Admissions Impossible?

By Tian Yang

I’ll get straight to the point. Procrastination is bad for the college-bound senior applying to college. For those trying to meet the early decision deadline of Nov. 1, it’s deadly. The UC application is a whole other story. I’ll admit to only looking at it about twice in the past month, but I promise I’ve started on it – sort of. Procrastination is also really bad for the college essay.

A college professor of history whose book was published by Cambridge once told me that good writing takes years and possibly even a whole career to develop. So do essays. And for an essay that carries so much weight, the college essay is perhaps the last attempt in one’s application to get accepted. After all, as my parents put it, the college essay is the accumulation of all essays ever written put into one essay that is judged so meticulously that admissions officers will know the applicant before even meeting him. I don’t even know myself that well yet. If college admissions officers can just know me from an essay, I get shivers thinking about how much they’ll know about me if we ever meet.

The thought of the college essay scares me. The college essay is supposed to be a personal statement that shows off the applicant’s character and accomplishments. But in addition to that, it also shows off the applicant’s ability to “successfully organize his thoughts.” So along with trying to frame myself as the “ideal candidate,” I also have to be a good essayist.

While I can write a decent report, I’m not exactly Hemingway – or any other literary genius for that matter. I often have trouble trying to find the inspiration trying to write. Believe me; the prospect of failing to get into one’s first choice college is not inspiring at all. Therefore when I started writing my essay, I wrote in fear.

I’ve basically spent this past month doing four things: doing homework, anticipating my SAT II scores, working on the common application, and rewriting my college essay. The writing part hasn’t been my least favorite. One of my favorite quotes about writing goes something like this: “Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” In a sense, it’s very true. If no inspiration comes, the only thing that can be done is to wait until it does. For me, the essay process has been excruciatingly painful. I’ve written and rewritten my essays hoping that some brilliant spark of genius will come.

Not taking the advice of my wiser, graduated friends, I didn’t start my essay during the summer. (I was hoping for some enlightening experiences to occur still.) After several initial drafts were egregiously flagged down by my parents, I finally arrived at a story that I felt happy with (and was also approved by my parents).

Then the flood of rewrites came. I’ve probably completely rewritten my essay eight different times. Each one of those times, something about the essay just didn’t quite feel right. I either was too brutally honest about myself or came off rather shallow. Currently I’m almost done with my essay. It needs to be proofread, but I’m feeling a bit better about it.

The college application process thus far has been a bit of a rat race. In my school where there are around a thousand students per grade, competition has a bit overwhelming. I’m not sure whether it’s the fact that 30 students asked one teacher in the same week to write their recommendations or that the teacher probably wrote the same recommendation for each student, but the essay is really the chance to stand out. I think this is the reason my parents have put so much emphasis on it. Yet I’m saddened at what I’ve been reduced to – giving up my weekends to work on college applications (that means no social life).

Yang is a senior at Carmel High School in Carmel, Indiana.