THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 8, 1996 TAG: 9603080060
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MICHELLE MIZAL, CAMPUS CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Long : 116 lines
FROM SCIENTIFIC to soul searching, today's college admissions essay questions have reached what must be a creative climax.
Veering from traditional questions about life-changing events, questions have evolved into a more entertaining form that gives students room to show who they really are. Instead of the old ``Tell us about yourself,'' colleges like the University of Chicago ask questions that go like this:
Compose an essay about a memorable meal you have eaten. We are especially interested in the details: the occasion, your company at this meal, its physical setting, the kinds of foods you ate, or their preparation.''
Admission officials say the new essay questions give them insight to students' lives.
``It's one way to get a sense of their intellectual activity,'' said Paul White, director of undergraduate admissions at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md.
To get students to think, Johns Hopkins decided to change its questions this year. One of the four questions: ``Take a piece of wire, a Hopkins car window sticker, an egg carton, and any inexpensive hardware store item and write an essay about how you would solve a problem with your invention. But fiction writers, don't worry, we won't require proof that it works.''
The question attracted hugely original responses and one student even sent in the invention - a swimming pool alarm.
But Johns Hopkins is not the only college using new essay questions, Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Virginia, Drew University in New Jersey and Pomona College in California are also breaking with tradition.
Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., asks applicants, ``What is your favorite newspaper cartoon? Explain.''
R. Russell Shunk, dean of admissions at Dickinson, said that the admissions staff wanted students to analyze and find deeper meanings in newspaper comic strips and editorial cartoons. The comical but intellectual exercise has produced both funny and smart answers - ``Calvin and Hobbes'' being the all-time favorite of many applicants.
One essay related the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip characters to the historical figures of John Calvin, who started the idea of predestination in France, and the 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who believed that it was human nature to be evil.
Another essay focused on Gary Larson's ``The Far Side.'' The student even included plans for an original cartoon saying, ``I would make a cartoon about the college admissions process. There would be a table of people labeled `Admissions Officers' with a stack of applications and a box of dice. Underneath would be a caption saying, `How they really decide.' ''
The University of Chicago application is both clever and stress-free. It asks applicants to choose one of several questions and adds, ``You need not write at length or use elevated language.''
One question asks the student to write a dialogue or story and gives these instructions: Construct a dialogue or story that meets the following requirements.
1. Your story should involve two people meeting at the frozen food section of a supermarket, and incorporate your favorite country music song. (We know you have one!)
2. Your story must include in its narrative or dialogue each of these four lines taken from pages 1, 13, 31, and 107 of the novel ``Sister Carrie'' by Theodore Dreiser.
a. When a girl leaves her home at 18, she does one of two things.
b. How true it is that words are but vague shadows of the volumes we mean.
c. Ah the long winter in Chicago - the lights, the crowd, the amusement!
This was a great, pleasing metropolis after all.
d. Several times, their eyes accidentally met, and then there poured into hers such a flood of feeling as she had never before experienced.''
The applicant is asked to limit the story to three pages. A note at the end of the question says, ``The intrepid among you may want to strike out on your own. Tell us what book other than ``Sister Carrie'' you have chosen and pick one line each from pages 1, 13, 31 and 107. Have fun! (We insist!).''
But the fun is not only for the applicants. College admissions officials say the questions are an amusing way to promote the school.
Peter Chemery, assistant director of admissions at the University of Chicago, said the questions ``grab the attention of students'' and can tell students a lot about a school's creativity and academics.
So how did the college application question evolve from boring to stimulating?
Lee Coffin, director of admissions at Connecticut College, said that the colleges that did require an essay asked the basic questions like ``Why do you want to go to this college?''
``Over time the application process got more selective,'' he said. ``Essay questions got a little more exotic.'' After World War II, more students applied for colleges so the admissions faculties needed a way to sift out the applicants.
Today, admissions officials say the essay is a vital part of the application - sometimes acting as a tiebreaker between two students. It can give the extra push toward college acceptance. . . or rejection.
After reading a moving essay by an applicant who volunteered to help an older woman, Coffin mentioned that the essay was good but the transcript was not. He recommended acceptance because the essay was strong.
Another essay was about a student whose mother was killed and who was raised by her grandmother. Coffin said the essay gave him a new outlook when he evaluated the grades and activities of the applicant.
He also said that colleges are becoming more interested in a student's reading and writing capabilities. Even science requires reading and writing comprehension.
``It's all tied together,'' Coffin said. ``In the minds of the students the essay is a monster. The essay doesn't need to be dreaded, it's an opportunity to tell us about yourself.'' MEMO: Michelle Mizal is a sophomore at Tidewater Community College.
ILLUSTRATION: Graphics
BASIC DO'S AND DON'TS FOR ESSAYISTS:
Color photos
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB