Let Your Life Speak in 650 Words or Fewer

From Hannah Verne, New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth Vice President and Dean of Admissions Infinite Gelaide, and this is Admissions Beats. Here's a Quaker saying, let your life speak. I first saw that saying on the wall of Sidwell-Fran School in Washington, DC, when I visited several years ago to do a high school program, and while I'm not a Quaker, that Quaker saying really struck me as very elegant and interesting as a way of thinking about life experience, about owning your story and telling your story. I've come to adopt it as both a motto for myself in many ways, but I've also used it twice as an essay prompt first when I was the Dean of Tuffs, and we just reintroduced it. I just reintroduced it to the Dartmouth a couple years ago as a question on our supplement. I start with let your life speak because I think it's an interesting way of framing this really important topic of narrative. Any college application is the combination of the data that populates a transcript and you're testing and the voice of the student who's introducing herself through the different parts of the file, with the essay being the spotlight. The essay is the narrative heart of any selective college application. I know it's also the part of the file, maybe alongside testing, that gives high school seniors the most agita as my Italian grandma used to say, and the thing people overthink. This week we will bring back two friends of the pod for a re-broadcast of an episode we first aired in season four in October of 2023 about letting your life speak, finding the words to tell your story and 650 words or less, and being true to yourself in that organic act of introduction. When we come back we'll say hello to Sherry Geller from Gann Academy in Massachusetts and Ronnie McNight from Pidea School in Atlanta as we re-air a popular episode about essays. We're right back. Ronnie and Sherry, welcome back to admission beat. Thank you. It's great to be here. Thanks for inviting us back. Of course, no, it's always fun to have you both, but also together. I come to think of you as sort of Lucy and Ethel, kind of this inseparable duo that we have to have. Wow. I think I'm Ethel in that arrangement. For the kids who are saying who are they, Tagmur, I love Lucy from the 1950s. If you don't know it, Google it because it is a cultural phenomenon from the mid-20th century that you really should watch some episodes because it's hilarious. Anyway, I'm not for Lucy. I know I just give each of you a little minute to let your life speak. Tell us about how you came to your jobs as college councils because you were both college admission officers. I think it's relevant to this conversation about essay writing because you've both been a reader like me, but also someone counseling kids. Ronnie, let your life speak. I went to Presbyterian College in South Carolina. I was a tour guide. I was a tour guide in college, worked at Presbyterian and then at Emory University in about 14 years. Then 12 years ago, I just joked with leave before this podcast began that I left the college side because I had read just one too many essays, which I always enjoyed, but also didn't, and have really enjoyed the college, the high school side of the college counseling process at Pidea. Yeah. Thanks. I have to speak. So I had a very similar story starting as a tour guide. It's a very common path to this profession. I went to Brandeis University and we also had a program called Chatters and for anyone that knows me, they know that I was a perfect chatter. We would sit in the admissions office and chat with our guests about the school as they came and waiting for their interviews and things. Oh, that was a real role. Like a chatter was a role in the admission office. Yes. Wow. I had a shower week, sort of like a tour guide, it was a volunteer position and his families came in, especially it was great if students were a little nervous before an interview or parents had questions all their students was on a tour, things like that. We would sit in chat with our guests. So I loved being a chatter and then my senior year, I was in one of the leadership positions in our office overseeing hosting students that wanted to stay overnight and matching them up and I said, wow, how do I get to do this and get paid for it? So I went to graduate school for public relations, which is not a common path to admissions, but I feel like I use my PR skills all the time at the college counselor in terms of writing and communicating and helping advocate for our students. So similar to Ronnie, I worked at college admissions, I had two different institutions, first at my alma mater, Brandeis and then at Northeastern for a short time. Now I've been a college counselor at two different schools. Yeah. So it's great to have you both. Thanks for sharing your life. And that quick moment. So as we talk about essays, broadly, it's really about storytelling. One of the things that's come up on every episode this season is the idea that the essay or the task of imagining and starting to write the essay is a source of stress for seniors in this early moment of fall. Do you see that in your two schools? The essay can allume over this part of the admission process as kind of an onerous chore. Yes. Yes. One audience are on a podcast. It's so helpful. But yeah, that was very definitive. Like you put an explanation in that. Why? Well, it's interesting because I always thought when I read applications, even as I work with students now, the essays were actually the most interesting part both to work on and to read. I think the stress comes because students could have so many stories they can tell and they want to get it right. They want to pick the right topic. They want to use the right language. They feel like they're putting so much into this essay. And what they don't realize when they first start is that 650 words is not that long and they don't have to tell their whole life story. It looms because they're really worried about how they'll be judged, how others will read their story. They're telling the right story and if they're using the right language along the way. Yeah. Yeah. Such a stressful process. And it's really the one thing in the fall that they still control in that your transcript is set, your activities are already completed for the most part. But the essay in a stressful process, all of that stress is funneled into that one document that's still in progress as opposed to all the other things that are kind of solidified. Yeah. Okay. So let's dig into that. That feels like the news you could use piece of this episode. So there's this kind of question about like the essay and how do I tell the right story as Sherry just said. So Sherry, when I visited again a couple of weeks ago for your case studies, you passed out a tip sheet to parents and one of the tips was on essay. And your sheet said, does the essay tell you something about the student beyond the transcript? What did you learn? What qualities or talents does the student reveal? Do you hear the student's voice? Do you get a sense of the student as a person? Does the student tell their story effectively? And I thought that series of questions that you shared with your senior class was smart. It was a nice summary of here are some questions to ask yourself as you start writing. And as a reader, as a case study program, some prompts to say this sample of writing should answer some of these questions or not. So, but let's talk about why there's an essay. Like when someone comes into one of your offices and says, why does a college ask me to do a writing sample? What's in your sense the purpose of this? So I often start with a version of Ronnie's answer to the last question about the control piece about the what do you want a college to know? They want to know the college wants to know what are your grades, sometimes what are your test scores, what are you doing for activities like they tell you. This is your chance even though the college requests it for you to have pretty free reign of what you want to tell them. So it's a chance for students to choose what kind of language they're going to use. If they're funny, their essay can be funny. Although I always tell them that if they're not funny, then maybe a college essay isn't the right time to try out. But if they're more serious than the essay can be serious. If they're really into the outdoors, their essay can be about the outdoors. Like it's really a chance to come off the page and not just be a standard set of grades and scores and things that every other student has. Seniors are kind of scratching their head and their fingers are poised at the keyboard, but they haven't started to type because they're a little they're overthinking it perhaps. Is the essay being evaluated for the quality of writing or is it more, are we more focused on the content or is it both? All three of us have read essays. I don't think I ever read an essay with a red ink pen, right? And so I never graded an essay within reason and so you you you have permission to write the way you speak. It doesn't have to be nearly as formal as something that you may have written for an English class. You want it to sound like a 17 year old or an 18 year old, depending on I guess most of these kids are 17 point, then they write. So all of that can be your voice and it doesn't have to be an academic voice by any means. Obviously you want to still pay attention to grammar and things like that. So you want to make a good impression. But the tone of it can definitely sound like an 18, you know, 17 year old when they when they write that. And I think that's actually important. I think one of the mistakes that students make. To write something and then he'll let it be edited by I'm pointing at myself a bunch of 54 year olds and suddenly it doesn't sound like a 17 year old that sounds like a 54 year old college counselor or English teacher, etc. And so they have developed a word for what Ronnie just said. And that's adultified. I read an essay. It's just a sentence, but often it's a whole piece. I see this essay sounds over adultified. And some students as we know while they're only 17. They're like 40 year olds in their daily lives. But those 17 year olds are really 17. And so the students who are like many 40 year olds. I think it's fine when they use more adult sounding language. But many times I read an essay and I say, yeah, what adults suggested this word. To you. And yeah, I love that. I love that phrase. I'm going to steal it. Adulter. Welcome to it. Yeah. Years ago, I was I used to be the territory manager for Washington DC. And so lots of the applicants had parents who worked in government, given where we were. And I was reading an essay. And I thought, this is such an odd topic. It just doesn't It wasn't very interesting. It was about micro financing and sub say her in Africa. And I thought, nothing in this file is kind of sinking up with this topic. And I flipped back because it was still a paper file. I flipped back to the parent section. And the mom was Working for the World Bank. I thought this is The road about micro financing and sub say her in Africa. And it didn't sound like her daughter. And yeah, so I love that. It's Altified. Yeah, it comes out sometimes even in a word. I read a supplemental piece a few years ago that the question was something about your favorite activity. And the student wrote about being a camp counselor. And it was a great short paragraph kind of essay. But the last sentence was about how much he enjoyed working with these youths. Yeah. And after I got over my mind cousin Vinnie thinking of the two youths, just thinking about the youths, I said youth. And he kind of turned red and said, oh, yeah, my father suggested that word. I said, really? And he said, well, because I said, what did you want to say? He said kids. He said, I can't say kids. It's my college essay. I said, well, actually, you can say kids because that's what you called these people. But while there were words, there's children as campers, there's teens, there were no, we kind of brainstormed all kinds of words that would have felt more like him. But when the father said youths that was, of course, an accurate word, but not one that went with the flow of the essay or felt like the students voice. No, and it's it's it Ronnie said something a minute ago that that I wrote down, which was, it's not an English paper. And I think one of the conundrums of this assignment is we're inviting students to write an essay or a short statement that is personal in nature, but it's not a critical paper. You haven't just read the great Gatsby and have to dissect it for its thematic content. And I think, you know, it's an interesting transition from what they do in high school. When the teacher does have a red pen to mark it up and make comments correct it to this is something very personal. And I would say as a takeaway from this point we're making to listeners, you don't want to overthink it. You do want these responses to be authentic in a student's voice. And that's a formal that they, you know, you want to have a thesis and you want us to learn something about you, but you don't need to be thinking about it as the assignment for your English literature class or your US history class. I often only tell students that most students in most high schools learn about a five paragraph essay. And I explained to them that a college essay doesn't have to be a five paragraph essay. But similarly, it should have a beginning, middle and end. It should have a well developed story. It should come to a point at the end that there's a takeaway. And so I feel like the college essay is a good place to use the skills that they've learned in high school, but then kind of adapt and use the ones that feel most relevant to them as they tell their story. Yeah. And what, and we bring the two of you back to your days on my side of the desk when you were reading files and Ronnie was saying, oh, another one. Like we have to summarize the essay, right? I mean, the, the point that I often share when I do a program in a high school is, what do you want me to know? Like when I finish reading it and I'm taking notes, that 650 words gets distilled down to a nugget. That helps me introduce you later. And I think that point gets lost to like you want to you want to ask yourself as you write these four or five six paragraphs. When I'm done, what do I know now? Right? I mean, what's the takeaway from what you shared? And if it's, or a camp counselor, OK. But like what a lot of people can say that, like what is it about being a camp counselor? That adds to my understanding of you as an applicant or a member of the class I'm trying to build those two statements that you just made about what you know and earlier when you talked about like what's your, what's your thesis? That's the, that's really why writing an essay is difficult because we often when you're 17 in your begin this, you begin this process, you often think about stories because it is so nice to have a really good story tell. But in reality, the story you tell, you're telling that story because you're making a point and what you should do first is actually sit down and think about what lead just said, what do I want this college to know about me? You know, when we help kids brainstorm, we talk about values and about experiences that define you and about those sort of central core beliefs and world views and things like that. And that is not like we don't go home after work and sit around and think of like what are my core values today? That's not a natural thing that we do on a daily basis, but that's kind of what you have to do before you write and the nice thing about beginning it with that sort of what I want to tell them that's important to me is that once you kind of have those two or three things in mind, then it's a lot easier to think of stories that can kind of highlight those sorts of central values. I think a lot of times kids begin the process and put the cart before the horse or whatever that old saying is saying is that they try to think of stories first before they really think of what am I trying to tell the college about myself? Yeah. And it seems so simple, but what I'm learning is we have these conversations on the pod is that's a harder question than it seems to a high school senior. I'm thinking about some memorable essays that I've read over time and sometimes they don't start with that core question, although I agree with Ronnie that that's kind of the best place to start. I remember an essay that a student once wrote about going on a roller coaster and he was really, really scared and I remember like feeling it with him how scared he was, but yet he survived, but as he was going up up up up up up and dreading coming back down the hill and whatever. And the takeaways from that were about being a risk taker and trying something new and there were all sorts of messages in it that I don't think with the original intent of the essay. He really wanted to talk about this time he went on the roller coaster ride, but in the end what made the essay so powerful is that there were all these other kinds of things that the reader could take away from it. It was really true to who he was, but it wasn't where his starting point. Yeah, does the essay connect to other parts of the file. You know, is it like a Lego that you could connect to the transcript or to the testing and do you do admission officers see ties to the other pieces or does it stand alone. I think it can go either way. I think content wise, sometimes a student is screaming, I'm a dancer and I want to be a dancer and I love dance. And so they've done any dance classes that their high school might offer and their activities are filled with dance and they write their essay about something that happened with dance. So sometimes there were themes or patterns, but other times that student who everything is screaming dance says, but you know what they're going to know I'm a dancer. So I want to write my essay about California that I took that just as a whole different story about a different experience. Yeah, I went over it about frogs. Yeah, it was. I was talking to a first year, the other day, which I bumped into her and she said, I wrote my essay about playing in the mud. I said, I know, I remember it. And she framed her story around her emerging interest in archaeology and she said, I just love the dirt. And I said, in that sentence was interesting. So Sherry had said, kids worry about, are they telling the right story? So Ronnie, like, when someone comes into your office and says, am I telling the right story? What's your advice on that one? - Lee, don't give me the hard questions. That's a tough question to answer. The essays that I love seem so effortless that it feels like the threshold is very low. Like it's just an introduction of who you are. And sometimes kids seemingly do that effortlessly. Those kids that sit down on like 45 minutes, they pound out the roller coaster essay that just works on every level. Like the litmus test is that someone who knows you well reads it and they're like, Ronnie, that is so you, right? Like you have to think of that sort of show you moment. And for some kids, it is pretty effortless. And for others, it's amazing because you have to kind of, like, who am I? Sometimes they're sweet and sometimes they're funny and sometimes they're heroic, whatever happens to be. But I say it knowing that for a lot of kids, it's an absolute struggle. And to try to capture yourself is difficult. In 650 words, it feels very difficult. - Yeah. Well, I would debunk the, if I had for diagramming that sentence, I would circle right and say, there's not a right story or a wrong story. It's your story and something that feels germane to you as a way of introducing yourself is worth sharing. And I would say stop pondering what's right. And the way this comes to me a lot is, well, what do you want to know? And I say back, I don't know. Like tell me what you want me to know. Don't try and answer the question from the perspective of the reader. What is the reader? I'd the reader wants to know whatever you're typing that gives me some way of understanding. And I wonder too, Ronnie, if, I've known you a long time, you and I are both very verbal. We read books, we like to talk. But there are a lot of people who are more science-oriented and I'm wondering for the stemmy part of our group, if they come to the essay and think, this is not my place to shine. - Some of them also did a really cool lab experiment. - Yeah, right. - To talk about it, they had this great summer opportunity for they, I actually read an essay a few years ago about a student who had a summer internship, and never thought about scientists as people who could be out in a pond. He always thought of science as something you do with a white lab coat on. Then he had an opportunity to learn from someone about environmental science, and it just kind of changed his thinking about science. - Yeah. - And that was a pretty cool topic. - Yeah. - What you have to do is pick something that you really love, and that sort of excitement always seems to shine through. The other thing, it's just struck me that, I'm gonna call the roller coaster essay, like an action-packed, exciting essay, and I'm gonna call the plane in the mud. Like I imagine that essay being about a little kid playing in the mud, and then talking about how that grew up into her adult, or her young adult interest. For every, you know, for all of us who have read literally thousands of essays, thinking about the ones that we still remember years and years later, for every exciting essay that I remember, I also remember just as many of those really kind of human moments with family and with their path, and you know, like things that are completely mundane that were just as memorable because they were lovely, and they were lovely introductions about who you were. I think sometimes we feel as though it needs to be heroic or exciting or dramatic, but in reality, it's just a, it's such a wide spectrum of stories, because, you know, humans are that wide spectrum. So. - Yeah. - I think also related to two things that, to something that you both alluded to, I think students sometimes overthink or try to guess who their audience is going to be. When you said the what do I want to hear? They have this image of what an admissions counselor looks like, and despite the admissions counselors that we bring in all the time to meet with our students, they have this image probably from a movie that the person is gonna have a particular look or interest, and I tell them, you don't know if you're gonna write a essay about meeting a sports hero, and they're also gonna be a sports fan, where you're gonna write an essay about meeting a sports star, and they're gonna say, "Oh, I really hate sports, but let me get to know this kid." The person is a theater kid and so are you that maybe you'll find a point of empathy or common interest in your reader, or maybe not, but it's the reader's job as a professional to have that separation, and but the students are often thinking about, when I mention about, is it the right topic? Is it the topic that the admissions counselor is gonna get excited about? And of course, they can't know that. - Yeah, and the thing that surprises people, friends when they talk about my job, and they're like, "So you read all these essays?" And I say, "You know, it is interesting, and I've learned things from high school seniors." I remember one last year I was reading, and the kid was writing about mushrooms, and she was a biology-oriented student, and my college, which I had to look it up, (laughs) was an area of focus, and I was like, "This kid is legit, "like this interest in mushrooms is in fungi, "more broadly, was. " I learned a lot, and I thought she's really smart, and she's telling me something I didn't know, and I think to your point, Sherry, I don't need to like the topic, or understand the topic, to appreciate its content, and to be able to make the, I mean, the other way I would say an essay kind of sits in this file is, there's data, which I think most people think about grades and testing when they think about college admission, that data piece kind of leads the parade, and the story, or the voice, is to me equally important, especially when you work in a place like the one where I am, where most of the people have the data that tells me they could do the work, and the art of my job is less about being an accountant running a bunch of numbers, and more about the shaping of a community based on the narratives that pop out of a file, and I think to the students who are kind of starting to think about this part of their file, give it some thought, the way you put a spotlight on something, and you have to be gimmicky, you have to represent yourself. Is that, am I, am I words smithing too much, or does that distinction make sense, Ronnie? - I agree. - You agree. (laughing) - Yes, I agree. - I agree. - So, okay, what, so, and let's just be, you know, needy-gritty first sex. So, the writing lives in the personal statements, so whether you're on the common app, the coalition app, a quest for jab, kind of the institutional app you're applying to Georgetown and they have their own, you have to write a long form, five, six, 700 word piece, and then there's often supplements that go along with it. So, let's guide our listeners through the distinction between those two things. So, the long form essay that someone's writing, which I think gets all of the angsty attention, one piece of writing goes everywhere, right? Like, what's your advice to your seniors, about the long form? - I wanna first reiterate the joy of the common application, not that I don't find joy in school-specific applications, but if a school has signed on to the common app, first and foremost, this is a stressful process and write your personal statement, loaded into the common app, and unless you find some egregious typo, let it live there as you apply to your reasonable list of schools. In a stressful process, sometimes that stress bubbles out into like, maybe I should change my essay according to the school, and I don't like that sort of added anxiety in a process that's already very anxious. And so, write your long essay, loaded into your personal statement, and send it to all of the schools because that's the whole point of the common application. In addition to that personal introduction that you've given to all of those schools, schools will often ask supplemental questions that are specific to them. Those very widely, they tend to be in kind of broad categories sometimes. A common question is about an activity that you've been involved in. And so, if you, allows you to elaborate something that you've listed in your activities grid, often it's a question about why are you interested in me? And so, I am a university or college, and I'd like to know how you found me and why you're interested in me. And then the other questions are just additional questions about your interesting curiosities and experiences. And so, you know, everything from five words to describe you or the books that you've read or your top 10 list, what it happens to be, those are all just additional questions about getting to know you. And I think college is you can tell us like you guys must brainstorm every spring like what like what good question can we ask these kids to get some good interesting sort of insights into them. And you know, we see that, we understand that colleges are trying to pry into their lives and get more information that they wouldn't get out of just the common application. And so, yeah. And sometimes schools have none, and sometimes schools have 20 other sort of additional questions. We have three. We have the wide-dark math question that you have to do. We have an identity themed question about, you know, what perspective do you bring to this campus we're trying to build. And then we have a question where we said of these six pick one and answer it in 250 words. So we'll come back to work kind of a sec. But, you know, to your question about interesting questions, one of them this year is celebrate your nerdy side. Yeah, wherever that goes, it goes. You know, we have my love of mushrooms. Mushrooms. Exactly. Yeah, we had one a couple years ago is what makes you happy. And someone said to me, that's such a simple question. I said, it's a very complicated question. But it puts a spotlight on happiness as a quality we are trying to amplify as we go through this admission process. And I think it's there also is really following what the question is following the directions, but really answering the question. Yeah. What makes you happy? The answer could be mushrooms because I already wrote this other essay on mushrooms and trying to reconfigure and make it fit. Why do I want to go to this school? Oh, because I heard this some mushrooms out in the, you know, neighboring fields. I think students sometimes try in the interest of stress and speed and other things to make things fit. But when I read answers to supplemental questions, especially, I am really looking to make sure that they've answered the question specifically to what that school has asked, rather than writing a generic thing or a common thing, if you will, to try to take it. Yeah. Yeah. I would, I would frame these two things as you've got the common app as kind of a universal writing prompt. Everyone gets the same thing and you've told your story and there it is. And then the sub is the local version. So, you know, for the 900 plus of us on the on the common app, it's a way of saying, here are some questions tailored more specifically to this campus and the class we're trying to build. You know, years ago I worked at Connecticut College and on our supplement, there was a question about the honor code because it was a college governed by a self-governing honor code and we asked students to reflect on what that honor code represented as they imagined their undergraduate experience. And that was a really conspecific question that gave us insight into that conceptual framing of the campus. And so, you know, these questions can do lots of different things. Are there any topics that are off limits? There used to be, it was at the five D's. I don't know if I can remember the. Yes, divorce destruction. But drugs. Drugs probably. Yeah, we can probably come up with some other D's also. Some of those topics actually can be okay. But I think to think of those categories in general that are really, really personal might not belong in a college essay. And also something that's maybe a little too provocative. I read an essay when I worked in college admissions about a student's first relationship, let's say. And I really didn't need to know too much detail about that student's first relationship. I also remember reading one about a public bathroom that I really didn't need to read about it. And maybe there was some good content in them about growth experiences and overcoming challenges and things like that. But the content and topics themselves were really not appropriate for an adult audience making a decision about college admission. Years and years ago, unfortunately, too many years ago, when I was in my 20s, my best friend was on a dating app. And she had this series of first dates, many of which ended in disaster. They were just disastrous. But one of her first dates, she had matched with a person. They had met in public. They read a restaurant. And within about 15 or 20 minutes, their initial first meeting, the guy lifts his t-shirt up and says something along the lines of, so he has a little bit of a belly, right? He says something along the lines of, if this is going to work, you have to accept me for who I am. So I use that story with one of my advisees because let's unpack that really fast. So my friend, beautiful woman, but her expectations were reasonable. Most men in America don't have six pack abs, right? It was a deal breaker that he might have had a bit of a beer gut, right? But what was so weird is that in the first 15 minutes, they just met their in public. And he lifts his shirt to say, if you can't accept me for who I am, then this is not going to work. Now, what he said is true. Like, we all have to accept people for their, you know, proposing cons, but you don't in the very first introduction, you don't want to lift your shirt and show your belly. It's just weird. It's just inappropriate and way too much personal information about yourself in the introduction. You just met. There's just no need to do that. With that in mind, I want to pivot to two topics that are in the news that kind of connect back to storytelling. So the first is the Supreme Court. So in June, the Supreme Court ruled that race, the use of race and college admission was unconstitutional. So the ruling said, the court expressly recognized the legitimacy of considering an applicant skills knowledge, or character related qualities of the rise from quote experiences as an individual. That may or may not be associated with the racial identities. So as we kind of go into this cycle, we're a student of color, or from an underrepresented background, may want to share their identity and its life experience. How does that play through an essay now, Ronnie? How are you counseling students to use the writing prompt short or long to kind of bring this really essential part of their identity into their storytelling? In many ways, I think you just answered it. I think it is often an essential part of your identity. And it has shaped many of not all, but certainly has shaped some of the experiences in your life. And I think that's fair to share. It's part of who you are. And I was in a session, we just came back from a professional conference. I was in a session, and I want to repeat something that someone said, sometimes when we think about identity in America, it's often thought about as a struggle or as, because there are struggles, that's legitimate. But it can also be a celebration, right? There are beautiful things about your identity that are amazing and wonderful. And I'm just as central to who you are and your experiences and the values that shape you. And so, relaying that to a college, I think it's completely fair. The college may not be able to ask you that, but you can absolutely share that sort of background and experience. Colleges collect a variety of interest and people and backgrounds and love diversity in every way. And so explaining to a college your specific background, regardless of what that happens to be, is completely fair. That's part of your introduction of who you are. Yep. Well, this topic has been in the news a lot, but for many years before the Supreme Court decision, there was a question on the common app. One of the prompts that some students have a background identity interest or talent that is so meaningful, they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. Yeah. So in a lot of ways, this isn't a new prompt or a new idea. It's possible that how colleges may use it might take a turn and leave maybe you could comment on that. But the idea of sharing something about identity and background is not a new one. That question's been on here for quite a while. Yeah, that's right. And to me, it's, it goes back to the quaker saying, "Let your life speak." Yeah. And you alone know what your life is saying. So how do you share that? And I think in light of the new legal guidelines, this is your lane to introduce yourself in whatever way feels relevant to the way we get to meet you. You know, since students are writing essays right now, I'm wondering about AI as a writing tool. And even on an early September, the New York Times had two stories kind of pondering artificial intelligence and its application in the college application process. And what the article said, some students say they're using using the tools to suggest personal essay topics or help structure their writing. Others are prompting the AI tools to generate rough drafts for their application essays or to edit their pieces. College counselors, is this a good idea? - I was at the same professional conference that Ronnie alluded to before from the National Association for College Admission Counseling. And I said in an excellent thought-provoking session about the use of AI, it made me think a little bit about when in the 80s, let's say, or 90s, students started using word processors and all of a sudden it was spell check. And it was, oh, no, no, no, you have to look up the word in the dictionary and you have to check for spelling. You can't let the computer do it for you. And now of course that's part of what's acceptable and even very appropriate and expected behavior. And I felt in listening to the session that that's where we're going to get with AI. The speakers talked about how we even right now, if you're typing an email in a lot of systems, the computer will suggest how you want to finish the email. And that's a form of using AI that we don't really think about because that's become more natural. The part that gets me is that at the end of the common application and many other applications, there's a question that says to students, is this your own work? And right now I think some of the ways that we think about AI lend themselves to not truly being the students' own work. And that gives me some hesitancy. So that's kind of where I sit on it. There was an interesting question that one of the presenters posed of we think about having the computer start. What about if a student wrote an essay that was 800 words and said to AI, hey, cut this to 650? So it's still the student's original words. What about doing it that way? The good news is the person actually tried it and the computer couldn't do it or couldn't do it well. So maybe for now, there's some hope. But there are just so many directions in which this new technology is going to go. I just keep coming back to the student's voice, the authenticity of both the writing and the language and the content and feel that probably we're not yet at a point where students should be relying on it. - Yeah, what's my Southern writer, Francai? - Well, it's an amazing tool. And to pretend as though they're not going to use it as naive. It's spelled checked, as Sherry just said. And so the examples that you gave, if it's a brainstorming tool or if it's to help you prove, I don't actually have any problems with that. The problem is that we're asking for a personal introduction to you and AI is only as good as the content that you give it. And unless you've written your autobiography and can feed it to AI and then say, hey, read about me and then give me a great 650 word essay about this amazing person who I am, right? It's just not gonna be the introduction of who you are because you're not just, you're just not gonna be able to give it enough information to produce an essay that's an introduction to you. And if you are, then just write your essay, right? (laughing) If you're not talented, just write 650 words about yourself. So you don't want AI to generate an essay about someone other than you. You want it to be your introduction and out of fairness to who you are and your lived experiences, you need to write it, right? And if you use AI as a brainstorming tool or as an editing tool, fine, but it's a disservice to yourself if you allow AI to create a person that you're not. - Yeah, yeah. And I think back to the question I posed, like why do we ask for writing? I mean, it's a form of introduction, but it's also a proof point as students come into a college environment that you're able to write. That's a skill that humans have had and need to continue to develop and celebrate. And it's that talent of putting your thoughts into words. To me, remain something essential. And I wrote in my journal the other day, 'cause I keep a journal, of course. I wrote, I don't know that I want to outsource the way I think and write to a computer. But then I think, look at maybe I'm just, like all of us, I'm a refugee from the 20th century and maybe I just need to rethink the tool. And I think the spell check example is a really thoughtful one ahead that hadn't occurred to me before. And I think it's the right. But sorry, in summary, as we wrap this episode, any final thoughts from either of you to our seniors or to parents, is there kind of looking over the keyboard at kid who is doing something? Any final thoughts about how to navigate the art of narrative in college admission process? - Some of the things that comes up a lot for my students is they love that there's an open question about sharing an essay on the topic of your choice. And I have found that most essays are better when a student actually has a topic, whether they follow one of the prompts that Common App suggests, which is usually what I suggest they do. Or if they wanted to topic of your choice to actually write out a prompt for themselves of what is the topic, those types make stronger essays. Several years ago, the Common App eliminated that question for a few years. And I thought overall the essays were better because the prompts give you some structure and framing for where are you going and help you set it up. If you're a senior, then you're already on the timeline with deadlines that will approach in November and January, et cetera. But if you happen to be listening and you're either the parent of a junior or a junior younger, one of my favorite things for students to do isn't necessarily to spend their entire summer between their junior and senior year working on their applications. They can if they'd like to get ahead start. But I think it's really wise at the very end of your junior year to kind of read those prompts that Sherry just mentioned and kind of start the brainstorming process and then give yourself over the summer when you're not in class probably and when you have some downtime. To, you know, you lay in bed at night before you fall asleep and you ponder those big questions that we're asking of you, who are you? What is important to you? What are the values that have shaped you? And not do that under the time crunch of an application is about to be due in a week. But to give yourself weeks, months to kind of ponder that and then when you have some good ideas, then sit down at a keyboard and actually type. Another litmus test is that if I'm attempting to tell you a story and I pound it out in an hour, that's a good sign as opposed to I'm staring at my computer and I'd like to tell you this story and I really don't have that much to say. And so giving yourself that sort of time to ponder and wonder and think is the gift of the summer between your junior and senior year. Yeah. And I thought of one more thing as you were saying that and that's that the essay is only 650 words. I think sometimes students hear about this college essay and they think they're writing a dissertation. Yeah. Most high school students, perhaps all high school students that are in the application process have written a page and a half paper before. And although it takes on a different level of importance, the questions and prompts are really not that difficult. The things that 17 year olds could answer and if they were given this as an assignment in English class or in class essay and just told to sit and write it without the pressures of is this gonna affect my college admission decision? I think they really wouldn't find it to be that hard. So to maybe think about the topics in that way of just if I had given this, if I had this prompt, what was the topic, what would I say? And often that can lead to a really great college essay with a lot less stress. Well, as always, so fun to have the two of you on admission beat again, I hope you'll come back. Thank you. (upbeat music) So every once in a while, an oldie but goodie is worth sharing again. And I think this conversation that Ronnie and Sherry and I had two years ago stood the test of time and is still really wonderful advice to the high school class of 26 as it was for the class of 24. And then the spirit of going into the attic and finding a treasure that's worth sharing, we're gonna do it again next week. And when my friends Jeremy, my equivalent from Yale and Emily Roper-Dotin from Brandeis will reappear on admission beat for a rebroadcast of a conversation we had about data and how you assess a transcript and testing as part of a student's file. So that's next week. When we come back for now, this is Leak Off from From Dartmouth College. Thanks so much for listening. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]