College essays that made a difference - Princeton Review 2010

Allison Kay Range
The applicants

Allison was involved in a number of extracurricular activities, including her high school theater program, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Summer Seminar for High School Juniors, and an exchange trip to Japan. She was also captain of her high school’s Speech and Debate team for three consecutive years and attended both the State and National Championships with her team. In addition, she completed eight AP courses, worked outside of class at a bakery and her family’s farm, and was president of the Marshall Medical Junior Volunteers Association.

Stats

SAT: 1930 (750 Critical Reading, 530 Math, 650 Writing)

SAT Subject Test(s): 700 Literature, 670 U.S. History

ACT: 28

High School GPA: 3.8

High School: El Dorado High School, Placerville, CA

Hometown: Placerville, CA

Gender: Female

Race: Caucasian

Applied To

Reed College

University of California—Berkeley

University of California—Los Angeles

University of California—Santa Barbara

Essay

Allison used the following essay in her application to Reed College.

Please tell us, without word limit or subject limitation, why you want to apply to Reed College?

Why Reed?

Applications. Every single one of them seems to matter more than life itself, more than breathing and eating and my AP Statistics homework. And the stress, my God, the stress. I feel a morbid camaraderie with all those other seniors out there, all of us furiously trying to figure out where we want to go. It’s everybody’s ten million dollar question; can we really say in 500 words or less why we are qualified to attend one of the thousands of institutions that we all seem to be scrambling to get into? I’m not going to pretend that Reed is the only college I’m applying to; it is my first choice, but I’d like to think that the admissions office at Reed would be disappointed if I didn’t give it a go at a few other of those afore-mentioned applications. I only say this because it is while doing those other applications that I had my epiphany as to why I truly want to go to Reed.

It happened in the library of my high school. I was there with several other friends, who are also seniors, and we were all doing our favorite activity.… yes, that’s right, working on applications. Essay after essay and question after question in the painful florescent lights of a claustrophobic facility. I tried to diligently work, but I was not as focused as I usually am. Truthfully, I was thinking about writing this essay. I was thinking of when I visited Reed, and spent the evening with a dorm host, but more specifically, I was thinking of the conversations I had participated in during dinner. I was talking to a girl named Rachel, who lived in the dorm with my host. I had asked her one of the questions I tried to ask every Reedie that I met, “What did you write your “Why Reed?” essay about?” She told me that she too had been worried about the essay when she applied (I guess I wasn’t as good at masking my lurking worries as I thought). She told me stories of other students, but the one that sticks in my mind and which I thought of that day in the library was about a guy who wrote that he wanted to attend Reed because he had a passion for giraffes, and he felt that he would find others who shared his love of the animal at a school like Reed. I smiled when I thought of the story, but the ringing of the bell brought me back to that claustrophobic library, with a terribly long, boring and seemingly insurmountable application to a rather bland university blinking back at me from the face of the computer screen. I tried my best to continue, to answer the myriad questions about my social and academic life, to write answers to essay questions that only attempted to scratch the surface of who I am, of what I love. And that’s when it hit me, the realization, the epiphany which showed me why I want to attend Reed so very badly. The more I tried to complete these applications with reasons why I wanted to go to one college or another, the more I didn’t want to go. It’s really simple when one thinks about it; while trying to convince those prestigious centers of learning that I was right for them, I was convincing myself that I wasn’t. A little oxymoronic, but at least I realized it sooner rather than later. Once I finally realized this, the reasons why Reed stood above the rest quickly made themselves apparent to me.

The more time I spent on the other applications which seemed so superficially shallow in their assessment of me as a human being, the more time I spent letting my mind wander and thinking about my Reed application, which invariably led to thinking about my two visits to Reed, and the conversations and experiences I’d had as a Prospie. One of my favorite moments was when I got to sit in on a Comparative Governments class, and just listen and watch. It is unusual for me to sit in a classroom and be freed from the responsibility of participating, and although there were a few instances when I was itching to join in the verbal fray, I found the experience rather liberating. Everyone was friendly and asked me questions about where I was from, what I was interested in, but once class began, they were all amazingly attentive. Now, you must realize that this class I visited was taking place on a Friday afternoon, and I’m sure that the coy, seductive minx we teenagers like to call the weekend was impolitely tugging on more than a few people’s minds, and yet, nobody seemed bothered at all. This isn’t to say they all passively listened to a stodgy professor drone on and on; to the contrary, the discussion was lively on both the student and the teacher’s parts. Most striking to me at the time was that everyone seemed unmistakably interested. Not to mention interesting; the opinions that were fired off varied wildly, making for a much more engaging discussion. I think many people don’t realize what a precious commodity discussion is; it is the fine art of exchanging opinions, without anger or resentment but certainly infused with generous amounts of passion and conviction. Sitting in Comparative Governments that day, I realized what a dying art discussion is. I, who am nearly at the age where I can vote for who runs our country, have only a few instances in my memory when I have been able to engage in a true discussion of material in the classroom. Seeing discussion alive and well that day at Reed filled me with an intense feeling I could not then define. But it got better; discussion seemed to be the coin of the realm at Reed. There were people discussing things everywhere; on the lawns, in the dormitories, in the dining room, on the couches (!) that were scattered here and there on the campus grounds. And the range of what they were discussing far outstripped the numerous locations for said discussions. I overheard people talking about politics, about rugby, art, technology, why they like vanilla ice cream, why the on-campus café makes the best lattes in Portland (I’d have to agree with them on that one). I was lucky enough to join in on some of these discussions, and the ones I participated in ranged in topic from Portland’s jazz scene to which meal plan allows you the most ice cream. And I loved it … I adored it. I liked that the students were open, friendly. Nobody seemed stand-offish or proud, and never did I catch a whiff of condescension while talking to Reedies. This extended to the staff, from those in the admissions office to the professors of the classes I sat in on. I liked that admissions interviews were conducted by current students, and I liked that when the professor walked into Comparative Governments, I didn’t realize he was the professor until he started writing on the board, mostly because he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and he was talking, joking with the students as if he was just another Reedie. I liked all these things about Reed. The lack of pretension seemed incredibly liberating to both the students and the staff, and I certainly felt more comfortable than I had at any other university I visited. That was when I was able to define the feeling I had earlier been unable to name. I felt that I belonged at Reed.

These are the things I think of when I try to describe why I want to attend Reed. I want to go to Reed because the people there are a rarity; those who are genuinely interested in what you have to say, and do not simply wait for their turn to speak. I love that it is the kind of place where a student must be self-driven, something I have always admired and tried to discipline myself in. The students at Reed know that they are being given an opportunity, the opportunity to learn without restrictions and to change their minds about their lives, about themselves. The Reedies know how to focus, how to learn in class with tenacity, but more importantly, they know how to learn outside of the classroom with an equal amount of enthusiasm. The students and the staff encourage the art of discussion, a quickly disappearing discipline. In an age where, if you turn on the T.V. to one of the numerous news channels, you will see one fast-talking pundit yelling at another, it is incredibly refreshing to see such discussions being fostered instead of rejected. I want to join that tradition, to learn how to listen just as much as how to speak. All these qualities lead me back to one thing: complexity. This is what I found lacking in other universities that may have been prestigious and sought-after, but left me feeling frustrated. The questions on their applications were so skin-deep, and visiting their campuses, I had the same anti-climatic feeling. To put it simply, these places were simple. They were easily cataloged into the various roles that they not only accepted, but seemed to promote: party school, serious-minded school, school for hippies, school for yuppies. It all seemed so diluted. I have never felt this way about Reed. So as I sit here, finishing the application which opened my mind about all those other applications, I give you my final answer. I want to go to Reed because I am a complex person, and Reed doesn’t hold that against me. Reed is a place where learning is held to the highest esteem, but where grades just don’t seems to matter, a complex system if ever there was one. At Reed, professors dress in jeans, and everyone at the university seems to have a wry sense of humor, which extends to the fact that they appreciate admissions essays which focus on giraffes. At Reed, complexity isn’t an impediment, it’s an asset. And I appreciate that more than one essay can convey. I know I will benefit and grow both as a student and a person at Reed, not because an education at Reed will make my life and the choices within it necessarily easy, but because Reed will teach me to value that complexity which seems to be so intrinsic to who I am, and I can’t imagine what more you could ask from a university.

See this page to find out where this student got in.