Who Am I in a College Application Essay? So Phony I Smell Sincere

Slug-crawling across my desk on its own lubricating fluids is a book of college application essays that have been successful in winning admission to our most prestigious schools. Here, for the perusal and presumably the imitation of other hopefuls, is a collection of the self-descriptions, statements of personal philosophy, family portraits and odd narratives of My Most Meaningful Experience. The book is “100 Successful College Application Essays” by Christopher Georges and Gigi Georges with the help of wisely anonymous “members of the staff of the Harvard Independent,” and it is awful.

As a marketing concept, of course, the book is very good. The most demanding part of applying for college is composing such essays. Every January, student applicants sweat oceans to hit that just right blend of offhand self-effacement, wide-eyed hope for the future and drooling awe of the university. To know what to say and how to say it is a problem. What better plan than to ape those who got accepted? (We must pity the admissions people, if in fact any of this stuff actually gets read.)

Like so many other self-help books this one is mostly nonsense, but it unwittingly defines a new phase in the longstanding American belief that things succeed not by hard work and honesty, but by tricks and persiflage. If you look carefully to figure out what these essays say, you can make the trick work for you. But after reading a number of them, one comes to the conclusion that if these are the essays that make it into our top schools, then this country is in trouble.

The introduction is by the dean of admissions at Princeton, and it tips the hand. “Your essay,” he winks, “should smell authentic.” (His italics.) Anyone bright enough to figure that out doesn’t need this book. The key in this scam, as in so many others, is to fake sincerity.

Even if the self-consciousness and puerile mimicry of the precocious 17-year-old mind can be factored out, the essays themselves reek of the desperate desire to please at all costs. But these days you can’t write plainly on applications. You must be cute and coy and imaginative, telling the admissions office something about yourself in an entertaining way, what the authors call “appealing.” Think of yourself as a bar of soap that must be sold.

Somebody got into Yale by starting off: “Certain people have shaped me. Hesse, for one.”

Somebody got into Princeton with this (?): “I am the honey-colored sounds of my grandmother’s grand piano on a Saturday morning.”

Somebody got into Brown with this: “I do not have a father on the alumni board of Brown . . . I do, however, have a 7-inch-tall plastic Godzilla.”

Somebody got into Harvard with this opener: “I like ducks.”

The reason all this stuff is baloney is that left to their own devices, reasonably smart American kids don’t write like this, or think like this. On these essays they are performance artists, vying for attention and the main chance. Now this competition has been turned, with the help of this book and the college entrance industry, into an art form.

Write me a sit-com, the new rules say, and I’ll give you a rating. You can write comedies or dramatic stuff. You can bare your most personal problems, viz., “As I ran my index finger along the cave between the blades of my pelvic bones, all I could think of was how revolted I felt at the thought of my former weight.” This anorexic future mini-series got in at Wellesley.

You can be a lone eagle: “I am not the kind of ‘person person’ who requires great numbers of friends and people around him to be happy. I am independent.” They gave him a single room at Yale.

You can be a poet: “November’s nasal-drip splatters on the red roofs.” Ye gods! Harvard again.

You can be utterly original: “I have chosen to take roads less traveled by.” Welcome to Barnard.

You can leave Earth entirely: “All of the other little angels were wearing white. Why wasn’t I?” Because you’re accepted to Brown.

Or you can get real close to the line: “The washing machine had a habit of ‘eating’ my panties.” Harvard, yet again. I am not kidding.

All the world’s a stage, and everyone’s a hambone. Certainly grades and SAT scores have a greater bearing on acceptance. On the essay, however, this blather is now the accepted norm, and concocted drivel advances your case. But what would happen if someone just wrote what he or she was thinking?

What if an essay came in like this:

“Who I am is none of your damn business. I want to go to your rotten overpriced school because of the name. I want to hang around with rich kids. I want to make money. I want as much as I can get. Just give me an education and don’t bother me.”

That has more than the smell of authenticity, but I doubt it would be a winner. Plain speech is Greek these days.