The spread of the web-based
Common Application has made it easy for kids to apply to dozens of colleges. So colleges have tried to winnow out the
looky-loos by demanding ever more supplementary essays specific to each college. That’s sensible supply-and-demand thinking, but the essays’ topics—or, to be accurate, topic— is always: Write about … Me! Once in college, you are graded on writing about what you’ve learned. But to get in, you must first expound in the approved manner on your innermost feelings, something difficult for teenagers with healthy levels of self-consciousness and self-respect. Ferguson asks:
"I’d interviewed a dozen admissions professionals who slagged the SAT, looked for ways to expel it from the process altogether, on the grounds that it couldn’t accurately measure qualities that might make a kid a successful college student. But what qualities does the Me Essay measure?"
He answers:
"Narcissism, exhibitionism, Uriah Heepish insincerity, and the unwholesome thrill that some people get from gyrating before strangers. Which of these traits, I wondered, predicted scholarly aptitude or academic success?"
Not surprisingly, the Me Essays encourages embroidery:
"If you’re uncomfortable writing about your inner life, and if your outer life has been happy and free of character-forming catastrophe … then you’ve got one option: make it up. … You can bend your life into a dramatic arc that it’s never had, in a voice that isn’t yours."
Or, of course, you can just pay somebody to concoct your inner self for you. Last week, I heard from one tiger mom who attributed her daughter’s success in getting accepted by famous colleges to the $1,500 she paid a consultant to more or less write her daughter’s essay about the Real Me.
