Thursday, October 2, 2014
College app system
The last few days I have solely worked on the college application process. While working on the surveys, essays, and transcript forms necessary to apply, I question every aspect of the process. First, how much is a rec letter actually worth? whether it is from your counselor or a teacher. While filling out the extremely long and tedious questionnaire that will "help" my counselor write a rec letter for me, I constantly kept thinking of how much of this will he really put into the letter. Also, does the college board even care or read deeply into this letter he is writing? If I am giving him all this information, what would it matter if I just wrote a self-recommendation letter, would there really be a difference? The other thing that I have struggled to feel comfortable on is the decision of a major. I know that it is easy to change majors once at the school, but senior year, for me at least, is full of classes that could very well influence my decision of a major. Then there are the essays. These "personalized" questions are supposed to give college admissions people a look at who you really are. But there is no way to get everything out in a single story, or a 600 word maximum prompt. And do they even take these seriously, for the common app a simple click can send the essay to any college that accepts the common app. This has increased the amount of applicants insanely. So, do they really look into these? how much does it mean? I feel like I have been educated to believe it is all GPA and ACT.
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I agree Joe. This sucks.
ReplyDeleteYeah I agree, they always say they have a holistic approach, but it seems hard to do so with only a few outlets for personal writing. And of course, if they were to have more personal writing opportunities, that might be worse because we would be even more overwhelmed with work. Its a tough system.
ReplyDeleteI agree Joe, the college application system is tough and unfair. Although many schools claim they look at the whole package, most of them don't.
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly how I feel about Naviance. I found out Thursday that I needed to finish it that night so I could turn in early application school transcript requests Friday so I basically spent my whole night finishing it and only did one subject of homework. And what did I write 1500 frickin words in response to ridiculously open-ended questions? No matter how much my counselor likes me, she has tons of students to write letters for, and to me that just sounds painful to be in her position. It just sounds like a bad deal for everyone.
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