Today is the last class in your current four class set. We will begin class with a casual conversation . Our reading this week is about engagement parties. Please underline three words or phrases that are not familiar to you. I will ask you to share them with me in class.
I have also included some listening material. Please listen once while following the transcript. Please note the listening story is from 2009.
Click HERE for your reading
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
High school juniors, put down your pencils, cease your texting. This item is really for you. Next year, many of you will have to craft a succinct, insightful and grammatical essay on a topic that someone at the college of your choice thinks is thought-provoking, the dreaded college admissions essay.
Well, the Wall Street Journal has turned the tables on several college presidents by having them write 500-word essays on assigned themes, and the results are pretty impressive. These people didn't rise to the top of academe for nothing.
Robert Zimmer, the president of the University of Chicago, was given a quotation from the German poet, Rilke: At present, you need to live the question.
That, Zimmer writes, requires a habit of challenging one's own assumptions, even while analyzing and questioning others. Importantly, questioning also requires listening, and his essay actually poses many questions.
President Amy Gutmann of the University of Pennsylvania was asked to write Page 217 of her 300-page autobiography. Not being a high school senior, she could plausibly figure that she's already lived Page 217, and she describes becoming president of Penn and embracing the goal of raising the university from excellence to eminence.
Earlier today, I spoke with Debora Spar, the president of Barnard College. The Journal told her to describe a daily routine or tradition that holds special meaning for her.
Ms. DEBORA SPAR (President, Barnard College): I found it, as I'm sure many potential students did, it was a very tough question to answer in an interesting way in 500 words or less.
SIEGEL: Yes. And in fact, your lead here is: Routines are good. Routines are comforting. Routines bring order and efficiency to the messiness of life. I do so wish I had some.
Ms. SPAR: Yes. I decided, as many college applicants do, that this question was best answered by actually not answering it and turning it on its head instead.
SIEGEL: The clever evasion, perhaps, but finding something more interesting about routine, to say.
Ms. SPAR: Yes. The time-worn trick…
(Soundbite of laughter)
…of answering the question you actually wanted to answer rather than the one you were asked.
SIEGEL: Well, it's a very nice essay that you wrote.
Ms. SPAR: Well, thank you.
SIEGEL: And did you come away from this experience feeling that, yeah, this really helps you find the best Barnard women you can find, or maybe the experience is overrated, having college admissions essays?
Ms. SPAR: Well, I think college essays are almost certainly overrated. The problem is that we haven't been able to come up with anything better. And I think, you know, having to choose between SAT scores and college essays, I'll go with the college essays even if they push students to answer fairly uninteresting questions in fairly routine ways.
So at least the essay gives an option, the possibility that a kid really can reveal something important about their personality.
SIEGEL: Something I've always wondered, by the way. Is there a black market in college application essays that college admissions offices all know about and are on the lookout for?
Ms. SPAR: Well, I know it better at the graduate school level, where I was previously, and for sure, there is a black market there.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIEGEL: There is?
Ms. SPAR: Yeah, unfortunately, but you can usually pick them out.
SIEGEL: So a practiced eye can do that?
Ms. SPAR: Yes, and our admissions officers, like I'm sure admissions officers everywhere, read thousands and thousands of these. So if something's out there on the black market, you probably will have seen it already.
SIEGEL: Well, Debora Spar, president of Barnard College, thanks a lot for talking with us.
Ms. SPAR: Thank you.
(Soundbite of music)
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.