay is a wonderful way to differentiate applicants it should be scrapped everywhere because it simply cannot be graded properly.
I mean how could you possible ensure that your grader will like your essay? There are some people out there that dislike even Shakespeare's writing. How can you be sure that your grader will like yours?
There may be a point of removing the essay, but what will they replace with?
Ten years ago, when I seeked for university admission in Korea, a country which has extremely competitive university admission procedures, we had essay exams. They give you approximately 500~1000 words of whatever text (it can be some literature, news article, textbook text, or whatsoever), followed by a short question which has to be answered in a 1,600 character (around 500 wordsessay. With something like 2 hours time limit.
With only two hours, students had only something like 10 minutes to read the text, 5 minutes to think, 10 minutes to plan the structure of the essay, and about an hour to write 500 words on a piece of paper, including making correceionts. In other words, if you cannot understand the text and figure out what to write within 20 or so minutes, you are doomed.
Back then, and for many more years, I thought it was unfair. I wanted to do engineering, but the essay looked ridiculous. However, after ten years, I found that preparing for the essay exam had greatly enhanced my writing skills (which I find really important - sometimes more important than math or physics), and it forced me to read a lot of books of all sorts of topics.
I think these kind of essay exams (with tight time limits) may help, but unlike Korea, United States is a fairly large country, and it may be too difficult to have all the students seeking admision in one place.
I like.
Why not have students bidding for an admission ?
TLDR.
How about Isaac Newton? Neurotic, no communications skills, died a virgin.
Paul Erdos? Maybe the greatest mathematician ever but no life skills at all.
etc.
Which is great for them. Really, it is.
But let's be honest, if you're reading this you are not the next Isaac Newton. And you never will be.
That kind of ability comes about a couple of times in a generation. If you (or anyone) is going to be part of some fantastic discovery which will change the world, the immense likelihood is that you'll be making that discovery as part of a team effort. Which requires communication.
Communication skills are essential for that.
Except... Essay is the antithesis of communicating.
If you look at communication as a "two-way process in which there is an exchange and progression of thoughts, feelings or ideas (energy) towards a mutually accepted goal or direction (information)."
Essay, is just fine and dandy for "expressing", ranting, giving speeches and eulogies and all other forms of monologues - where you expect NO REPLY from the reader/listener.
Also, it being a "word wall", you will still probably get a huge number of applicants with zero communications skills - who just happen to know how better to express themselves using a slow, editable, one-way, written form.
Instead of actually communicating with one or more persons and exchanging information and ideas in real time.
What it will MOST DEFINITELY give you though, is a base for subjective discrimination based NOT on applicants "communication skills" - but on his or her "way of thinking" instead.
Essentially, if one gets in based on his/her essay - it is because they fit the "group-think" profile. Leave your "creativity" at home kids and fall in line.
On the other hand, if they get rejected based on their essays, it is because they are guilty of committing that much loved slashdot staple - the thought crime.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
What, the Isaac Newton who was a closet alchemist and member of secret societies and was also one of the first true scientists ? That Isaac Newton ? The member of Parliament, the fellow and then President of the Royal Society who gained a knighthood and was buried with great ritual and tradition in Westminster Abbey ? The guy who was seen as the greatest natural philosopher in Europe of his time, in his time ? That Isaac Newton ?
No life skills there at all.
dick.
Yeesh. I just wrote an essay for my English class (a mock college application essay) in maybe 20 minutes. It came out to around 620 words, less than two pages. Personally, I believe writing skills are very important and that the college application process should be even more personalized than it is. This just sounds like the MIT applications office is getting tired of reading essays...
I went to MIT during the same time period. I wrote well when I arrived, so guess what? I wrote well when I left. The Humanities courses were a total waste of time for me. Thirty years on, I can't recall a single inspiring thought or insight that was transmitted to me by the unhappy and unpleasant faculty in the MIT Humanities Department.
You may have been some kind of weird-ass nerd genius ("the technical stuff was easy"), but please don't assume that everyone else requires two years of remedial training in order to become a human being. We don't.
like i'm reading all that
wish I hadn't commented now, that deserves to be modded to the sky and back.
In Germany, they "fixed" things, by simply modifying grammar to be closer to the most common errors students made in the last years. So now "they are no errors anymore". Wait for nature to invent even bigger idiots, and for them to "fix" the language again.
The rule is: If the students are becoming too dumb (500 words is "larger than life"?? hello? do they mean "mentally challenged life"?): Lower the bar.
It worked well for evolution of humanity, so it will work well for education too. Oh, wait...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
What I got from the essay?... apparently MIT isn't rejecting people based on their narcissistic views of their own preciousness.
God, that was horrible.
Don't get me wrong - I agree with her in principle that it's NOT excessive to ask 18-yr-olds to express themselves cogently in a 500 word essay. I think that's a good hurdle for top schools.
But her essay wasn't a good example, it was drivel. Self-obsessive, whiny, emo drivel.
-Styopa
Newton was a very shrewd politician and an effective communicator. He also didn't focus all of his energies on science -- he did a lot of very strange work on the occult that his hagiographers tend to gloss over.
Erdos was lucky enough to have a lot of friends who were able to look after him. I agree that the GP was optimistic in suggesting that it would be hard to find one great scientist -- I immediately thought of Erdos too. But one fluke is not a good basis for a complete admissions policy.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Middle managers only exist to facilitate communication between technical specialist workers and policy generalist upper management. If you can't manage to do that, blaming your subordinates will probably not get you very far.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
jesus christ if you cant write 500 words how do you expect to deal with climate change, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, the culture war, the national debt, racial bigotry, and all the other wonderful things you are going to inherit from generation X?
time to man up and stop making excuses. 500 word essay might seem tough but by the time you are halfway through college you should be able to crank them out like peanuts at a circus. for practice, try editing wikipedia.
I must have been really bad in an past life :(
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Anyone who doesn't already have at least a couple of essays of roughly that length that they did for school assignments floating around on their hard drive probably doesn't belong at MIT anyway. When I applied to colleges that required essays, I just freshened up one of my old ones and sent it in...and that was back in '85 when we used floppies.
Translation: Students no longer know how to write. I'm just waiting for schools to start requiring students to text or tweet as part of the application process.
"Communication is the process of transferring information from one entity to another" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication).
One way communication is an important and valuable form of communication. There are other forms, and they are equally important, but that doesn't mean there is no value in essays.
Essay, is just fine and dandy for "expressing", ranting, giving speeches and eulogies and all other forms of monologues - where you expect NO REPLY from the reader/listener.
I am sure that if your application essay was ranting or overly "expressing" that would not get you accepted. Just like in any other situation in life - if you meet with your boss and start rambling incoherently you are not going to be the one who gets the promotion. You can call that "thought crime" if you want. I call it life.
Endowment.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
You have to start at a Tavern!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
The place is now infiltrated by feel-good do-gooders. What will the world come to now that the fire hose is now a bottle of water, with a nipple?
Hitler: Didn't they read the part of my essay where I say that I will BOMB THEM IF I DON'T GET IN?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I haven't gone to college, but when I do, I'll drink Dos Equis.
Stay thirsty my friends.
Sent from your iPad.
I agree that the GP was optimistic in suggesting that it would be hard to find one great scientist -- I immediately thought of Erdos too.
In my defense, I said nothing about mathematicians, and the omission was intentional. Outside a very narrow range of fields like mathematics, where everything you need to know to understand a problem can be precisely defined, real greatness requires mental versatility.
Setting aside geniuses, I would argue more generally that this sort of versatility is often (though not always) found in the most successful people in any field.
One way communication is an important and valuable form of communication.
How can you know that, unless it is two-way? With one way communication all you get is "undeniable opinions".
Sure... you might get a grade in return, but you don't get to revise your essay, or argue its value. The grade you get is just another one-way "undeniable opinion".
Unless there is dialog, communication is worthless - as far as communicating goes. Sure.. it may be a nice story, but the writer and the reader are NOT communicating.
I am sure that if your application essay was ranting or overly "expressing" that would not get you accepted. Just like in any other situation in life - if you meet with your boss and start rambling incoherently you are not going to be the one who gets the promotion. You can call that "thought crime" if you want. I call it life.
Ta-DAH!
And that is the point. There is NO communication in the essay. One shot and that's it.
In real-life you wouldn't get to rant-out incoherently. You would be asked to explain your behavior most likely more than once.
And as you have put it - you might not get the promotion.
NOT get banned from practicing the profession - which is what using a 500 word essay as a determining criteria for getting into the university of your choosing effectively is.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
In high school I absolutely hated questions like that. I could never answer them without copious amounts of BS. Almost nobody could. Looking back now, the proper answer to that prompt would have been something like this:
I am 17. I have been cognitively capable of understanding my experiences in a way sufficient to answer this question for only a few years. Again, I am 17. I have experienced less in my life than you have forgotten in yours. I am completely typical in these regards. There may be geniuses that were capable of abstract thought by age 7, or go-getters who had done more by 13 than some people will do in their lifetimes. Good for them. Even they will not be able to understand their experiences as well now as they will in 10 years. And even after those 10 years have passed, they still won't be able to answer this question perfectly.
The simple fact is I have done nothing special and am nothing special. That is why I'm going to college; For the opportunity to do something special. That is why many people go to college. Even then many people will still never do or be anything special. That likely includes me. That likely includes many of the geniuses and "well-traveled" that you're inclined to admit. If you admitted people randomly you would probably find just as many alumni that do become some special.
You're giving a prompt about the past to people with barely any past. You're doing so in order to determine if they are allowed the greatest opportunity for their future they may ever have had in their lives. You don't see a problem with this?
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Seriously, essays about my past bugged me. I was a kid. I barely had a past to speak of, let alone one that was in any way special. The whole reason I wanted to go to college was to change that!
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Hmm. With a lot refinement this essay could work. Of course it required me to be 10 years older in order to better understand why these essays bugged me. And it would fail miserably because it didn't fit their prompt.
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Alternative TLDR version: Admissions essays suck.
In response to the question 'Why would you like to attend North Carolina State University?', I wrote the following very candid and succinct list:
1. It's close.
2. It's cheap.
3. I can get in.
Approximately four years later, I had a BS in Aerospace Engineering.
sentence, not repentance
open source modern art: laser taggi
All students write essays. All evaluators judge essays. Randomly split the final evaluation formula so that 50% of the evaluations ignore the essay scores...
Excellence is an attitude.
As I recall, I came across 2 engineering schools that did not require essays on the application when I was looking:
Rose-Hullman Institute of Technology, and Colorado School of Mines.
I am told I write very well, but I hate the kind of writing they are apparently asking for. Consequently, I was only accepted at two engineering schools.
I later found it is actually easier to transfer into most schools than to be accepted as a new student (or get a new driver's license).
Captcha: forgot
You forgot: he (probably) died a virgin.
Well of course they had to make it easier to get in. You wouldn't want to be sued by someone who couldn't write. I am surprised they don't just go with the community college approach. Submit an application, pay your fee, show residence, and get a course catalog.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Indian Institute of Technology in India is called MIT on steroids in USA by a number of people including some MIT professors. I had the previlage of going to IIT. I have met people there who can barely speak English. They are brilliant minds some of the best in Technology who get readily absorbed at MIT or Stanford or any of the the thousand other schools in USA. Now the question I ask is will they ever be the brilliant engineers they are if they were asked to take an English essay test instead of the objective hard hitting JEE exam they take in India and only on that basis do you get in or out of IIT and only on that basis do you get to do computer science or civil engineering. So trust me the word essays are over rated crap. One that brings in subjectivity where none is required. Why should MIT choose a guy who can score worse than the other guy or knows less about science and maths ? You look for other qualities or look for the THE quality which will make him a good engineer. The answer in India is you choose THE QUALITY that makes him what he wants to be. He wants to be an engineer. To do that he needs to understand problems formulate solutions using Math, Physics and Chemistry. Period. I think that is the way to go.
Might be worth noting that Clare Bayley was one of the team of five who created Locale, one of the Grand Prize Winners of the Android Developer Challenge.
"That kind of ability comes about a couple of times in a generation."
Maybe...but they're not talking, so who knows?
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.