What, one might ask, is the literary equivalent of two all-beef patties with lettuce, tomato, mayo and American cheese all squashed between a sesame seed bun? The answer: The ubiquitous Big Mac finally has made its way to college application essays as ... drum roll, please ... McEssays!
Director of International Admissions Parke Muth coined the term "McEssay" several years ago as a description for the often-generic college essays he sifts through each year.
"We get about 10,000 people saying the same thing every year," Muth said. He likened reading most college application essays to eating a Big Mac because he said he knows all the standard ingredients, and no matter what McDonalds he travels to, he knows he always will be eating the same sandwich.
Muth, who has worked in the Office of Admissions for 15 years, has written several articles for U.S. News & World Report about "McEssays."
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In these articles he has written how McEssays are not wrong but simply boring. The standard five-paragraph essay is not going to let a student stand out and "the student who uses cliché, in effect, becomes cliché," he said.
Muth said the generic essay never attracts the attention of an admissions officer. Instead, he is drawn to essays that take risks in order to speak from a new perspective.
"What we are looking for is a student with a voice. Someone who is willing to speak out and say something controversial," he said.
In some essays, Muth said it is as though people think the only topics that have any weight in the Office of Admissions are those that tell of overcoming hardships or tragedies.
"There's a lot of 'tell us your pain' type of essays. It's sort of the Jerry Springerization of essays," he said. Sometimes Muth believes students write essays tailored to what they think admissions officers want to hear. But this becomes an obvious tactic, as in one year when over 1,000 students submitted essays on the Declaration of Independence.
"We don't have a platonic ideal for students to reach and we don't have a magic formula," he said.
The false idea that colleges have a specific formula for essays becomes evident to Muth when he gives essay workshops to high school students each year.
Muth brings examples of essays for the students to see but never passes out copies.
"To pass around an essay I say I like would be the kiss of death," he said. Students oftentimes will read these examples and think, "oh this must be how I should write my essay," and copy the idea.
Muth disagrees with the way college essay writing has become a commercial enterprise in which students pay money to companies like Kaplan to revise and give suggestions on essays.
"They can't teach a person to be a good writer. I mean, it's like learning to make three-pointers overnight. It's just not going to happen," he said.
Though the relative importance of college essays varies from school to school, Muth said it is an important factor in University admissions. At other schools, he said, the essay can be used in a variety of ways.
"Some schools use it to make applicants believe that they are a selective school. But then they might not even read the essay," he said.
Muth said he thinks essays also give some schools the chance to look for diversity without having to rely on race.
The debate over how important admission essays really are continues among several first-year students at the University.
"I spent an hour and 45 minutes on my essay, then rushed it to the post office," first-year College student Benjamin Schellman said. He recalls that the essay questions did not reflect the kind of person he was. "They seemed superficial."
But first-year College student Lorrie Anselmo said expressing herself as an individual gave her the chance to "show what grades and test scores just can't."
While the importance applicants place on essays in the admissions process may vary, Muth thinks there can be a clear line drawn between the good essays and the bad essays. He has cited several examples of both good and bad essays that have come across his desk.
In one of the essays that Muth pronounced to be strong, a prospective student for whom English was a fourth language wrote about an influential person in her life.
Her essay began, "In the artistic part of my academic career, I was influenced by David Lynch. A painter, having discovered film-making, like myself, Lynch proceeded to shock and enlighten through the confusing seventies, the opulent eighties and the dissonant nineties with vitriolic inspiration."
Muth said this essay's discussion of David Lynch as well as the in-depth knowledge of his films highlighted the writer's creativity.
One of Muth's personal favorite essays exhibited a creative style and a deft handling of language absent from most essays. He points out the qualities of this piece at high school workshops.
This person wrote an essay that calls for a news story in the year 2020: "In a phenomenon which has puzzled political scientists and religious leaders world-wide, thousands of witnesses have reported seeing visions of Newt Gingrich, dressed all in white, appear in churches and Burger Kings across the nation. This upstanding moral and political leader of the twentieth century died of heart disease in 2003, but is fondly remembered in the hearts of rabid conservatives everywhere."
The essay impressed Muth to such an extent that he wrote the student an e-mail commending her on her work.
"She was a little taken aback, since she had labeled this essay as the 'cut-my-throat-U.Va. essay,'" he said.
In the end, Muth said it just comes down to how a student tackles the topic.
"Some students have amazing experiences but come across as being really trite. And others are very specific and just sort of blow you away," he said.
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