Essay Test: The Order of Things: love, location, background and testing

The following essay was submitted to highly selective colleges and universities.

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Immovable

            I nudge open the door in the darkness. It grates against the frame, but doesn't give me away. Inside my parents snore oblivious. I feel bad waking them up. The door shudders closed again.
   I return to my room, stare at the ceiling. My Calculus teacher's words run like a broken record through my head: you already know all the material. Sleep is the best way to study.
But thinking about sleep, as everyone knows, is the surest way to not sleep. I stand up again, trying to remember how to find the remainder of a Taylor series after the nth term with increasing desperation.
   "Dad, I can't sleep." I feel like I’m eight years old again, on the verge of tears at the foot of his bed.
   "Hnh?" He grunts awake. "What's wrong?"
   I tell him.
   "Do you want to sleep in my bed?" Dad asks.
   “No, I'm fine. I just wanted to talk to someone.”
   He offers various strategies for falling asleep-- think of a tune instead of words, focus on your breathing. And then he goes, "I've been listening to this song."
   "Oh?"
   "I think it has a really good message. It's called 'Let Me Fall.' It’s about how falling is sometimes a good thing. Do you want to listen to it?"
   "Um, sure?" He summons a Youtube video on his iPhone and a soprano voice lilts out of the speaker. Someone I am/ Is waiting for courage/ the one I want, the one I will become will catch me...
   Sleep takes me under the covers. Wordlessly, he brings a pillow to the floor.

   "Can we see the eclipse?"
   "Oh yeah, almost forgot. Sure." Dad and I leave Mom and Chris playing basketball and chase the setting sun in our CR-V. We talk for a while before falling silent, admiring the sky. Neither of us can multitask.
   It's almost nine o'clock. A rosy cloud silhouettes the horizon, the only hint of sun I've seen since we came outside.
   "Do you think it's too late?" I ask, hesitating to break the quiet.
   "Let's go just a little bit farther-- past those hills." Our street zooms by and we enter the billowing cornfields west of town. The silence thickens. Just our car and the farmland, rising and falling, with each ascent hoping for a last glimpse of the waning sun.
   And in this silence, as darkness approaches, it occurs to me just how much my father loves me. He isn't an eloquent man-- he obsesses over Toastmasters and NPR hoping they’ll teach him to converse fluently in English-- but in every extra soundless mile he drives for me I imagine, I love you, I love you, I love you.

   I am mutable-- in the next four years I’ll meet countless new people, learn things I can't even describe now-- but I will always have a foundation in Dad, in an immovable love as constant as the sun.

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Questions

Rate this essay from 1-5 with 5 being the highest. What rating did you give it and why?

What character traits have you learned about the writer of this essay? Are these traits ones that predict success at a highly selective school?

The writer mentions some things in a slightly oblique way? Is this a useful way to write?  (Do you even know what things I am referring to?)

Is the writer male or female? Does this make a difference?

Is the writer white, Asian, African-American, or Hispanic? Would your reading of the essay change if the writer was non-white and if so in what way?

Is the father’s first language not English? Should this have any bearing in the rating of the student’s essay?

Do you think essays should have a title? Why or why not?

If I posted the student’s SAT scores before you read this essay and they were low would this surprise you?

If I posted this student’s SAT scores before you read this and they were high would this surprise you?

Did you know that almost all readers of applications have looked at SAT scores before reading the essay? Do you think this practice affects how they might read the application? (To learn more about this look up the cognitive science concept of priming.)

Should the location the applicant lives in affect how a reader will rate the essay? Does living in Iowa give this applicant an edge in admission? Should it? Why or why not?

Would it help your reading of the essay if the writer could embed the song 'Let Me Fall' into the Common Ap form? Why or why not?

The writer’s SAT’s are above 2350. Are you sure this information would not affect your reading of the essay?

I would like to thank Phoebe for letting me post her essay here. The essay and other admission information  from Phoebe is available on the website admitsee.com for a small fee. I am grateful to the author and to admitsee for letting me post the essay here for free.