Weekly News Archive

November 28 (’04) – December 4 (’04)

Application Reflections

Recently I’ve been embroiled in the morass usually called “college applications,” though you could describe it better with harsher language. Depending on the person, this can be anything from a solemn rite of passage to a halfway-disregarded pain in the neck, or even not done at all. (My situation is unorthodox, but somewhere close to the first.)

In truth, I hadn’t expected to find the process so distasteful. The essence is that you’re approaching a variety of institutions with your hands held out in supplication, and saying, “Here’s my entire life, of 18 years or so, summarized in a few pages. Here’s everything about me that might appeal to your Process. Please judge me as a human being; judge my existence and tell me if I’ve lived in a suitable manner. I’ll give you some money for it. It’s no problem; after all, my ultimate goal is to pay you a lot more of it.”

My intention isn’t to start a debate on the relevance of college or its pros and cons. Folks end up going to a massive range of schools, and their eventual happiness — both while in attendance and afterwards, later in life — seems to be linked to very few recognizable factors. And some folks opt not to do it at all. It’s a mess, basically, and much like life, it’s rarely possible to predict the way things will shake out ahead of time.

But right now, it’s just applications, just lots of paper and pixels to burn, and there’s very little to say for it except that it sucks. What I’m made to understand is that the approach here is basically to build yourself an appealing, cohesive image, which you will use the different elements of the application to support. The essay, the background information, the “short answers,” all are tools with which you try to push the idea that you’re a “very bright and motivated student from a disadvantaged household who excels in football and participates in leadership activities, and manages to juggle all of these using the power of his faith.” Or whatever. So naturally, the impression becomes that everything you’ve ever done that was interesting or admirable or productive or human was all done with the sole intention of improving your image. It’s like retroactive shallowness.

The truth, of course, is that for some people, this is exactly the case: Most of their conscious lives have been lived in a way carefully modeled to create an appealing college-bound humanoid. They walk, talk, and breathe this, and the application process is the culmination of essentially everything they’ve ever attempted or achieved. I respect this for the discipline required, though I loathe that it’s generally done only at the behest of very creepy and vicariously-overachieving parents rather than any real desire on the part of the student. In any case, it’s not me.

My own profile is a little bit strange, mostly because I’ve spent the majority of high school not really “doing” school—that is to say, I generally attend class, do most of the necessary work, but by and large, I’ve kept my neck above water by coasting on natural ability. It’s pretty well accepted that some really excellent individuals can perform near-flawless using only ability, or others with only hard work, but for most, you’ve got to have both in order to break the “moderately good” barrier and hit “excellent.” I never put the work out to do that because I never cared.

The irony is that, objectively speaking, this may actually be a good strategy. Selective schools nowadays have such a massive pool of really outstanding applicants that the standards for good academics are both very high and very frequently achieved. 4.0+ GPAs and perfect SAT scores are not only common, they’re also just as likely to be “outdated” next week by 5.0s and SAT scores that somehow exceed flawless. So maybe uniqueness in an applicant, someone who really does break the mold, is truly more appealing than someone who tries to be just a little more perfect than everyone else.

Or maybe the people who get accepted are the ones who are both perfect and unique. There are a hell of a lot of prospective students out there, and there’s probably no standard that’s too high to still net a classful.

Maybe they just flip a coin, roll a die, and call it a day.

Anyway. Just for kittens, I’ve made my main essay (or “personal statement”) available here. Any applicants should feel free to lift ideas. Anyone else can draw whatever amusement they please from it. Download here, PDF format.

On on unrelated and cheerier matter: One of the better student resources I’ve discovered in the course of maintaining this site is something I ran into several weeks ago — Purplemath.com. It’s an algebra help site created by a philanthropithic math professor, and it has a plethora of guides and lessons that walks the burgeoning (or struggling) student through concepts, problem-solving tips, and even links to yet more sources. The best part is that it’s written comfortably and with a focus on actually solving problems, something that other help guides and even your math class may not do. Learning the background, theory, and conceptual definition of an idea is great, but if you don’t also learn how to actually get the answer, you can end up wanting to tear your hair out.

A great resource, especially for those evening-before-the-test-and-haven’t-studied-at-all moments. And “algebra” is pretty loosely defined, so they’ve got material that will apply to many curricula. Check it out; it’ll be on the Links page in a bit, too.

Want to know something really cool? This is the 101st news post on this site. I missed 100, obviously, which is a shame; I’d rather that the 100th have been more dramatic, or at least more interesting, than a harried notification about things breaking, but I guess it goes how it goes. In any case, this is pretty darned cool, and I’m pretty pleased that this godforsaken site is still alive and kicking.

— Brandon

Under Attack

A quick heads-up — in the last couple of days, this site has been under siege from a spam attack, which has flooded the news comments with advertisements for online poker, internet gambling, and so forth. Bad mojo, both annoying and serving to make the real comments more difficult for the reader to find. I’ve been running around like Chicken Little, trying to caulk the holes and delete the intruders, but it’s frankly beyond my means; as a result, I’m shutting down the commenting system for the time being.

With any luck, those responsible will get bitten by rabid dogs or something, or at least move on to a more interesting target. Until then, attempting to post comments will result in an error page. You can still read already-posted comments.

If anyone has a really insightful suggestion for dealing with this that’s less stupid than this scorched earth method, please drop me an email and pass it along.

UPDATE: Comments have been switched back on, tentatively.

— Brandon