College Essay

This is the (cheeky) essay I wrote for the Common Application in 2014. Looking back, my effort to find an institution that promoted learning for its own sake was fruitful, though it is a miracle I was accepted anywhere. Here it is, unedited for your reading pleasure.

The art of deceiving prospective employers, college boards, and the like is one that, suffice it to say, greatly eludes me. It is said that when applying to college one should mention only his or her “soft” weaknesses, traits actually considered assets in most fields. I cannot help but imagine an obscenely large sum when I think of the number of times interviewers have asked for weaknesses and received answers like “perfectionism” and “competitiveness”. It is no wonder this is the case, given the k-12 education system prepares students for post-secondary success by encouraging learning for the sake of progression rather than learning for the sake of genuine academic curiosity. I look at the way many approach education as a form of fraud. My intent is to find a college that is a good fit for me, and I do not think this can be accomplished by assuring a college board that the worst aspects of my personality are my crippling perfectionist tendencies.

I distinctly remember being told in first grade that it was imperative we learn to write in cursive because we would use it in second grade. In fifth grade I was taught how to write an essay because I would need to know how to do so in middle school. Grammar was not taught to me so I would understand speech. Math and science were presented to me not as a means to explain the physical world but, rather, as useful tools on standardized tests. Each year the focus shifted further from developing an understanding of language, events, and natural processes, and gravitated toward understanding how to ace a test. And those tests, which are meant to be a measure of cumulative understanding, can be studied for and taken countless times. With enough money and resources, one can essentially cheat his or her way through high school and into college. But the countless students who do this do a great disservice to themselves by neglecting to explore the vast multitude of opportunities education can provide for personal and intellectual growth.

As high school students we seek so ceaselessly to sell ourselves to the college board that we sometimes lose sight of the purpose of post-secondary education entirely. What makes me an asset to colleges is the exact characteristic that has made my education, at times, painstakingly frustrating. I have felt imprisoned for years behind the bars of standardized tests and stifled by those who promote learning for the sake of progression. So for me, college provides a unique opportunity to escape those confines. College is a chance to take the courses I never could in high school, to learn about linguistics and mythology and to delve further into the more abstract aspects of calculus. College is not the final frontier in education, but an opportunity to improve as a learner and hone the individuality and purpose that will define the rest of my life.

I am sure it has not escaped the reader’s attention that my essay thus far has no apparent connection with any of the Common Application prompts. My reasoning is that following such constraints seems disingenuous, not to mention far too structured for me to give an adequate portrayal of myself. In my opinion, excessive forethought is an affront to innovation. I do not want to shape this essay around a prompt, but rather let it convey its own message. I want it to convey my personality and my intellectual curiosity in a way that a cliched anecdote or delineation of a spiritual awakening never could. I suppose I am currently challenging the accepted means of application to college by not writing my essay in accordance with any of the prompts. To this logic, the act of writing this essay is, in itself, my example of a time I have challenged a belief. It is my hope that the reader appreciates this paradox.