Write Us an Essay,
Buster, and Make It
Interesting--or Else
* * *
Your Fervent Desire to Meet
Abe Lincoln Won't Get
You Into Best Colleges
By Andrew B. Cohen
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
Aristotle wrote, "The Good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim." Alexander Woolcott said, "Everything good in the world is either immoral, illegal or fattening." Who's right? Or are the two views in agreement? If not, what accounts for the implied dispute?
Sharpen your pencils. Get ready. Go.
If you can write a thoughtful, well-reasoned response to the above problem, you just might earn one of the more coveted prizes in academia: admittance to this fall's freshman class at the University of Chicago.
There are many hurdles to clear on the way to Prestige U., and one is answering the offbeat essay questions that appear on some schools' undergraduate admissions applications. The University of Pennsylvania has this one: "You have just completed your 300-page autobiography. Please submit page 217." Stanford requires applicants to "jot a note telling your future roommate what to expect from you in the coming year," while Smith College asks, " If you were forced to live with only three items, which items would you choose and why?"
GETTING BEYOND NUMBERS
Other schools look for scope. "If you could introduce one new idea or material thing to a primitive culture, what would it be?" asks the College of the Atlantic, in Bar Harbor, Maine. Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., asks, "If you could change any event in the course of history, what would you change and why?"