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.]
Because real applications should be measured in characters
"Frist post!"
... axe me about my high school diploma.
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?
Per tradition, I carefully avoided reading the fine article. And then you come along and toss that nauseous paragraph at me anyway.
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.
Who did they axe about this?
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.
The world needs more diverse, creative types who can communicate with everyone else. - people who can write. They serve as a bridge between the fierce logicians of the world to whom everything is a computation.
And to invent the jump to conclusions mat.
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.
How dare you! My mother was a saint!
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
You put them out in the wilderness with no food and water. If they make it home alive, you take them both. If one eats the other to survive it's an epic fail ;-)
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
why the hell do you try break down any assay are lieing and bullshit? communication ability is THE number one factor that seperates the successful from the could have been.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The alternative is hiring competent middle managers that doesn't judge ideas based on presentation?
I think this has been tried already but they were all fired the next week by the upper level of management who couldn't stand their smugness.
Remember to tighten your ties, the more starved for oxygen your brain cells are, the easier it is to deal with corporate culture.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
And something similar happened with me after my A-Levels in England. The A-Levels (university admittance exams; 'A' for advanced) were the real test of one's technical knowledge, but the S-Levels (Scholarship) were really a little bit different and were their for those _expected_ to get A grades in the A-Level. These were about _interpretation_. Two questions I remember from my biology: "Dogs would be better with wheels. Discuss" and "Describe the biological response in your response to this statement to this statement".
And lapped that sort of open-endedness right up.
I'll take a brilliant engineer who knows how to communicate difficult concepts (such as "why I should get into MIT instead of some other valedictorian") over a brilliant engineer who does not know how to communicate every time.
So will employers of brilliant engineers, by the way.
And remember, MIT isn't only looking for who's the smartest, but who's going to make it to graduation without a) killing himself, b) killing one or more of his classmates, c) killing a member of the faculty or staff.
I say keep the essay.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm sure that a post in slashdot isn't going to make them change their policy. Since MIT has now removed the 500 word essay, it seems that it might not be a good way to measure the "drive, ambition, etc.". It seems to me that such an essay helps just as little in determining these important attributes as the xkcd capcha in differentiating humans and computers. With a little help anyone can write 500 words of bullshit like the "great" essay in the article.
I think the most important argument against the use of subjective measurements like these is that they can be used to pervert the selection system.
Here's my sample essay (in 33 words):
My dad is the CEO of Big Corp and is willing to donate millions to the university I'll be attending. So you see that I'm a very good candidate for MIT.
I agree that skills other than pure math are important for success in a top engineering school; test for those, but don't put people ahead of others because the say they're motivated.