|
Brody's Guide to the College Admissions Essay
Brody's Guide to the College Admissions Essay is available at bookstores and at online retailers such as Amazon.com. The book was written by a college counselor and writer who has appeared on national television to discuss admissions-related issues, and a dean of law school admissions at a major university. It has been used in high schools and in after-school programs.
For those students who would benefit from professional help with their college admissions essays, we recommend EssayEdge.com, which has been praised by the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Essay #4
I, Me, She, Her… Meredith
It is she, number 8971, senior graduating class, who you have met already. Her numbers fill the first pages of this application, these numbers which she uses to quantify and thus represent herself. Her 4.0's and 1480's and 6's establish her identity to the world: she exists purely in the universe of quantification.
She and I are very often confused, although upon glance we seem so very different. She is the intellectual, the academic reputation. She is classified through a series of numbers, while I am only understood through words. I adore poetry, popcorn, and playing tennis in the rain, and while she enjoys these endeavors, she prefers questioning and reasoning. At one time, I claimed she stifled me and tried to push her away, to send her numbers and her analytical questions to some other person, but she kept returning. At the time, I couldn’t find a way to make us fit together: to ensure that her scholarly nature wouldn’t overtake me. I wanted to be the dominant one, the one people invited places and wanted to see. Because of her intellect, I was being classified into a group I didn’t belong in. She was the student, but I was more than that. I was talkative, artsy-crafty, energetic. But because she was in the honors’ classes, she was all anyone could see: the one with the impressive numbers. I was being ignored. Yet as hard as I tried to rid myself of the intellect, the curiosity, she returned in full force. I couldn’t escape it: she was still there. Gradually, we have become friends. I have begun to appreciate her as a companion; and while at times we hide in one another’s shadows, we are now able to work in much more harmony than before: we are teammates with the same goal.
She is the tutor, the aspiring doctor, the perfectionist whose hands shake when public speaking. I am the pianist, the one who fills journals with unspoken words, and the one who starts philosophical arguments over the dinner table. I work comfortably within the universe of creativity and words, while she finds solace in the boundaries of logic and mathematics. Her thought process follows all logic and reason; I search for emotional and moral connections. I am impulsive, irrational, creative; she is sensible. And yet many times I am seen as only her.
Are we really all that different? Every day she and I are more and more intertwined with one another. Our drives match up perfectly; we have the same mantra: adversity is not an adequate deterrent. Each day we draw upon one another’s source of energy, the other’s inexplicable passion for life and learning, especially finding out the “Why” in everything. Every day, she gives me a little of her scholarly attitude, and every day I release to her a little of my creative spirit. She possesses the adoration of mathematics and science, establishes new ideas, and she also has the drive to succeed in what she takes on. I possess the builder’s hands, the mechanism for the ideas to spur to life, to take form and succeed in themselves. We work together, we are friends, partners. We are both scholars, both “creative geniuses,” over-zealous and outgoing, diligent and driven. Twisted and tangled, we are both Meredith, but one person, just one personality. She is I, I am she, and we are Meredith.
This essays is special because it reveals the author to be a complex individual—academically qualified, but also struggling with the burdens that the academic “grind” imposes upon a maturing young woman. Many smart kids feel the struggle Meredith describes between “she” and “I”; few, however, express it so articulately.
While Meredith’s talent in describing how she’s come to terms with her two disparate halves is the highlight of this essay, it also has several other strengths. The essay’s format provides a forum for Meredith to describe some of her passions and interests, and to personalize her a little bit for the admissions committees (notice how she, almost in passing, mentions her plans to become a doctor). And the whole she/I/Meredith construction enables a literary approach that—while not perfect—demonstrates the author as a gifted writer not afraid to take risks with her prose.
Not surprisingly, Meredith was admitted Early Action to Harvard.
|
