Three or Four Hints About Essays (Reposted)

We received this essay two years ago, in response to a prompt that asked students to choose and describe a logo that encapsulates who they are:

Logos are symbols that are used to describe or stand for objects, places, or people. If I were to choose a logo for myself it would be a boat.

One reason I would choose my logo to be a boat is because I love to fish and most of the time when I go fishing it takes place on a boat. I try to go fishing on my boat as often as I can. I usually go out every weekend and if I have free time after school I don’t mind going in the late afternoon. My favorite fishing is waking up early and going way offshore. I like this best because the fish are bigger.

Another reason I would choose a boat as my logo is that I’d much rather drive a boat than a car. …

And so it went on — for five well-organized but tough-to-wade-through paragraphs. After reading it, we knew that this student liked his boat. But we didn’t know much else about him.

Now here's an excerpt from a different essay — one that left a different impression.

It seemed like everything exciting in the world was about to happen to you when you were ten. Even in the books I read, ten-year-olds seemed always about to embark on some new adventure. Wendy from Peter Pan was ten. So was Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, and Anne in Anne of Green Gables. Secretly I had a feeling that life would now start being like a book, full of humor and excitement. I was ten years old, and I thought I could do anything. Well, no, that’s not true. I knew I could do anything.

This student was writing in response to a prompt that asked, “What advice would you give to a ten-year-old?” She ended like this:

Keep that feeling, that confidence, as long as you can. It’s a way of looking at things that makes the whole world seem as if it’s just a little more brightly colored, a little more gentle. If you don’t know the odds, you may find yourself accomplishing anything.

Where did this essay succeed where the Boat essay fell short? Here are three ideas about these two essays, and about essays in general.

1. Voice matters as much as content. Good essays sound as though they were written by real people — ideally, smart, curious, good-hearted people.

2. Little is better than big. Small subjects close at hand are better than big subjects that are beyond any writer’s grasp. Students are tempted to write about big things, about ultimate experiences — the best thing that ever happened to me; the worst thing that ever happened to me. Almost no one can write well about this kind of thing, and students should generally steer clear.

3. Others are better than self. Not everyone shares this view. In fact we often advise students that the essay is a chance to say something about themselves — preferably something winning and definitive. But in my view this is really a tall order for any student, and in fact it’s something of a curse. It’s the rare writer and the rarer seventeen-year-old who can write self-consciously in this way. Better to write about something else, especially since we learn a lot about others by listening to them talk about something not themselves.

To illustrate this point, here’s a third essay from two years ago. The prompt read: “Describe a mistake you’ve seen some leader make.”

Head over heels, my grandfather entered the grave. He was merely ashes at that point, stored in a modest cardboard box. Before his death, he was a dedicated minister and teacher. Despite this, the pastor in charge of the internment ceremony bent down slightly and tossed Granddaddy into the hole. The priest let gravity take my grandfather three feet down when he was supposed to be ensuring a journey many miles upward.

I watched disbelief spread like a wave around the circle of family members. Their eyes fixated on the hole as my grandfather bumped and tumbled into his final resting place like a man in a barrel going over Niagara Falls.

The pastor was the leader of the ceremony, the emcee of mourning and remembrance. …

“The emcee of mourning and remembrance”: I wish I'd written those words. Wouldn’t we all want to teach this student? Wouldn’t we want to learn alongside her?

Three ideas: Voice as much as content. Little better than big. Others better than self.

And this fourth one: stories help. If you get stuck, tell us a story. Humans are suckers for stories, because our stories tell us something about ourselves, and because our stories matter.

--Stephen Farmer

(Reposted, with a few changes, from October 2008.)

Pardon Our Dust

Next week will mark a turning point for our office and for the University, as we go live with a new administrative system called ConnectCarolina.

Eventually, ConnectCarolina will provide a consistent environment for online interaction with UNC-Chapel Hill. Prospective and current students will use it heavily, as will faculty and staff.

For now, prospective undergraduate students will be using the system to apply for admission, check the status of their applications, and register for campus tours and other events.

We hope the new system will make it easier for you to interact with us over the course of the coming year. We also hope you’ll bear with us as we work through any problems we might face.

Although we’ve built ConnectCarolina carefully and believe it’s ready to go, we know we’ll need to keep tinkering with it for months to come. So please pardon our dust -- and as always, please let us know how we may serve you better.

--Stephen Farmer

What's Your Life Goal?

I spent much of last week on vacation with my family, which includes our dog Samwise, shown here in mid-retrieve.

On the ride home, our daughter told us about a conversation she’d recently had with two of her fourth-grade friends about something they called their “life goals.”

“Jenny’s life goal is to try mahi-mahi,” she said. When we asked her why mahi-mahi, she thought for a minute. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “Maybe because she’s never tasted it.”

She went on to tell us about John, whose life goal is either to get a minifridge or to become a garbage collector -- the latter, we were told, "because he just likes the stench."

People who work in admissions like to talk about "passion," which I suppose is our word for "life goal." It's not a word I'm fond of, mainly because students tend to hear it not as passion but as Passion -- something cosmic, final, and fantastic, rather than something familiar, provisional, and real.

We ask about your passion not so that we can weigh your aspirations, much less pass judgment upon them. Rather, we ask because we long to know who you are.

Whatever drives or intrigues you -- whether it's medicine or monetary theory, travelling or retrieving, gustation or refrigeration or sanitation -- is exactly what we hope you'll show us should you choose to apply to Carolina.

In the meantime, please know that we wish you all the best.

--Stephen Farmer

Why We Care About Schedule Changes--And Why You Should, Too

Each year around this time--just after we've posted first-deadline decisions--we start hearing from students who want to change their senior schedules.

We completely understand why students who’ve just been admitted to Carolina may want to celebrate by lightening their load. But we think that these schedule changes are generally a bad idea, for three reasons.

First—if you’ll excuse the analogy—getting ready for college is very much like getting ready for the Olympics: if you want to do your best, you have to keep training. If Michael Phelps had stopped swimming eight months before Beijing, he probably would have still made it to the end of the pool. But he’d also probably be eight medals shy of where he is today.

Second, changing schedules after you’ve been admitted isn’t fair to the 8,807 students who haven’t been admitted. When we read applications, strength of curriculum weighs heavily in our decisions. When admitted students decide to drop a course or two, they undermine one of the main reasons why we offered them admission in the first place.

Which leads to Third: when admitted students change their schedules without first receiving permission from us, they run the risk of having their admission revoked.

Not all schedule changes are equal. Shifting from Basketweaving to Knitting is one thing; dropping AP Calculus is another. Regardless, students who’ve been admitted, or students who have an application that we’re still considering, need to write to us before they make the change, so that we can help them sort out the possible consequences.

If you’re considering changing your schedule for the upcoming semester, please email us at schedule@admissions.unc.edu. Include your original schedule, what you’re adding/dropping, and a brief explanation for the change. We promise to get back to you within two business days.

--Stephen Farmer

Next Steps

As many of you already know, we're posting first-deadline decisions today at 4 pm. This simple act--turning a switch, really--will be the culmination of three months of intensive effort on the part of the staff here in Jackson Hall. More important, it will be the culmination of nearly thirteen years of work on the part of our candidates, who have in some ways been preparing for this moment from the time they entered kindergarten.

To those who've been admitted: we congratulate you and hope you'll choose to join us. If you're undecided, we hope you'll visit, so that you can see Chapel Hill with your own eyes and make a thoughtful and well-informed choice.

To those who haven't: we're sorry we couldn't give you the news you'd hoped for and in a better world would have received. If your heart is truly set on Carolina, we hope you'll work closely with us towards your admission after one or two years elsewhere.

To all: thank you for how hard you've worked and how patient you've been, and thank you for letting us get to know you through your applications. I promise you we haven't taken lightly--not for a minute, not for a second--the trust you've placed in us.

Whether your news is good or bad, we wish you every success, and we hope you will call on us if we may help you in any way.

--Stephen Farmer

4 p.m. on Wednesday

As of a few minutes ago, we’ve confirmed that we’re on track to release decisions online at 4 pm on Wednesday, January 14.

If you applied first deadline and completed your application in good order, you’ll be able to log onto your UNC homepage and view a facsimile of your decision letter. Official letters should start arriving by U.S. mail on Thursday, January 15. Please note that, to protect the privacy of our candidates, we can’t release decisions by telephone or by email.

We know that each of these decisions will shape the life of someone who lives and breathes. We also know that each of these someones is infinitely more interesting, complicated, and promising than we can imagine.

If choosing among such wonderful students is a humbling and terrifying challenge, it is also a great privilege. So thank you, candidates, for giving us this opportunity; for trusting us enough to let us glimpse your great potential; and for bearing with us over the course of the last two weeks, when the tension has understandably been high.

--Stephen Farmer

The Poetry of Admissions

This is a tough week for our candidates, as anyone who’s followed this blog already knows. First-deadline students are sweating out their decisions, which should arrive on or around January 15. Second-deadline students are sweating out their applications, which are due on the same day.

It’s probably naïve to think that we can do anything to relieve the stress that everyone’s feeling. But maybe we can at least distract ourselves—and since the subject of poetry already came up in my previous entry, maybe that’s as good a place as any to start.

Do you know of any poems that remind you of college admissions—that evoke the experience of searching for a school, writing an application, waiting for a decision? In my last post I mentioned “A Psalm of Life,” the overwrought poem by Longfellow that made such an impression on me in middle school. Can you think of any others?

How about the opening words of Roethke’s “Open House”—

My secrets cry aloud.
I have no need for tongue.
My heart keeps open house,
My doors are widely swung.

—which seem to capture pretty well the same longing to be known fully and fairly that applicants often seem to feel?

Or how about the last stanza of Yeats’s “Under Ben Bulben”—

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!

—which some have read as a bracing expression of stoic resignation—the knowing peace that can come when we realize that our fate is out of our hands?

I’m sure others can think of better examples than these; why don’t you give it a try? At the least, we’ll have all gotten ourselves a few minutes closer to January 15.

Best wishes to all.

--Stephen Farmer

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

I’ve heard there are various rumors going around about when we’ll post our first-deadline decisions online. Depending on the rumor, we’re set to post yesterday, today, or tomorrow, or maybe this Friday, January 9, at 4 or 5 or 6 pm.

These rumors are completely understandable, but they’re all off base. While it’s true that we’ve been able to finish our work a week or two early in each of the last four years, this year we’re only running right on schedule. We plan to let everyone know on or around Thursday, January 15, as we originally promised.

Please know that we don’t take lightly the anxiety that our candidates are feeling. I promise we won’t take a minute more than we need.

--Stephen Farmer

Celebrating Exams

I know I'm biased, but I think we have the greatest and friendliest students in the world, and the most spirited. If you need evidence of the latter, take a look at this clip of how our students came together this week to blow off a little steam during exams.



You don't have to be able to dance to be a Tar Heel. But it helps to love life--and to be willing to love your classmates.

--Stephen Farmer

Solving Great Problems

Sunday, October 12, was a great day for Carolina. For one thing, it was the University’s birthday. For another, it was the day we installed our new Chancellor, Holden Thorp.

After taking what must be the longest oath of office anywhere—administered by Patricia Timmons-Goodson, a UNC-Chapel Hill alumna and justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court—Chancellor Thorp talked about his vision for the future of the nation’s oldest public university.

If you’re thinking about joining us in Chapel Hill, his remarks, which are available here, are worth reading in their entirety. And if you’re not yet thinking about UNC, and you’re the kind of person who hopes to change the world, the following three paragraphs are especially worth reading:

This is the right time for a Carolina education. It may be the most challenging period our state and nation have ever faced. But thanks to my years at Carolina, I am filled with an enduring hope that derives from the unquenchable idealism of our students and their interest in the world's great problems.

So imagine that a student could come to Chapel Hill to major in Mandarin and international studies while addressing global health. Or major in chemistry while addressing global warming. Or major in American Studies while addressing poverty or youth violence.

We can come together as an intellectual community to address the world's great problems. We can do it without dismantling or realigning our existing academic structure. And students can do their work on the great problems inside the classroom and as part of their academic life. Because of our guiding principle of academic excellence plus service, Carolina is perfectly suited to redefine higher education in this way and to leverage our young peoples' interests in the great problems to enhance their academic success and position them to lead us.

If you want to help solve our greatest problems, and if you want to be positioned to lead us through the challenges we face, then this is a great day to think about Carolina. Regardless, we are here to help you, and we wish you well.

--Stephen Farmer

Beat the Deadline

Our first deadline falls on November 3. If this year turns out like last year, around 5,000 students will hit the submit button on their applications within 48 hours of the deadline.

If you can help it, don’t let this be you. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with waiting until the deadline, and while we’ll gladly receive your application whether it comes to us on October 2 or November 2, it’s generally smart to avoid the last-minute rush.

Two years ago I waited too long to finish a big project. Thinking I had plenty of time before my Monday deadline, I woke up early on Saturday, grabbed a cup of coffee, turned on our home computer—and got the blue screen of death.

Don’t let this be you. Great students lead busy lives, and there are times when just-in-time delivery is the best that you can do. But waiting until the last minute doesn’t always work—and even when it does, it can cost you both a weekend’s worth of worry and a lapful of hot coffee.

--Stephen Farmer

One Campus

Yesterday I wrote about walking the 400 steps from the Pit to the Office of Undergraduate Admissions. Today I took a longer walk—all the way across campus—just to show you how long it doesn't take.

Carolina is one campus. All our undergraduates study, and most of them live, within a few minutes of one another. When you visit while you’re still in high school, you might wonder how you’ll find your way around. But the campus is really pretty compact—and there are plenty of friendly people to help you find your way.


1:52:00 pm. Standing at the northernmost edge of campus--on the stone wall separating McCorkle Place from Franklin Street. Two students walk past and wish me happy Friday.


1:55:00 pm. Just miss photo of toddler drinking from the Old Well. Nothing to be sad about, since this happens every day.


1:57:45 pm. Wilson Library, home of one of the greatest manuscript collections in the world, as well as the great digital collection Documenting the American South. Steps here are a great place to meet; in fact I’m meeting a prospective student here tomorrow afternoon just before the football game to talk about Carolina.


1:59:15 pm. Bell Tower. Fourteen bells chime the hour and occasionally play “Sweet Caroline.”


2:04:30 pm. Rams Head Dining Hall. Delayed because of conversation with Steve Reznick, friend and psychology professor. Walk down lawn—actually a green roof for the parking deck below--just as Rebecca Egbert, assistant director of admissions, walks out of dining hall with terrific transfer students involved in our C-STEP program.


2:09:50 pm. Student Academic Services Building. Delayed because of conversation with John Blanchard and Robert Mercer, friends and colleagues from the athletics department. Note color of sky.

Total time: 17 minutes, 50 seconds. I’m betting you can beat that pretty easily—and if you don’t want to walk or need help getting around, there are tons of buses and vans to get you from place to place. Happy Friday.

--Stephen Farmer

Why do they seem so happy?

Yesterday morning in the media center at West Charlotte High School, one of the students asked Holden Thorp, our chancellor, what makes UNC students special. Chancellor Thorp said: “They love the University, and they love each other.”

I just walked back to my office from the Pit, the shaded, sunken plaza that’s the heart of student life at Carolina. It’s a short trip—maybe 400 steps—but on the way at least a dozen students smiled and said hello. The few who didn’t were walking in twos or threes, laughing and lost in conversation.

Why do students smile so much at Carolina? Why do they seem so happy?

I think Holden Thorp has the right answer—and I’m not just saying that because he’s the chancellor.

--Stephen Farmer

Three or Four Hints about Essays

This morning I visited West Charlotte High School, home of the Lions, with our chancellor, Dr. Holden Thorp. We were warmly welcomed and had a great time.

The students at West Charlotte asked terrific questions. One of them had to do with application essays: What specifically do we look for when we read them?

Because this is such a good question, and because it’s one that comes up a lot, I thought it might be helpful to post a talk on this subject that I gave last spring to a group of guidance counselors. Let me know if this does any good at all—and please feel free to tell me if it doesn’t.

We received this essay last year, in response to a prompt that asked students to choose and describe a logo that encapsulates who they are:

Logos are symbols that are used to describe or stand for objects, places, or people. If I were to choose a logo for myself it would be a boat.
One reason I would choose my logo to be a boat is because I love to fish and most of the time when I go fishing it takes place on a boat. I try to go fishing on my boat as often as I can. I usually go out every weekend and if I have free time after school I don’t mind going in the late afternoon. My favorite fishing is waking up early and going way offshore. I like this best because the fish are bigger.
Another reason I would choose a boat as my logo is that I’d much rather drive a boat than a car. …

And so it went on—for five well-organized paragraphs. After reading it, we knew that this student liked his boat. But we didn’t know much else about him.

Now let me quote from a different essay—one that left a different impression.

It seemed like everything exciting in the world was about to happen to you when you were ten. Even in the books I read, ten-year-olds seemed always about to embark on some new adventure. Wendy from Peter Pan was ten. So was Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, and Anne in Anne of Green Gables. Secretly I had a feeling that life would now start being like a book, full of humor and excitement. I was ten years old, and I thought I could do anything. Well, no, that’s not true. I knew I could do anything.

This student was writing in response to a prompt that asked, “What advice would you give to a ten-year-old?” She ended like this:

Keep that feeling, that confidence, as long as you can. It’s a way of looking at things that makes the whole world seem as if it’s just a little more brightly colored, a little more gentle. If you don’t know the odds, you may find yourself accomplishing anything.

Where did this essay succeed where the Boat essay fell short? Let me offer just three observations, in the hopes that they’ll be helpful to at least some of your students.

The first idea: voice matters as much as content. Good essays sound as though they were written by real people—ideally, smart, curious, good-hearted people.

The second idea: little is better than big. Small subjects close at hand are better than big subjects that are beyond any writer’s grasp. Students are tempted to write about big things, about ultimate experiences—the best thing that ever happened to me; the worst thing that ever happened to me. Almost no one can write well about this kind of thing, and students should generally steer clear.

The third idea: others are better than self. Not everyone shares this view. In fact we often advise students that the essay is a chance to say something about themselves—preferably something winning and definitive. But in my view this is really a tall order for any student, and in fact it’s something of a curse. It’s the rare writer and the rarer seventeen-year-old who can write self-consciously in this way. Better to write about something else, especially since we learn a lot about others by listening to them talk about something not themselves.

To illustrate this point, here’s a third essay from last year. The prompt read: “Describe a mistake you’ve seen some leader make.”

Head over heels, my grandfather entered the grave. He was merely ashes at that point, stored in a modest cardboard box. Before his death, he was a dedicated minister and teacher. Despite this, the pastor in charge of the internment ceremony bent down slightly and tossed Granddaddy into the hole. The priest let gravity take my grandfather three feet down when he was supposed to be ensuring a journey many miles upward.
I watched disbelief spread like a wave around the circle of family members. Their eyes fixated on the hole as my grandfather bumped and tumbled into his final resting place like a man in a barrel going over Niagara Falls.
The pastor was the leader of the ceremony, the emcee of mourning and remembrance. …

“The emcee of mourning and remembrance”—what a beautiful and evocative phrase! The student closed with the quiet lesson she’d drawn from her experience: “A leader must realize the effect of every choice he makes on the people in his charge and must act in the best interest of his followers.” Wouldn’t we all want to teach this student? Wouldn’t we want to learn from her?

Three observations: Voice as much as content. Little better than big. Others better than self.

And this fourth one: stories help. If your students get stuck, encourage them to tell us a story. Humans are suckers for stories, because our stories tell us something about ourselves, and because our stories matter.

--Stephen Farmer