Deep Life Lessons Shouldn’t Be College Admissions Requirements

Each year college essay prompts get more complicated and difficult to write.

While I encourage my students to be honest and write from their hearts, I find myself explaining what the college admissions committees are looking for as these students begin this agonizing process. So many students feel defeated before they even begin the application process. Most believe that they haven’t done enough or that their lives have been so boring because they don’t have one parent in prison and haven’t been abused the other one.  

PRO TIP:  Sob stories are well received if you have overcome the obstacle.

Some prompts require deep philosophical thought processes that most teens don’t have at the young age of 17 or 18.

It seems that selective colleges are expecting students to have already done miraculous things BEFORE they start college.  When my students read about applicants who have cured diseases or engineered innovative solutions, they question whether they will get into colleges with such fierce competition.

I wonder if colleges have forgotten that students want to go to college to gain the knowledge and skills to be successful once they graduate from — not before they arrive — to college.

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