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----- Original Message -----
From: "Corinne Scheiner" <cscheiner@ColoradoCollege.edu>
>
> ---------------- Message requiring your approval (142
lines) ------------------
> This article, "To Impress an Admissions Officer, Read Something
> Worth Writing About," is available online at this address:
>
> address:
>
> http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i22/22b01501.htm
>
>
> The Chroncile of Higher Education
> The Chronicle Review
> From the issue dated February 6, 2004
>
>
>
>
> To Impress an Admissions Officer, Read
> Something Worth Writing About
>
> By MARJORIE A. SCHIFF
>
> When I realized that nearly half of the roughly 14,800 applicants to the
> University of Virginia's Class of 2007 had applied online, it occurred to
> me that we had collected enough essays -- each applicant writes three, the
> longest of which is 500 words -- to perform some interesting statistical
> analyses. For instance, did writing on a certain topic affect an
> applicant's chance of admission?
>
> I did not set out to confirm or disprove any notions of what constitutes a
> good or a bad essay; in fact, the idea of a statistical analysis occurred
> to me only after I had used the database to determine whether two
> applicants might have plagiarized parts of their essays from a common
> source. I had read an essay that, in response to the question we ask all
> applicants to the College of Arts and Sciences -- "What work of art,
> music, science, mathematics, or literature has surprised, unsettled, or
> challenged you, and in what way?" -- compared Pink Floyd's The Wall with
> The Wizard of Oz. Two days later, I read another essay that seemed very
> similar. Hoping that both essayists had applied online, so I could compare
> the two pieces electronically, I searched the appropriate field in the
> database for the phrase "Pink Floyd." To my surprise, my query produced
> four records, including the two I was looking for. The essays turned out
> to be dissimilar enough that I ruled out plagiarism.
>
> A few weeks later, a colleague in the admissions office lamented that so
> many arts-and-sciences applicants, in response to the same question, had
> chosen cloning as the work of science that had unsettled or challenged
> them. Having read many essays myself about Dolly the sheep, I wondered
> whether I could find any correlation between cloning essays and admission
> rates. How many applicants had written about cloning, and how well did
> they fare compared with applicants who chose other topics? I searched the
> database for "clone, cloned, cloning, or stem cell," and my query returned
> 347 essays. Cloning did seem popular, until I searched for "Jesus, Bible,
> or God" and found 657 essays. More than 1,000 arts-and-sciences
> applicants, or more than 17 percent of those who had applied online, had
> written on religious beliefs, controversial new developments in science,
> or both; 67 essays included "cloning" and "God." But did an applicant's
> selection of topics affect his or her chance of being admitted? Did
> admissions officers prefer the ovine to the divine, or vice versa?
>
> Of the 657 applicants who had written about religious beliefs, 228, or 35
> percent, were offered admission. That is awfully close to the overall
> acceptance rate for applicants to UVa. Of the 347 people who had discussed
> cloning, 113, or 33 percent, were offered admission. Reluctant to jump to
> the conclusion that religion and cloning respondents fared exactly the
> same as did applicants at large, or that topic selection -- despite our
> groaning about all the cloning essays -- did not affect admission rates at
> all, I spent some more time with the data.
>
> Although UVa's acceptance rate hovers around 35 percent, no applicant
> actually has a 35-percent chance of being offered admission. In-state
> applicants are admitted at a rate of 45 to 50 percent, and out-of-state
> applicants at 20 to 25 percent. So I looked at in-state applicants who had
> written about religious beliefs and found that 47.3 percent were accepted.
> Of the out-of-state applicants who discussed religion, 22 percent were
> accepted. For applicants who wrote about cloning, admission rates were
> almost identical: Forty-seven percent of those from Virginia were
> accepted, and 21.5 percent of those from other states. Contrary to a
> colleague's speculation that essays on religious beliefs and cloning must
> be "the kiss of death," writing about those topics seemed to make no
> difference to an applicant's chance of admission.
>
> Before drawing too many conclusions from the fate of cloning and religion
> respondents, I decided to survey other colleagues in the admissions office
> to determine what works of literature they thought had been popular with
> our applicants. One person accurately speculated "any book they read
> junior year in AP English," while others rattled off specific authors. I
> began with Shakespeare because, after God, he had "surprised, unsettled,
> or challenged" more applicants than any other author. Of the 126
> applicants who wrote about Shakespeare, 31 percent were offered admission.
> Similarly, 31 percent of the applicants who wrote about Orwell, 33 percent
> of those who wrote about Faulkner or Ayn Rand, and 35 percent of those who
> wrote about William Golding were accepted.
>
> When I turned my attention to two other authors, however, I noticed
> something different. Of the applicants who wrote about J.D. Salinger, only
> 18 percent were offered admission. And applicants who wrote about Vladimir
> Nabokov -- admittedly, there were only six of them -- were offered
> admission at a rate of 67 percent. Four were admitted, and one was placed
> on the waiting list.
>
> Do those results prove that admissions officers prefer Humbert Humbert's
> obsessions to Holden Caulfield's observations? Not exactly. The impulse to
> write about Nabokov indicates that an applicant is already deeply engaged
> with literature that few students encounter in high school. The impulse to
> write about Salinger indicates that an applicant is less well read. It is
> telling that the average verbal-SAT score among Nabokov respondents was
> 735, while the average for Salinger respondents was 630.
>
> Although admissions officers may bemoan the enormous number of essays on
> Dolly, we like to claim that we are not particularly interested in
> students' choice of topic -- we are much more interested in form, style,
> and careful reflection, or what we sometimes refer to as quality of
> thought. The data I collected seem to support that claim.
>
> One of the essays I particularly liked is an applicant's response to the
> question: "Look out any window in your home. What would you change about
> what you see?" The applicant described "the primordial dance of husbands
> dragging trash bins to the curb" and gracefully moved from the particular
> (the neighbor and his trash can) to the universal (Americans produce a lot
> of trash). That essay was a success, but not because admissions officers
> are fascinated by trash. An applicant who wrote that well about garbage
> probably would have gotten in even if he had written about Salinger.
>
> Marjorie A. Schiff is senior assistant dean of admission at the University
> of Virginia.
>
> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
> Corinne Scheiner
> Maytag Assistant Professor
> Comparative Literature
> The Colorado College
> 14 East Cache La Poudre Street
> Colorado Springs, CO 80903
> 719/389-6238 tel
> 719/389-6179 fax
> cscheiner@coloradocollege.edu
>
From: "Corinne Scheiner" <cscheiner@ColoradoCollege.edu>
>
> ---------------- Message requiring your approval (142
lines) ------------------
> This article, "To Impress an Admissions Officer, Read Something
> Worth Writing About," is available online at this address:
>
> address:
>
> http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i22/22b01501.htm
>
>
> The Chroncile of Higher Education
> The Chronicle Review
> From the issue dated February 6, 2004
>
>
>
>
> To Impress an Admissions Officer, Read
> Something Worth Writing About
>
> By MARJORIE A. SCHIFF
>
> When I realized that nearly half of the roughly 14,800 applicants to the
> University of Virginia's Class of 2007 had applied online, it occurred to
> me that we had collected enough essays -- each applicant writes three, the
> longest of which is 500 words -- to perform some interesting statistical
> analyses. For instance, did writing on a certain topic affect an
> applicant's chance of admission?
>
> I did not set out to confirm or disprove any notions of what constitutes a
> good or a bad essay; in fact, the idea of a statistical analysis occurred
> to me only after I had used the database to determine whether two
> applicants might have plagiarized parts of their essays from a common
> source. I had read an essay that, in response to the question we ask all
> applicants to the College of Arts and Sciences -- "What work of art,
> music, science, mathematics, or literature has surprised, unsettled, or
> challenged you, and in what way?" -- compared Pink Floyd's The Wall with
> The Wizard of Oz. Two days later, I read another essay that seemed very
> similar. Hoping that both essayists had applied online, so I could compare
> the two pieces electronically, I searched the appropriate field in the
> database for the phrase "Pink Floyd." To my surprise, my query produced
> four records, including the two I was looking for. The essays turned out
> to be dissimilar enough that I ruled out plagiarism.
>
> A few weeks later, a colleague in the admissions office lamented that so
> many arts-and-sciences applicants, in response to the same question, had
> chosen cloning as the work of science that had unsettled or challenged
> them. Having read many essays myself about Dolly the sheep, I wondered
> whether I could find any correlation between cloning essays and admission
> rates. How many applicants had written about cloning, and how well did
> they fare compared with applicants who chose other topics? I searched the
> database for "clone, cloned, cloning, or stem cell," and my query returned
> 347 essays. Cloning did seem popular, until I searched for "Jesus, Bible,
> or God" and found 657 essays. More than 1,000 arts-and-sciences
> applicants, or more than 17 percent of those who had applied online, had
> written on religious beliefs, controversial new developments in science,
> or both; 67 essays included "cloning" and "God." But did an applicant's
> selection of topics affect his or her chance of being admitted? Did
> admissions officers prefer the ovine to the divine, or vice versa?
>
> Of the 657 applicants who had written about religious beliefs, 228, or 35
> percent, were offered admission. That is awfully close to the overall
> acceptance rate for applicants to UVa. Of the 347 people who had discussed
> cloning, 113, or 33 percent, were offered admission. Reluctant to jump to
> the conclusion that religion and cloning respondents fared exactly the
> same as did applicants at large, or that topic selection -- despite our
> groaning about all the cloning essays -- did not affect admission rates at
> all, I spent some more time with the data.
>
> Although UVa's acceptance rate hovers around 35 percent, no applicant
> actually has a 35-percent chance of being offered admission. In-state
> applicants are admitted at a rate of 45 to 50 percent, and out-of-state
> applicants at 20 to 25 percent. So I looked at in-state applicants who had
> written about religious beliefs and found that 47.3 percent were accepted.
> Of the out-of-state applicants who discussed religion, 22 percent were
> accepted. For applicants who wrote about cloning, admission rates were
> almost identical: Forty-seven percent of those from Virginia were
> accepted, and 21.5 percent of those from other states. Contrary to a
> colleague's speculation that essays on religious beliefs and cloning must
> be "the kiss of death," writing about those topics seemed to make no
> difference to an applicant's chance of admission.
>
> Before drawing too many conclusions from the fate of cloning and religion
> respondents, I decided to survey other colleagues in the admissions office
> to determine what works of literature they thought had been popular with
> our applicants. One person accurately speculated "any book they read
> junior year in AP English," while others rattled off specific authors. I
> began with Shakespeare because, after God, he had "surprised, unsettled,
> or challenged" more applicants than any other author. Of the 126
> applicants who wrote about Shakespeare, 31 percent were offered admission.
> Similarly, 31 percent of the applicants who wrote about Orwell, 33 percent
> of those who wrote about Faulkner or Ayn Rand, and 35 percent of those who
> wrote about William Golding were accepted.
>
> When I turned my attention to two other authors, however, I noticed
> something different. Of the applicants who wrote about J.D. Salinger, only
> 18 percent were offered admission. And applicants who wrote about Vladimir
> Nabokov -- admittedly, there were only six of them -- were offered
> admission at a rate of 67 percent. Four were admitted, and one was placed
> on the waiting list.
>
> Do those results prove that admissions officers prefer Humbert Humbert's
> obsessions to Holden Caulfield's observations? Not exactly. The impulse to
> write about Nabokov indicates that an applicant is already deeply engaged
> with literature that few students encounter in high school. The impulse to
> write about Salinger indicates that an applicant is less well read. It is
> telling that the average verbal-SAT score among Nabokov respondents was
> 735, while the average for Salinger respondents was 630.
>
> Although admissions officers may bemoan the enormous number of essays on
> Dolly, we like to claim that we are not particularly interested in
> students' choice of topic -- we are much more interested in form, style,
> and careful reflection, or what we sometimes refer to as quality of
> thought. The data I collected seem to support that claim.
>
> One of the essays I particularly liked is an applicant's response to the
> question: "Look out any window in your home. What would you change about
> what you see?" The applicant described "the primordial dance of husbands
> dragging trash bins to the curb" and gracefully moved from the particular
> (the neighbor and his trash can) to the universal (Americans produce a lot
> of trash). That essay was a success, but not because admissions officers
> are fascinated by trash. An applicant who wrote that well about garbage
> probably would have gotten in even if he had written about Salinger.
>
> Marjorie A. Schiff is senior assistant dean of admission at the University
> of Virginia.
>
> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
> Corinne Scheiner
> Maytag Assistant Professor
> Comparative Literature
> The Colorado College
> 14 East Cache La Poudre Street
> Colorado Springs, CO 80903
> 719/389-6238 tel
> 719/389-6179 fax
> cscheiner@coloradocollege.edu
>