It’s pretty well known that college admissions processes are more than a little crazy—but the twists and turns of getting into even the most popular colleges in the country pale in comparison to the—forgive me—lunacy that is part of getting admitted to many of the private high schools in New York City. Tales of getting into the right nursery school in order to get on the right trajectory for a certain high school are legendary—and given the relatively small physical space compared to the recruiting range for most colleges, the intensity of it all can make even the most ethical applicants consider looking for an unequal edge.
One of these high schools is trying to do something about that. Beacon High School has announced that the essay portion of its admission policy must now be completed by the student, in person, on one of several available dates at the high school. Students receive the writing prompts ahead of time, as well as the scoring rubric, but walk into the test site with no previously written materials.
Unnamed sources at the school report the change was largely initiated by the dramatic increase in excellent essays that were written at home, once artificial intelligence resources flourished. Beacon joins a few other high schools engaging in this switch, but for some reason, the change here has increased stress among the 9th-grade-bound New York community.
This change echoes much of the discussion the college admissions community has had in recent years over the value of admissions essays in an AI world. Many say the addition of AI is just one more hurdle savvy admissions officers can overcome, having been weaned on essays that seemed strengthened by over-zealous essay “coaches”, or written by middle-aged parents who were convinced they could “sound” 17. Others say this is now a brave new world, since AI can analyze the tone of teenage writing and produce material that is the rare mix of exceptional and expected for strong high school writers.
At the same time, Beacon’s switch seems to take the discussion on college admissions essays on a new track. Rather than considering doing away with the essays, why not go back to having students write college essays in person? This obviously wouldn’t be as simple as a college saying “You want to go here? Bring a Number 2 pencil to campus Saturday!”, but the merits of offering students a chance to just write have their advantages:
- • Colleges get to see the raw writing abilities of students
- • It reduces the advantages the wealthy have to hire writing coaches
- • Students spend less time agonizing over drafts 4, 5, or 6, and can focus more on school
That said, there are some downsides:
- • A big part of the college experience has to do with polished writing, not in-class writing
- • Some students’ writing improves vastly with the second or third draft
- • How on earth do you organize this?
That last one is kind of easy, at least in my world. There’s a couple of days where high schools can hold essay sessions, proctored not by high school staff, but by staff from a neighboring school—they switch schools to proctor. The prompts are released to students at 7 pm the night before, reducing the likelihood of essay coaching or multiple drafts. Finally, not every essay is done this way. Students would write, say, the main Common App essay, this way, writing the supplemental essays on their own—so colleges can compare raw work with polished and, uh, supervised writing.
Better? Worse? Something to consider.
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