nadia-digioia-blog

[nadia-digioia-blog]

personal object

This is a little lamp I bought while I was on a cruise vacation. I got it in the town of Kusadasi in Turkey. I think this along with the other objects I bought shows my interest in traveling and exploring new places. I also like to learn about traditional elements of different places. I bought this because it shows a cultural aspect of Turkey which is their mosaic lamps that come in all shapes and sizes. I always want to buy something when I go places because it will remind me of that place and bring back the feelings and memories of being there.

[nadia-digioia-blog]

Does Privilege and Perfection Work?

From the outside, the college admissions process may seem pretty simple and easy going. However, when you’re placed into that situation, you realize it’s a lot trickier and intricate than expected. There are so many factors that come into it like the essay, financial ability, and deciding on a major that you think you want to do for the rest of your life, all at the age of seventeen. Other personal life factors can either aid or hinder your results. This is why it’s a very tricky process and sometimes out of our control.

One aspect that is continually being focused and pushed on us is the personal essay. We are told that it’s a way for colleges and universities to get to know us better and that it’s the only part of our application that we can control. I believe that if they are trying to get to know us better then students should be able to show it through their own writing styles. However, in reality, there are certain guidelines that come with it. This is what Melzer refers to as “genres”. He says that new genres are formed when, “new audiences and contexts… evolve to meet the demands of new literacy situations…” (Melzer 4). In the genre of the college essay, certain rules need to be followed to be appropriate for the situation, along with your ability to include a bit of your personality in the writing. Although in our school we do go in-depth about this type of writing during our senior year, I feel it would be beneficial to be introduced to it even sooner rather than at the exact moment we are supposed to be writing this type of essay.

I am very grateful for the opportunities and education I receive at my school to help me in this process but on the other hand, there are so many more kids in the country who do not get the same opportunities as I do. I feel that some parts of the essay writing process are unfair. There are more privileged kids, financially and educationally, that know how to “play the game” of college admissions and have an upper hand on others applying. They are taught to look beyond the prompt that is given to them and write what the admissions committee is looking for. These essays may appear to be “perfect” but they can be exaggerated or fabricated for all we know. In comparison, there are students in lower-income schools where they are not taught all these tips and tricks. They would just blatantly follow the prompt, possibly pouring their heart out and telling the absolute truth in this essay, but not get in due to their disadvantage. In Warren’s “The Rhetoric of College Application Essays”, that was the whole study of his research. Admissions committees want evidence, specific anecdotes, and support to back up what the writer is telling them (Warren 52). Those writers who know how to tailor their essays to the counselors’ values tend to have a more positive outcome than those who don’t. This is why I think this aspect of figuring out whether someone is worthy or not to be accepted into an institution is unfair because there are definitely students who don’t receive the same “training” to succeed like the others.

Although someone can make their essay the “ideal” one with everything counselors want to see, there are so many other aspects of the process that it’s hard to make everything perfect. This applies to a lot of the highly selective schools, like Ivy League and Ivy League-equivalent universities. Besides the essay, there are grades, standardized test scores, and extracurriculars. Even from the earliest years, schools like Harvard had standards for their accepted students, from religion, to “manliness” to athletic ability. Of course, these same traits for what schools want from their students are not the same currently, but the concept of wanting certain aspects is still in place. They look for characteristics like a person’s drive and determination. In Gladwell’s “Getting In”, he says that Ivy Leagues justify their “emphasis on character and personality, however, arguing that they were looking for the students who would have the greatest success after college” (Gladwell 8). This is why schools don’t look at just grades and scores but other aspects because someone’s intelligence will not necessarily bring success. College admissions committees look for so many characteristics for their “ideal” students that even though we can try to control all of this, to a certain point we can’t. The committees will look at our applications and interpret things differently than we intended. In the end, all we can do is try to present ourselves the best we can and hope it’s enough for the committees.