So, I finished up most of my MIT first-draft application today. I figured it was high time to reflect on the process of college applications.
Back in Februrary, when I visited MIT, I remember having a pretty enlightening discussion about applications with some of the guys at the PBE house. After all was said and done, there was a common consensus on how to approach the application: “be yourself”. I remember most of them saying they hadn’t labored over their application and essays – they filled it out with a blank honesty of who they were. I had that in mind today as I was figuring out the best way to bare my soul for college admissions.
I mean, what, you pay ~$70 to send in an essay, a couple questions, and the academic history of your life. Somewhere amongst 1000 words for the whole bonanza, you need to reflect on who you are, who you’ll be, and why college X is your fit. Yikes. I think there’s something missing from this process. Sure, there’s the potential interview, teacher recommendations, school counselor (yikes^2), and more. But where’s the beef? How on earth could these things sculpt a full image of who I am?
As far as I’m concerned, most college applications provide the equivalent of an ASCII-fied image of the student. I’ve seen some pretty impressive ASCII images, but the point remains. I’m supposed to be myself, but how on earth do you express to an admissions officer that if you don’t know the answer to a question, you’re very capable of finding it? How do you outline a series of past achievements without turning your application into a proverbial handjob? Most students would say, “very easily – it’s all in the presentation”, but then I reach the second dilemma. How can I really ‘be myself’ without artificially tweaking the execution of these essays?
For example, MIT asks this question about a situation when I thought “it was the end of the world” and what good came from the negative. The first thing that came to mind was, in sophomore year, when my 500gb data tower crashed and I lost my life’s digital existence in one quick bang.
That really was the end of the world at the time. What did I learn? How to regularly back up my files. In all honesty, I doubt that would be a great example of how I’ve changed as a person. Maybe I’m a little more vigilant about how I save files, but that tower’s crashing was completely out of my control (curse Western Digital). Maybe I could’ve talked about how my conversion to Mac OS X has made me ‘think different’? Perhaps I could’ve explained why losing that much data was particularly important to me? I lost countless family photos, dug a pretty deep hole in quarter papers, and lost my entire media collection. My creations, my ways of life, gone. I'm actually confident my heart skipped a few beats when I realized my tower crashed. An essay on why my life is so vested (and continues to be vested) in computers probably wouldn’t be very effective. Sure, I would “be myself” in doing so and, heck, I could’ve used it as a metaphor for unexpectedly purging my life, but that’s a bit of a stretch.
I read over some of the comments on MIT’s admissions blog – which is posted to by multiple members of the MIT admissions community. In particular, there were three posts for those who were admitted, deferred, or denied. I was surprised by the frankness of some of the kids in the comments sections. The admitted post was a collection of outbursts of well-earned joy. The deferral comments ranged from stagnant amusal to cocky “four more months until I’m an MIT student” declarations. I found that the most interesting comments came from the “Not Admitted” post. An interesting thread of discussion arose about how MIT admissions isn’t judging you as a person – rather, on how well you’d do at MIT. The pent up expressions of frustration and shock are an interesting expose into a dream deferred. If MIT (or any college, really) is admitting based on perceived potential, I think I’ve found a practical application of circular logic. How can admissions determine how well you’ll do at MIT if their applications are framed representations of who you are?
I’d like to interject with one of the components of the MIT application that made me chuckle. “No admission application can meet the needs of every individual. If you think additional information or material will give us a more thorough impression of you, please respond below. (Please limit your answer to 500 words or fewer.)” No admission application can meet all your needs with just textboxes and questions. Here’s another textbox, knock yourself out.
I guess this is the system. You know, I think I’ve found some irony in this process of analyzing the process. MIT’s homepage was designed by the multidisciplinary firm Pentagram. The logic behind the daily changing homepage is that MIT houses a dynamic wealth of diversity at their school. I don’t think anyone will contest that fact. When I was researching the MIT Media Lab and looking around the campus last February, I saw a lot of great people. However, it seems like the gateway into MIT, the admissions process, has flaws. The fast quip is “well, it’s worked for all years past and MIT has done just fine.” Sure. This entire process is analogous to programming. When developing applications, saying “because it works” doesn’t suffice. “Because it works” is a shot in the dark that happens to hit the target. How do we measure the transparency or effectiveness of any admissions process?
Prove me wrong, but I’m not quite sure the college admissions process of today works for all. In fact, I would definitely like to hear an argument to the contrary (please limit your response to 500 words or fewer).