So it’s pouring rain here in Knoxville and I spent the afternoon reading a terrific book called Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College.
The author, Andrew Ferguson, goes through the process of trying to help his son get into college and starts by discussing the lengths parents are going to to try and get their kids into a selective school. Some are even hiring $40,000 college counselors years before their kid applies to college to guide them through the process. Wouldn’t it be easier just to give the kid forty grand and tell them to start their own business? But perhaps that is too simplistic.
One thing that caught my eye was how hard and depressing it was for the son to try and write the college essay. Many of the colleges ask for an essay about the student’s “inner life”–usually a buzz word for some kind of sappy self-absorbed nonsense where the student “took a risk” of some kind and went on to become a better person or some variation of that theme.
In the book, Ferguson’s son finally spits out a couple of paragraphs about his experience at a camp where there was a swimming test and he managed to swim the required distance while the rest were defeated. In the essay, the son wrote that he was “tired but proud; he sympathized with his classmates who hadn’t finished and in his victory, accepted modestly, he learned the timeless value of persistence and determination, expressed with grim earnestness…”
But his father knew the truth: “which was the masculine truth. He didn’t remember the race because it proved the timeless value of persistence. He remembered the victory because it was a victory: he had competed against this classmates, friends and rivals alike, and beaten them soundly and undeniably, and earned the right to a sack dance in the end zone. He knew he couldn’t say this, though, and I knew he was right.”
And that pretty much sums it up for the rest of college. Trying to please a bunch of people who care more about a PC stance than critically thinking with passion. It’s no wonder that boys and men are bypassing college.
Dr. Helen,
I went to college, for a while, and then discovered most of the classes I had to take had d*ck-all to do with what my major was.
Then I discovered that most editors cared more about whether or not you could do the job, than a piece of paper, and since I’d been _doing_ the job, professionally, while in college I finally said “pee on it” and went to work.
I suspect there’s a lot of people exactly like me out there.
It has been my experience that people who know how to do stuff recognize the ability to learn how to do stuff in others. Handing a piece of parchment at the boss doesn’t cut it.
It did indeed suck the life out of my kid- to the point where he put it off repeatedly and ended up applying only to science and engineering schools that didn’t require such BS.
And two years in, the one he attends still doesn’t.
Dana, can you “please” tell me what science and engineering schools don’t require gender studies and PC stuff? Who care about real truth and not PC truth? A college that doesn’t blindly accept global warming as gospel?
My daughter is going to Berklee College of Music, and I went through her liberal arts courses and told her she couldn’t take some of them. We weren’t paying for them, but they still had them. I wouldn’t send my son to a liberal arts college for the all the tea in China, and this is from someone who gave the graduation speech on the “advantages of a liberal arts eduction.” I am carefully watching the FIRE website on how colleges think all boys are rapists as well. My son is a freshman in high school but I really think this is going to be a process!
KP
I never could bring myself to apply to a school that required such BS, and in the end I’m saving a lot of money because of it.
By the way, and I know this is incredibly off topic and probably old news, but has anyone else noticed how libtarded Law and Order: SVU actually is? I sat down and watched an episode and I couldn’t believe such illogical trash actually makes it to the screen. Now I remember why I play video games instead.
You’re right about that money issue. It’s the expensive private schools that require it. In fact, now that I think of it, this was THE deciding factor regarding Harvey Mudd. My son had labored through the Common App, and just when he thought he was done (sometime in Feb.) they called back and said he had one more to write. He’d already been admitted to some fine schools, so I just told him “Whatever you want.” He never wrote the essay.
I really wonder if this isn’t a significant factor with the male/female imbalance at some of these schools. Certainly I would expect a science & tech school to have skewed ratios, but some of the liberal arts schools are way off in the other direction. This has got to be a factor.
…has anyone else noticed how libtarded Law and Order: SVU actually is?
Yes.
It’s feminsane. Protect your children, save your marriage – throw away the TVs.
I am encouraging my children (boys) to skip college and use the proceeds to start a business or learn a real skill.
My wife and I are considering using the “college fund” to put our children (ages 5 and 1) through a private, Christian K-12 school. What happens after that, we don’t know. But we can’t afford a private school and college tuition, so we have to choose. We think that avoiding the liberal ideology early would be the best route.
Homeschooling is an excellent, “mainstream” option, especially for the purpose of passing on values and the Faith–after all, especially in the older grades, one really has no idea if the children are actually taught Christianity by their individual teachers. It is hard work, but a joy and very rewarding if a family is able. God bless your decision!
Do your degree at a distance university. Less bulshit, less timewasteing. Simply pay the fees, do the assignments and take the exams. Don’t even bother with the idisyncracies of individual lecturers.
They typical soft science credential is not worthy of respect. You normally have to be an intellectual whore to graduate. There may be some exceptions to the rule—but usually this is the case. We should treat these people as dummies until proven otherwise. Andrew Ferguson may also be one of those editors at The Weekly Standard who disgracefully decided not to publish Jack Cashill’s article arguing that Barack Obama did not write his own books. He might be too eager to compromise with the politically correct academic establishment.
To quote the man “Yes. Next question.”
We have supported our son is his decision to join the Marines as a way to get real life experience and skills. It certainly will be a better teacher of actual life skills than any college education ever could be.
Boys learn earlier that life isn’t fair. That can be a positive or a negative going forward.
Dr. Helen,
Since my third son has just started college, I have gained some experience in the realm of college essays. My sons major(ed) in engineering, the number of essays on non-technical subjects has been (was) kept to a minimum. The boys did learn what most conservatives already know – to get an “A” in a liberal arts class, you must write like a liberal. It is somewhat humorous, though. Most liberal college professors have no idea that they’ve trained conservatives to tell professors what they want to hear and then laugh at them at the end of the semester.
And then I also learned how to word essays that my essays spit on the liberal theology while citing the very lesson they were trying to teach. It’ fun to write what they want to hear. It’s another to write what they don’t want to hear but can’t refute because you use their own lectures and text against them.
And they can’t do a damned thing because I never caused trouble and I’ll have a better case to present to the school that the professor has it out for me.
My degrees aren’t in science or engineering but neither is from a school that demanded an essay as the price of admission. I applied to schools that actually wanted to admit students; they knew which side their bread was buttered on.
I remember an epiphany I had when I was applying to college: all the essays were BS. They were always about “striking the perfect note” during a performance or as the post above states, persistence in a personal struggle. I struggled in writing these essays myself until it finally occurred to me, lie your *ss off. Then it became remarkably easy to BS my way through the application BS. So, that would be my advice…..
The most difficult part of applying to law school was the essay for precisely the reasons listed in this blog post. I felt that my values were not likely to be appreciated by academia. Perhaps I was overly sensitive.
What makes you think it’s just boys? My daughter’s a senior and hates this bullshit as much as any boy could, and i don’t think she’s unusual in that respect. But having two conservative parents maybe makes her freer to admit, I guess.
I think that the admissions people are heartily sick of having to review and grade most of the college application drivel they have to read through. Call me naive, but I think that the “dancing in the end zone” essay would get that young lad more places than meekly going along with the herd. The people reading that crap know it is a game. They must be bored out of their mind. So channel your inner Seth Godin and dare to stand out! If nothing else, it will liven the day of a mindless drone in the higher education bureaucracy. The applicant gets the satisfaction of not compromising his principles and having to bring his best and most witty writing forth. (With a high risk approach like this, only a well written entry will prevail) If the university rejects you because you tell it the way it is in an engaging and funny way, then it is their loss.
I remember one young lady I talked to at Caltech said she sent in a collage. Obviously, it worked for her!
If the collage was well engineered like, say, pop-up books, then more power to her and Caltech.
Otherwise, femediocrity has also conquered Caltech.
That’s a rather uncharitable interpretation. I assumed it was a rather clever collage, having been given no reason to assume otherwise.
It sucks the life out of girls, too. What gives admissions people the right to demand that people spill their guts about their personal lives in order to get into a college? Especially since most of them are recent graduates themselves and probably wouldn’t appreciate a mature essay if it was published as the lead article in Commentary. Plus, people who are rural, religious, or conservative need not apply. They have to figure out how to pretend to tell about themselves while hiding what they actually believe as it would get them summarily rejected.
Crazy U does a good job of summing up the admissions process and the higher education bubble. Especially as it affects people with bright kids who have had relatively normal lives and haven’t been aimed them at elite colleges with every detail of their academics and sports and activities controlled from elementary school on. At a certain level, admissions are very much a random crapshoot. Kids should be told that from the beginning so that they do not base their estimate of their own worth on the college that they end up attending.
I would like to highlight Mike Rowe’s WORKS Foundation, which promotes the development of trade skills: http://www.mikeroweworks.com/
I didn’t write these essays for admission- IIRC.
I did remember being in an ultra PC sexuality class which had a similar navel gazing essay for a grade. I was getting a B due to my occasional complaints that all men aren’t rapists, etc.
OK- I said- I wrote an essay that was a cross between an After School Special, A thousand Little Pieces and Lifetime movie of the week. I believe both my parents were alcoholics and I raised myself on Raman noodles or something. Based it on my uncle’s life with bits and pieces from every dysfunctional family I knew.
I got an A- although my professor wanted me to get counseling!
My daughter, an engineering student at the largest and finest state university in the nation, wrote her essays about two heroes in her life. Both were quite un-PC.
One was about her grandmother using her concealed pistol to protect herself. The other was about her Taekwondo instructor returning to his native Haiti to assist after the earthquake there. Neither had any PC crap in them. And I did not suggest the topics to her, or guide her writing.
In her first year there, she had to take a liberal arts course and ended up in a class of >100 students, about 75 of whom were engineering students. The course was called “Race in the Arts” or some such drivel. The first day of class was quite interesting, as the engineers insisted that race was an insignificant matter compared to an individual’s character and intelligence.
Don’t count out the kids just yet. They do not conform to the PC rules of their elders, and can (intellectuallY) kick the daylights out of a PC indoctrinated professor. And as engineers, they don’t give a darn about a grade in anything other than their major.
“And as engineers, they don’t give a darn about a grade in anything other than their major.”
Sadly, the non-major courses can drag your GPA down and cost you a scholarship.
This type of essay is pure bull**it. Boys and young men want to EXCEL and WIN in whatever they do. They want the exhilaration of hard work, perseverance and accomplishment at a high level. Yes, males measure themselves and push themselves to BE THE BEST. It is built into their genes.
Sorry, professor…I just don’t want to tell you about my feminine side. Screw you and this politically correct nonsense. College essays are a total waste of time for young men. They can never tell the truth to politically correct “educators” about what they THINK.
Such PC garbage does train someone to deal with the staff of most colleges as well as the business world. We all might hate it but that’s the culture and anyone that can’t ‘fake it’ for an essay isn’t gonna cut it, or should seriously be starting their own business.
totally agree
essays are complete BS
but being a good BS artist is an essential element for success
kids at 1. Ivy of ivies- better bullshitter
2. (x )IT top 5 college- didnt want to BS didnt get into the ivy he wanted- brighter than his sibling, better grades franky better essays too. just didnt feel like opening his heart out to a complete stranger. F* the retards at the college admissions office.
I am glad i never have to go throughthis hum,ilaition with my kids again.
a pox on all admissions officers
“It’s no wonder that boys and men are bypassing college”
I’d be interested in some stats on this. Every time I hear that fewer men are going to college, the “proof” offered is change in the percentage of male students to female students. Is the change due to an actual decline in the percentage of the males in the general population going to college, or is it due to an increase in the percentage of women who are?
I did the college, after the Navy so it was paid for. I wrote a ton of crap I didn’t believe so I could get it done. That may be good training for working for a boss, but probably not for being your own boss. Take the win where you can find it.
It doesn’t so much as suck the life out of them as encourage them to be dishonest in order to regurgitate up some PC pablum designed to feed to the goo-goos screening the essays.
Hence preparing them well for future careers in Academia, Government, or Finance.
For me it was when our gym instructor introduced us to the weight room and I found out I could lift more than many classmates of mine that were even much larger than myself. People start looking at you differently after something like that.
When my oldest son was applying to college in 1983, he had such an essay to write. He asked me about a topic (He was asked to write about a significant experience) and I suggested his experience sailing to Hawaii with me at the age of 16. We had been racing with a young crew; only one besides me was over 25. He stood his watches and pulled his weight. He showed the essay to his high school counselor who not only disapproved but called me and asked me if he really wanted to go to college.
Fortunately, the essay did not harm his chances and he is now a partner in a large law firm running its San Francisco office. He still sails most weekends although his new daughter has pretty much ended that for a while.
It has been a long time for me, but feedback from my grand children lead me to believe that college has not changed a lot.
For me it was like a sentence to a reformatory. Turgid subjects, taught by boring Professors, who were clearly going through the motions. I am not excusing my own lack of motivation. I lasted two years, and then the Navy offered to pay me to fly their airplanes. Went back many years later, thanks to the USN and the taxpayers. I was highly motivated and worked hard. Finished undergraduate, and earned a Masters degree. After a few years, I could not think of any specific subject that better prepared me for life. The two primary benefits were increased confidence, because I had a MS; and a lot of writing practice.
I do believe that it would be beneficial for many boys to delay college. After a couple of years in the military, or in the work world, they can probably assess what they want to do with the next phase of their life. If their goals requires college, so be it. If they requires some other training or experience, they can go for it.
By the way, my two daughters each have over six years of college. Over the course of those years, we supported one degree in Anthropology followed by one in Nursing, and one in Sports Medicine followed by Physical Therapy. Of those four degrees, it shouldn’t be hard to guess which were useful.
You will never organize a community with an attitude like that!
The college admissions assay asks a simple question, “With ample time to consider and prepare, can and will you lie clearly and convincingly?”
We ask the same question at job interviews, when we say “Why do you want to work here?”
Colleges are smart enough not to ask “Why do you want to come here?”, because they don’t want kids thinking too hard about that.
I live in Portland, Oregon. I used to apply for English teaching positions at the local colleges. All of them had PC essay questions that were impossible to respond to in anything other than cant phrases and popular rubbish (Why do you value diversity? On what occasions have you experienced discrimination and how did it feel?).
I quit applying because of these frustrating and empty but demanding essays. And, I love reading and writing essays.
“Why do you value diversity?”
I don’t. Who cares what color or gender folks are? Focusing on diversity is racist.
“On what occasions have you experienced discrimination and how did it feel?”
I’m sure I have encountered discrimination at some time, but I never pay it any heed. I’m all grown up now, and I pay no attention to such pettiness from my fellow man. In fact, I expect it, so I do not let it bother me. If I let such stuff bother me, I would probably be dysfunctional and have to live on welfare.
Gosh, do I get the job, now?
The “touchy feely” garbage is the second round of dumbing down our schools.
The first round began a long time ago, and has been a resounding success.
Witness this article: We have a Ph.D. beginning a sentence with “So it’s pouring rain…” and writing (repeatedly) “try and” instead of “try to”.
And it’s not just boys who are wasting time, energy and money responding to BS with what the BS-ers want to hear…
My neighbor just started college on an 80% athletic scholarship and was clear that she answered the scholarship-program request for BS with BS as well as the college application BS request.
She is very smart, very capable and is a great American. Too bad the same can’t be said of so many of the administrators and leaders in our university/college systems.
Having started on the rounds of college visits, I’m pretty skeptical of the assumption that the essay had to be PC. Especially at schools which get 10,000+ applications, it appears to me that your best bet with an essay is to stand out. Do anything to make your essay memorable. Yesterday at Notre Dame the Asst Director of Admissions told us of his favorite essay of all time. It was from a girl who applying with the intention of majoring in creative writing. She lived in a tiny town in remote rural Montana. Her essay was a rich description of the day that her town McDonalds opened. She told about how this transformed everyone, that the town was a different place from the day before. The last two sentences: “Get me out of here! Please!”
(Of course I went to the University of Chicago, whose essay questions have been legend for generations.)
Hey! I didn’t know my daughter applied to Notre Dame!
In 2009, the University of North Texas included the essay question: “Why is Barack Obama a great man”.
I remember writing one of those. I wrote one about some guy that had run a grocery store all his life and decided he wanted to face new challenges by going to college.
Got a good grade. Wasn’t me, but the grade was good.
Don’t forget the lad that got into college on the basis of his “prize-winning clams.”
http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/hell/Bestof/nyu.html
Academia now controlled by Marxists and feminazis. Waste of hundreds of thousands to send your kids thither. Invest instead in a good plumbing or electrician’s course, you’ll make a lot more money and have better job security.
Enough of the making excuses and going on about how hard men and boys have it. Men and boys have had just about everything their way for thousands of years. If some things are now accounting for the female outlook, the suck it up, boys and learn how to cope, as women have been forced to do since time immemorial.
I teach college English composition. The first week of class, I tell my students that I do not expect them to tell me their most personal thoughts or “life-changing events.” The relief in the room is palpable. Then I tell them they have to choose their own topics. First, there’s a moment of stunned silence. Then comes the question, invariably asked by a male: “You mean we can write about ANYTHING? Really?”
The results are pretty cool. I’ve read papers on everything from religion-as-evolutionary-development to advanced space exploration to deer herd management to uranium mining. And lots of the guy kind of history (“Dirty Jobs” meets Genghis Khan).
So at least in my class, boys get to be boys.
Yes, I must confess… I met a girl once in college. Her name was Essay. I thought she was Greek but (I found out later) she was Hispanic. She sucked the life out of me. After that first date, I never saw her again. Her MS13 affiliated brother made sure of that.