Essays, Editors, and Ethics: Part 1

How much writing and editing assistance do -- and should -- U.S. students get with their college application essays?

This question was posted on the website Quora.com. It’s one that a lot of people would love to know the ‘right’ answer to. Unfortunately, the answers are, at best, estimates based on what little data exists, and frankly even with that, any answer falls far more into the guess category than anything worth using as a reliable tool.

The reasons for what I have just said should be, I think, pretty obvious. There are students out there getting help of all kinds, and some of the help crosses the line between what’s ethical and what’s not. Those on the latter end of the spectrum certainly won’t volunteer this information. What follows is based on what I know from my long experience in admission and talking with hundreds of students, counselors and educators.

Original Title and Opening of "The Waste Land"

Without editors, some of the greatest works of literature and writing would be far different than what we read today. Perhaps the most famous editing job I know of, Ezra Pound’s manhandling of a manuscript given to him by T.S Eliot, changed poetry. The manuscript was called “He Do the Police in Different Voices” and it consisted of a very long hodgepodge of scenes, voices, and attempts to describe the world. (Eliot had had a breakdown when writing it and his wife was also mentally unstable.) The facsimile edition of the poem shows just how much Pound was responsible for shaping the poem into a masterpiece. Pound was ruthless in his edits and cut out sections, words, and the title. “The Waste Land”, perhaps the most famous poem of the 20^th century, is dedicated to Ezra Pound, “il migglior fabro” a line from Dante that means ‘the better craftsman’. Eliot needed Pound to shape his words.

If Eliot, a Noble recipient in literature, needed Pound’s help to shape his words into great art, I think it fair to say that a 17 or 18 year old should get some advice about his or her essay.  I’ve written a lot about admission essays, but one thing I always advise:  find a trusted editor. Of course, this raises an important question—who do you trust? As with any abstract question there is no easy or correct answer to this. Each person has circumstances and a background, which might make the answer different, but here are a few pluses and minuses to some of the choices.

Parent(s):

A parent has (often) lived with a student from birth and therefore has insight into his or her personality and experiences that few, if any, others do. A parent has watched a student grow over years and this perspective can be useful now that the Common Application (both for this year and next year too) center on growth, one’s background, and culture:

Option #1: Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story,

Option #2: Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?

Option #3: Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?

Option #4: Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?

Option #5: Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.

The prompts make a good case for why parents might be useful, at least at the outset, when a student brainstorms about potential topics. But things are not so simple (they rarely are).  Here’s why. Colleges and universities are, from President Obama on down, under scrutiny to enroll more low-income students and to keep up efforts to add diversity to their student bodies. Highly selective schools, especially those with enough money to provide financial aid packages that cover costs, have made enrolling more low-income and first generation students a priority. (They are already very committed to enrolling more students from under-represented groups.) The prompts offered by Common Ap give these kinds of students the chance to talk about their experiences in ways that might help an admission committee offer them a space over a student who has not had the challenges of worrying about financing their education. Students, on the whole, who come from low income and first generation backgrounds score lower, in the aggregate, on standardized tests, and often attend schools that don’t offer the range of honors and AP/IB courses that private, boarding and highly funded suburban and magnet schools do. Students who make a great case in an essay for what the MacArthur grant winning professor Angela Lee Duckworth calls ‘grit’ may have a better chance of getting in to a highly selective school than a student who has not had the same challenges. On the other hand, parents who have not attended college and who may not have experience writing for their jobs or for pleasure may not be great at giving advice on the nuts and bolts of what makes a good or great essay.

For those parents who do have income that places them in the upper income brackets, they may not know that some of the things they might think would be great essay topics might not help that much when applying to selective schools. One example that comes up frequently is the service trip. Some students go off to exotic places to help the poor for a week or two in the summer or over a break. While this experience may have changed the student’s worldview and so be a story worth telling, the common feeling among many admission readers is that such trips are largely done to add to the resume. (Not all readers feel this way, of course,  but I have talked to some who do.) The expense of going off to Tanzania or India or Nicaragua is significant and therefore often keeps those without means from participating.

The other argument that readers bring up is that the student might be able to accomplish long lasting change in the local community rather than some exotic port of call. The same reaction from readers might occur when students write about great and expensive summer programs that colleges and universities sponsor. Such programs cost a lot of money and they often have little positive impact on readers.  Finally, some challenges that students write about could be risky. If an upper income student has suffered from depression or an eating disorder and writes about this, then it tends not to generate as much sympathy as a student who writes about growing up in a drug filled neighborhood. In addition, describing a medical condition that might require lots of support on the part of college or university could be, even unconsciously, a topic that might not work to the student’s advantage.

Finally, in talking with some students who have parents editing essays I have noticed that the student feels compelled to write for 2 audiences. The words a student will use, knowing a parent will be reading over them, may well be very different than the words they would use if the parents were not looking it over. The issue is: if parents are very involved in the life of the child, the student may feel compelled to write a message to the parent that takes the form of a college essay. (I have seen essays like this and they aren’t often pretty or helpful to the student.) . Parents, however, often are wordsmiths of some sort, and they may well be great editors and have great things to add. But I have listed the caveats simply because they aren’t often brought up much in discussions about essays and editors.

TS Eliot and Ezra Pound

Peer(s)

For many years I have advised students to read their essays out loud to their best friends. Even if a student does not read it to a peer, he or she should still read it out loud to someone. Hearing the words unfold often gives both the student and the listener the opportunity to discover if the flow of words is smooth, clear, and concise. I have observed again and again a student who reads an essay out loud often knows, well before I say a word, where the rough patches are. The reason I suggest a peer hear the essay read? Schools and many books and articles all like to say that they are looking for an authentic voice in an essay. The voice a student uses with a peer tends to be more unguarded and relaxed with peers than with parents. The personal essay should be personal rather than an attempt to mimic a PhD thesis so it makes sense to have feedback from a peer. If, after hearing it, the peer says, “Yes, that sounds like you” then this is often a good sign. The student can then send the essay in knowing they have carried out the assignment.

But once again, things are not always so simple. A peer may think that a humorous essay sounds just like the student. But humor, across age groups and cultures, is tricky. What high school students consider the 'soul of wit 'may not be quite as laugh out loud to an old guy like me. It isn’t just voice that matters; it’s the audience too. I’ve done a fair amount of research on who reads admission essays these days and it is a mixed bunch. But the majority of readers who look at the application first tend not to be faculty, tend not to have teaching experience, and tend not to have advanced degrees in writing or literature. In addition, these readers tend to have to evaluate significant numbers of applications every day. Essays that make pop culture references to people readers don’t know might not be great. But it’s also true that a student writing a David Foster Wallacesque essay or a Kafkaesque essay might also not get the reception intended even if this is the voice a student has with peers. A reader may not ‘get’ that creative non-fiction, which revels in the demotic, experimental prose that breaks rules, is purposeful. It’s one of the reasons I tell students to see if they can find out who the person is who will be reading their application. A bit of research might help gather enough intel to help find the right voice that would appeal to this particular reader. (A number of people have told me they find this approach cynical, but the voice we use with parents, friends, teachers etc. differs so that the effort of finding one ‘true’ voice seems a bit off the mark –I take what I say here from the prof who has taught essay writing at U of Iowa, the number 1 writing program in the US):

The "made-up" self and the manifold ways it has come to life in a wide range of essayists and essays-these are my central concerns in this book. Thus it is intended to reconceive the most fundamental element of the personal essay-the "I" of the essayist-and by doing so to demonstrate that this seemingly uncontrived form of writing is inherently problematic. I don't mean to suggest that it's devious or willfully misleading like some fictionalized memoirs of recent years. But it's well to remember that the world of literary nonfiction borders upon the world of fiction, and sometimes their boundaries overlap, as Phillip Lopate implies in his Foreword to The Essays of Elia: "all autobiographical first persons are highly selective and therefore distorting representations of their owners, even when they do not bother, as Lamb did, to employ an alter ego or pen name." Lopate's observation is a reminder too that whenever we write in the first person, reflecting on our personal experience, we inevitably create a version of ourselves, crafting a self out of words.

Carl H. Klaus. The Made-Up Self: Impersonation in the Personal Essay. Kindle Edition. 

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In subsequent additions to this examination of college essays, editors, and audience I will add a few more of the usual suspects to the list of who edits essays, and will add a couple of sample essays as a starting point for a discussion of how much help a student should get and from whom.

epigraph to Eliot's "The Wate Land"