Faceoff

DESIGN: ELIZABETH LEFFEW, STAFF WRITER

REMI MUNYE, STAFF WRITER

College essays should be a defining factor in a collage application. Nobody has ever enjoyed test taking. Standardize testing scores have been given more than enough importance in college applications.

Since the pandemic, and waves of ice coffee and cloud bread, the pandemic brought on a tax of people’s mental healths. It also caused deaths, it affected many families and relationship. GPAs and test scores have also been effected by the pandemic. Nobody really liked online school.. Come on, are we really expected to have the same grades as those who graduated before us after going through a whole pandemic?. The pandemic brought on sorts of issues into college applicants. It caused scores to drop in every social, economic, and racial class. According to the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) the drop in grades was universal. However minorities were hit hardest, including low income families, Black and Hispanic students and disabled students.

College essays give an amazing pathway to fill the gap that academics left from the pandemic. It shows (possibly) what lead to that gap, and the struggles that students had to overcome. If they weren’t making cloud bread, and fancy ice coffee. Students also living with abusive, or oppressive families, home life didn’t get easier with quarantine. The pandemic also killed at least one million Americans according to Google News. It left some jobless and others homeless . It can also explain the lack of high taking AP classes, or rigorous courses because students may have had to fill in a role during COVID-19 as parent to younger siblings or other relatives due to death or illness.

College essays should be a determining factor because they explain about a person’s interests and passions outside of school. It provides a whole new alleyway, and avenues that this student can talk about. They prove their passions, or perhaps dedication to the community. It brings the applicant a story, a memory, an emotion tied that person.

It brings a face, to that person, something a few measly test scores can never achieve. Test scores can also not even be accurate, if the applicant have undiagnosed disorders that prohibit the student from doing their best, Collage essays provide chance to bring an applicant from a few “denfing” numbers, to a person, who can achieve, dedicate, and work through collage.

The essay could talk about their passion for said major, what drives them to study this at, a collage expertise. College Essays provide a chance to figure it out, they bring out numbers rather than a person. A collage essay can determine that better than a test score can. Words, provide emotions, thoughts and feeling something that a GPA can’t. How can admissions recruits know that the applicant is being serious? Number’s can’t a define person, rather a story or an essay about them can. Essays should definitely be a reason a collage admits you.

EOWYNN MILLER, STAFF WRITER

College essays are an unnecessary part of the college admission process. These essays are something of the past, and students shouldn’t be struggling over it today.

Teenagers are fighting to stay afloat as it is. Students are pressured by the internet or their family to make their college application diverse. Students are told to apply themselves in their academics. They are told to make the grade and keep it. Then, when they are encouraged to go to clubs and be diverse in what they do, they listen and do more. Along with that, they need to keep up with their friends and invest in relationships, which is difficult enough on its own. When the day is done, they may not even have a second for themselves. This pressure is a part of all students’ lives. Have the grade and the clubs while also attempting to stay a normal teenager. Yet this process is exhausting and burns students out without including adding an essay to college admissions.

Colleges don’t want any normal teenager who is burning out though. Colleges want students who stand out and essays are supposedly the way to find those students. According to commonapp.org one of the most common questions asked in college essays is to recount a difficult time and how it has changed you. To teens, the easiest answer is to go to relationships troubles or that school was hard. Most try not to write about this due to pressure colleges put on the students to be ‘unique’. It is hard to find something original when all these students have been living the same lives with the same goal of going to college. Colleges are asking for teens to look in and find out who they are when, most people say, college is about finding out who you are. Yet students still struggle on to find an answer that is acceptable to be ‘original’ in these outdated college essays.

College essays are so slaved over for the perfect college admission that it has become an industry. This industry is made up of two different groups: the producer and consumer.

The producer is a college essay coach and the consumer is the students writing this pointless essay. Yet instead of benefiting the consumer, this industry only benefits the producer and colleges. This process distorts the image the college is going for, of finding out who the student is- not who the teachers, parents, and a coach are. It also creates setbacks for those who are unable to hire a coach to help them write their essay. It pushes the richer up and the poor man down.

Students are struggling and the solution is clear. The college admission process is better without the essay. When the essay is removed a load will be taken off the student’s backs. Without this pressure students can focus more on school work and becoming well rounded people. Without the essays students will have a chance to prepare to learn in college and about who they are as people. Maybe not all of the pressure will be removed, but most.