Robot U

Those who say we’re turning into mind-numbed robots may find ample support for this view in the current crop of college applications. It seems that students’ submissions are so highly polished that they’ve strayed from the real person into “slick misguided attempts at perfection,” says the Wall Street Journal’s Sue Shellenberger.

Pity the folks who have to wade through this stuff. A heavy dose of students’ overseas service work starts to read like a travelogue. And school personnel soon detect parental influence after an overload of heretofores and semicolons are sprinkled throughout the form. “You know the lawyer-parent factor may have been at work,” says Admissions Dean Jennifer Delahunty, adding that “some parents even slip up and sign the applications themselves.”

What admissions offices would like to see is something more personal. “Tell us how you felt when you had to change a tire in the middle of a Minnesota winter.” But whatever you do, don’t stalk the dean, like the applicant “who sent eight thank you notes to every person she’d met during a campus visit.”

Deborah Lambert writes the Squeaky Chalk column for Accuracy in Academia.

Deborah Lambert