Admission essays: Are some topics better than others? Part 1

Durer: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Recently I have been involved with several discussions on sites like LinkedIn about whether some topics selected as answers for admission essays are better than others. The debate has been heated. Some say that a well-written essay, on any topic, will help. Others disagree.  Given that admission to highly selective schools occupies a central place in many thousands of students’ (and parents’) minds right now, a simple answer would prove useful.

Unfortunately, there is not enough that is simple about getting in to schools whose acceptance rates drop each year, some now safely into single digits. I am afraid my answer will not necessarily be one that leads to a one size fits all ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Life, as we all know, is complicated and often contradictory.

Let’s start with the basic cliché: never talk about religion or politics to strangers at a dinner party or almost anywhere else. Is this good advice for those who wish to write an admission essay about a passion or something that is an intimate part of their culture or lives?

Thought experiments:

Read the following italicized passages as though they had been submitted to an admission office in response to a question about a world or culture that the student comes from.

Zeus giving birth to Dionysus

I

Without Zeus, the world would be, if not a chaotic void, then at least a place empty of men. His defeat of Chronos was more than heroic; it was life generating for all of us. And yet for those of us living today it is hard to imagine killing one’s father in order to ascend to a throne in Olympus. To climb to the heights comes as and through a sacrifice. Today, Zeus still oversees my daily life. I make sure my offerings contain the ritual meats, make sure not to offend him in any way. I know that if I transgress his dictates a thunderbolt might strike me down at any time. On the other and, knowing Zeus and the other gods are there watching each of us as we move through our lives gives me great comfort. I know there are powers greater than me and that my fate is not my own. 

If you stopped reading at this point, what would your interpretation of the student be? Is this some kind of joke or is it an attempt to recreate the mind of someone in the past? Could she be serious?

I believe, as William James says, that the belief in something greater than oneself gives us the strength and courage to carry on despite setbacks. When my father died suddenly I was sad, but then recognized that this was Zeus’ way of testing me for my own strength and courage. I had to take on part time jobs to help pay the bills and had to help my mother move through her grief. But his loss was simply the inexplicable will of Zeus and I am not in a place to question this. My small place in the world is to serve him in ways that I believe will add to his glory and make me savor the time I have been given here to do all that I can to live a life that will gain Kleos (Greek word for glory). 

Given this added information how do you respond to these words? She cites a well-respected thinker and tells us why her belief has helped her come to terms with the loss of her father. Does this make you sympathetic with her? Or do you think she is misguided for believing in a false god?

I see it as my calling in life to carry the word of Zeus to others and to make them see the light before they are struck down by his mighty power. I hope to become a leader at your school who will share the word with others in order to serve the god of all.

Now that she has put forth her missionary zeal to convert others to her belief are you sympathetic? Do you think she would add diversity to an incoming class? What if her academics were exceptional? Should this essay help or hurt her admission?

Now go back and reread the essay except for the word Zeus, substitute the appropriate  deity and details about Jesus or Buddha or Mohammed (or others). If you are person of faith and you substitute your deity for hers would you be inclined to like what she says? If you are an atheist would you be inclined to judge this person negatively?

II

The four horsemen are right. Religion’s killed more people than it’s ever helped. Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and the late Hitchens demonstrate scientifically and through reasoned argument that they believe faith in a big guy in the sky is pernicious to each of us. The history of men has largely been told with blood spilled over religion. Evolutionary biologists now agree that the belief in religion comes from our efforts to gain territory and power over our tribal neighbors. This happened thousand of years ago and it still happens daily across the earth. If people stopped believing in myths and move toward humanistic approaches to life there would be much greater peace in the world and a lot less suffering, especially on the part of women, like me, who are forced to live under strictures of religious laws that make what I am writing here enough to get me stoned to death. How barbaric a people we are.

How do you feel about this person’s essay so far? If you are a person of faith do you think she is misguided? Do you think she is courageous for saying things that could get her killed? Would this make you want to fight for her admission since she seems to come from a place where she is subjugated and under threat?

Ever since my father passed away, I’ve had to pretend that his death was the result of god’s great plan. Our economic woes and my mother’s depression are all for the good of souls it seems. When I told my pastor that I thought religion was a form of mental enslavement and that women should not be subservient to men, he told me that in the old days people with views like mine would be stoned to death.  How loving a god this must be to take away my father and to let me live as though under a death sentence? 

After having read these words are you sympathetic to the writer and what she has to live through? If she were writing from within a culture dominated by another religion (say, Islam) would this change how you feel about what she written? Are you sure?

I want to come to your university so that I can begin my efforts to obtain my PhD in neuroscience. I plan to follow in the footsteps of the many scientists today who are discovering the way religious belief is a harmful leftover from the time when humans lived on the Savannah in Africa. I want to open the eyes of the world to false belief so that we stop killing each other over whether one book written millennia ago is more sacred than another written millennia ago. I hope to change the world with the fire and light of reason I will bring to the superstitious.

Given her goal of obtaining a science degree should she be rewarded for this interest? Is her goal of defeating religious belief something that should be taken into consideration by an admission officer? Will she face difficulties on campus because of her beliefs and if so should this be taken into consideration? She has overcome much in her life, has an academic plan, but is also quite strong in views. If she had exceptional academic preparation would you offer her a space over someone who had chosen to write about a less controversial subject?

                                 The four horsemen: Dawkins, Dennett Harris, Hitchens

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If all this philosophical meandering seems too abstract to address the issue of  essay topics in admission, then I apologize. I raise these points because I think what a student writes about and how, when it comes to culture, belief, and religion can help or hurt in ways that students may not be aware of.

Here are a couple of things that might be of more pragmatic use to those contemplating writing an essay based upon religious beliefs:

If you are a student and your beliefs are what centers your life, you may need to think twice about the way you share this in an admission essay. This is especially true if you believe the word of God supersedes US laws. For example, if you believe that abortion is wrong in all cases, no matter what, because life begins at conception, then you have just put your words before an audience, demographically at least, that believes you are wrong for thinking this way.

Most people in admission, at least at schools that are not religiously affiliated, believe in a woman’s right to choose. If you try to demonstrate, in a short essay, that God's word supersedes the laws of the land, you are not playing the odds in terms of having a sympathetic audience. While all of us like to think we are open to others, studies show again and again that we live within, as a new book title sums it up, Moral Tribes. We define ourselves by what we are and believe, but we also define ourselves against those whose beliefs conflict with our own.

Is it possible that people reading applications can read virtually any topic without making some kind of ethical or moral judgment, positive or negative, consciously or unconsciously? Cognitive scientists, sociologists and lots of others who have published highly regarded studies don’t think so.

A slightly tougher questions then: should admission application readers make moral judgments? If your answer is no, then does this apply to ideas only or to actions too? Should a student who has been suspended for violating school rules be looked at differently than other applicants? I think most would say yes. But what about if the student has joined protests for or against an issue that is a core belief of a reader? If, for example, a student has formed a group at school that says that gay marriage should be defeated, would this hurt a student’s chances of being admitted? Should it? What if the student had been arrested for protesting a political or religious view she found pernicious? What if this student lived in the US? What about Turkey or China?  Can breaking the law sometimes be admirable? If the answer is yes, would the people who arrested her for a crime agree? If you applaud someone for violating the law in defense of their beliefs should this action be judged according to personal beliefs of the reader, the laws of the US, or something else?

I am in no position to enter the minds of the thousands of readers busily staying up way too late going through applications right now. But I can say, based on empirical experience and on data, that people respond more positively to people who write about topics we agree with.  They are, after all, a part of our moral tribe. And this extends into teaching too. Are all approaches to Shakespeare’s Hamlet equally valid or are some so off the mark that the ideas are simply wrong even if well-stated?

The questions I’ve raised here do not have simple answers. That’s the point of this entry. But I think it is worth stating that writing on certain topics when the odds favor that the reader will not, initially, be sympathetic, may not be the best approach. After all, has anyone ever changed a core belief you have held in 600 words? If so, please send the essay to me. These words are rare indeed. But they do happen. In fact, sometimes people change with only a phrase. Anyone who has read Augustine’s 'Confessions' knows that two words "Tolle, lege; tolle, lege," (pick up and read, pick up and read) sung by some children changed his life and the lives of untold millions who were influenced by his conversion.

St. Augustine

After all this, it might seem contradictory to end with what I am going to say here. As I said at the beginning, life is not without its contradictions.

Any topic can be written about well or poorly. Great writing transcends topic. It is an issue of craft and not simply ideology. Knowing how to structure sentences, use vivid words and active verbs and supportive examples or data are all basics that work. On the other hand, readers of essays are not blank slates. Steven Pinker at Harvard has written a great book about this. We are wired in ways so that what we hear and see is not ‘reality’ but a small part of all that is said and done in any given millisecond. We respond to certain stimuli because that is what our wiring and previous experiences have structured us to do. It is not Pavlovian behaviorism, but we are limited to ways of seeing the world that are finite and shaded, some might say, through a glass darkly. If Pinker and others are right about this, then writers need to think quite a bit about audience before picking a topic. Finding common ground, whatever that is, will help students communicate in ways that will be rewarded. But I can’t quite end without one more dialectical twist.

Prometheus

There are still people who think that they should be honest about their beliefs rather than worry about gaming the system to ensure an advantage in life or in an admission decision. People like these want to dare to share ideas they care about, and say to themselves, "the hell with what happens" in terms of getting in to a certain school or a certain job. For these brave souls, there are some readers who, even if the ideology seems suspect, a great and spirited defense of a controversial belief will nevertheless still convince that particular reader that it is best to admit her. She will be great in a class because she is willing to defend her beliefs in ways that cannot be easily dismissed. And this may happen on a dorm floor or a debate society or a million other places during four years.

History is full of heroes who have fought for their beliefs and won. And history is full of martyrs whose lives or opportunities have been lost because they did the same. And then there is Prometheus. He risked all to give fire, what metaphorically might be called the spirit of imagination, to man. He changed the world because of his daring. But he himself suffered the consequences. Such was the fate Zeus decreed.