posted
I haven't been able to find this story on ULRP and the message boards, though it sounds like classic UL fodder to me. My daughter said she just heard about brilliant high school senior who had to write a timed admission essay in his quest to be admitted at Harvard. He was given the topic, "Describe the biggest risk you have ever taken." After much deliberation, the young man turned in a paper that simply read, "F*** you." You can guess how the story ends: he was accepted. Anyone ever heard this story or variations thereof?
Posts: 207 | From: Alabama | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
Whereas he took a big risk with the 'essay', the paper itself did not satisfy the request: "Describe the biggest risk..."
The young man failed to describe the risk.
-------------------- "The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." - G.K. Chesterton Posts: 1514 | From: Wisconsin | Registered: May 2005
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posted
There's an old joke about an Admiral, an Airforce General, a Marine General, and an Army General bragging about whose men have the biggest balls (figuratively). The Admiral and the the Airforce and Marine Generals each assign a man to do something spectacularly brave. Then it's the Army General's turn: "Private, get me a cup of coffee." "F*** you, sir, get it yourelf."
pinqy
-------------------- Don't Forget! Winter Solstice Hanukkah Christmas Kwanzaa & Gurnenthar's Ascendance Are Coming! Posts: 8671 | From: Washington, DC | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
pinqy, there's also the joke about the biggest penis/risktaker, where two of three guys are bragging, and the third just sits and stirs the fire with his penis.
-------------------- "Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." -- Mark Twain Posts: 173 | From: Pennsylvania | Registered: Dec 2005
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posted
A timed admissions essay? Do such things exist? I never did one of those when applying to colleges. Of course, I didn't apply to Harvard, but you think I would have heard of such things. I did apply to two Ivies and never had to do anything like that.
That, in and of itself, makes this seem unlikely.
Posts: 1048 | From: Brunswick, Maine | Registered: Oct 2005
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Yeah, that seems all wrong to me, too. That and the badly-worded essay topic make me think think that this little story has gotten worse in the re-telling.
Posts: 207 | From: Alabama | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
Sounds like something a pencil neck geek like Jason Lewis would say he's a talk show host in Minnesota on KTLK radio...he's an urban legend in his own mind! Timed essay sounds subjective.
posted
Many private colleges require an applicant for admission to take an entrance exam. Many of these are timed exams involving basics like math, grammar, geography, history, etc. However, I have never heard of a timed essay either.
Barbara R.
Posts: 378 | From: Boonville, Missouri USA | Registered: Dec 2003
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Canuckistan
Ding Dong! Merrily on High Definition TV
posted
quote:Originally posted by Barbara R.: Many private colleges require an applicant for admission to take an entrance exam. Many of these are timed exams involving basics like math, grammar, geography, history, etc. However, I have never heard of a timed essay either.
I've written exams that were strictly essay questions, and those were timed, so I'm thinking the idea isn't inconceivable.
-------------------- People need to stop appropriating Jesus as their reason for behaving badly. It's so irritating. (Avril) Posts: 8429 | From: New York run by the Swiss (Toronto) | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I've never heard of having to take an admission test for any private college I applied to (I applied somewhat recently, in 2001/2). Some schools have their own applications/add ons to the common application, and of course they all require a personal statement, but that's meant to be written at your leisure, and turned in along with the rest of the application.
-------------------- "You can't play Electro-magnetic Golf according to the rules of Centrifugal Bumble Puppy." -Mustapha Mond, "Brave New World" Posts: 679 | From: New York | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
I've never heard of a timed admissions essay, but my college does have timed essays for some scholarship competitions.
FWIW Bee
-------------------- People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools. -Alice Walker Posts: 335 | From: Minnesota | Registered: May 2006
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Canuckistan
Ding Dong! Merrily on High Definition TV
posted
quote:Originally posted by Brillo Bee: I've never heard of a timed admissions essay, but my college does have timed essays for some scholarship competitions.
I should add that I've never had to write an admissions test. When you have a 97 average, the schools come to you.
[/brag]
But timed essay tests of some shape do exist. A number of my finals were timed essays.
-------------------- People need to stop appropriating Jesus as their reason for behaving badly. It's so irritating. (Avril) Posts: 8429 | From: New York run by the Swiss (Toronto) | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Canuckistan: I should add that I've never had to write an admissions test. When you have a 97 average, the schools come to you.
You're kidding right?
-------------------- "Dear Lord, please protect this rockethouse and all who dwell within..." Posts: 1093 | From: Japan | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
The biggest flaw I can see in this UL is the last thing colleges want is free thinkers.
-------------------- All the world's a face, And all the men and women merely acne. Posts: 673 | From: Glasgow, Scotland | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
I had to do a timed entrance exam for my college, but sadly the questions were not amenable to bold, one or two word answers. I am pretty certain that if they were, I would not have been a smart alec and would have tried to turn in a proper response.
lazerus, I find your cynicism saddening. Perhaps more saddening is the suspicion that in many cases it is correct. OTOH, I remember discussing the admissions process with my admissions tutor when I graduated; he told me that what he always looked for was an open mind, which would benefit from the experience of university. But it was the interview process which established this; the exam was intended simply to narrow the field a bit, and (so far as any exam can) guarantee a minimum level of intelligence.
Posts: 2370 | From: Arabia | Registered: Feb 2002
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My General Studies* A-level had two papers. One paper was multiple guess, the other essays. I was always good at the guessing but terrible at the essays mainly due to a laziness and/or boredom. On the essay paper there was a question that I can't fully remember now. It was of the style, "How much do you think blah affected blah in blah?" I answered "Quite a bit". How come I only got a C?
*Kinda a general knowledge/politics/geography/history/current weather/anything they thought of on a whim subject. We were forced to do it at our school. Noone cared about it and most, if not all, Unis didn't even recognise it as an real A-level.
Canuckistan
Ding Dong! Merrily on High Definition TV
posted
quote:Originally posted by ASL:
quote:Originally posted by Canuckistan: I should add that I've never had to write an admissions test. When you have a 97 average, the schools come to you.
You're kidding right?
Yes on the second part of that sentence.
No on the first -- I did have a 97 average in the final year of high school.
(Although it was a contest to see which school would give me the biggest scholarship. I went with the one that let me run a student surplus. Over four years, it paid for my books, transportation, computer and stereo.
And I still paid too much to go there! )
-------------------- People need to stop appropriating Jesus as their reason for behaving badly. It's so irritating. (Avril) Posts: 8429 | From: New York run by the Swiss (Toronto) | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by lazerus the duck: The biggest flaw I can see in this UL is the last thing colleges want is free thinkers.
I don't see how that makes him a free thinker. Basically all he did was blow off the assignment. It doesn't prove that he has good writing skills or that he's intelligent or well-educated. The assignment, as others have mentioned, was to describe your risk.
-------------------- "You can't play Electro-magnetic Golf according to the rules of Centrifugal Bumble Puppy." -Mustapha Mond, "Brave New World" Posts: 679 | From: New York | Registered: Oct 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Canuckistan: I should add that I've never had to write an admissions test. When you have a 97 average, the schools come to you.
You're kidding right?
Yes on the second part of that sentence.
No on the first -- I did have a 97 average in the final year of high school.
Still... It's just that in the US, HS grades don't tend to mean much on their own.
-------------------- "Dear Lord, please protect this rockethouse and all who dwell within..." Posts: 1093 | From: Japan | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Hmm, the only timed essay I've ever heard about that are linked to an admission criteria are the ones at the end of an LSAT, MCAT or GSAT. Those essays aren't even marked but used as a means by the school to assess a candidate's ability for academia should there be a tie between potential students with regards to their marks, scores etc. or if the candidate's exam is showing an out of character grade to their transcripts (ie, a lower percentile on the exam but a high GPA or vice versa).
So while the "F*ck you essay story sounds bogus for a general school admission, it may have a thin streak of truth in its origins for having been written for a post grad exam and admission.
Having sat on my school's admission committee for a number of years, I can only recall ever having to actually read the LSAT essay once on an applicant's file. However, that said there is now a different mechanism for admission where applications are filed through a central admissions office and dispersed to the individual universities so admission committees don't tend to see as many of the applications as we used to see.
-------------------- Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. Napoleon Bonaparte Posts: 47 | From: Ontario | Registered: Sep 2006
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Canuckistan
Ding Dong! Merrily on High Definition TV
posted
quote:Originally posted by ASL: Still... It's just that in the US, HS grades don't tend to mean much on their own.
This is probably a big difference between the U.S. and Canada (well, at least Ontario). High school grades are the determining factor in getting in. I don't recall anyone I know having to write an admissions test here.
-------------------- People need to stop appropriating Jesus as their reason for behaving badly. It's so irritating. (Avril) Posts: 8429 | From: New York run by the Swiss (Toronto) | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I remember having to do a timed essay on a placement exam; to see how well the you could write, and if you should go to English 099, 101, or 102. I'm not sure whether you could skip the 100 series entirely or not from the essay.
I imagine that simply writing explitives would place you in English 099.
-------------------- If the sum of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square on the other two sides, why is a mouse when it spins? Posts: 90 | From: Cleveland, OH | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by ASL: Still... It's just that in the US, HS grades don't tend to mean much on their own.
This is probably a big difference between the U.S. and Canada (well, at least Ontario). High school grades are the determining factor in getting in. I don't recall anyone I know having to write an admissions test here.
I can assure you that High School grades are essential for college admission...unless, of course, you're a 'legacy' student (meaning there's a building on campus built by, and named for, your father).
-------------------- "The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." - G.K. Chesterton Posts: 1514 | From: Wisconsin | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Brandon University in the late 80s and early 90s (and maybe even until today) had a timed essay that was for admission.
It was labelled the Test of Written English Proficiency (TWEP) and every student was supposed to have completed it prior to commencing classes, but the window was wide enough to ensure that you completed it prior to the end of your first year.
The student was brought into the lecture theatre, and given an exam booklet and a topic sheet. You had three hours to write the paper, without having any reference material. There were 50 topics on the paper so there was bound to be something that you could write on.
The goal of the test was to catch those who had an obvious gap in their education (ie passed HS without having the requisite knowledge) and possibly correct this.
I know several students that required three, four or five attempts to pass.
Posts: 2064 | From: New Brunswick, Canada | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:Originally posted by ASL: Still... It's just that in the US, HS grades don't tend to mean much on their own.
This is probably a big difference between the U.S. and Canada (well, at least Ontario). High school grades are the determining factor in getting in. I don't recall anyone I know having to write an admissions test here.
In America, -judging from my son's experience in 2004 - the standardized tests (ACT mostly in midwest, SAT more popular on coasts) makes up a really big part of admissions. Only the schools that are higher up on the ladder in terms of selectivity require essays, many state schools do not, but some do. Most of them used a combination of your class ranking, GPA, standardized scores, and then possibly an essay.
Of the schools we looked at, I don't recall any that went on HS grades alone. Pretty much all of them required either ACT or SAT.
-------------------- "Wolves, dragons and vampires, man. Draw the nut-bars like big ol' nut-bar magnets." ~evilrabbit
(snurched because one of my nutbar family members is all about wolves and another one is all about dragons...)(with apologies to surfcitydogdad) Posts: 2397 | From: Texarkana, TX | Registered: Mar 2006
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Tom o' Bedlam
I'll Be Home for After Christmas Sales
posted
quote:Originally posted by WingedBear: I remember having to do a timed essay on a placement exam; to see how well the you could write, and if you should go to English 099, 101, or 102. I'm not sure whether you could skip the 100 series entirely or not from the essay.
I imagine that simply writing explitives would place you in English 099.
I had this as well when transferring from community college to university.
WARNING: LENGTHY SEMI-HIJACK AHEAD The prompt was something along the lines of "Write a letter advising a friend who wants to issue a formal complaint, using at least one example from persinal experience," and a few other guidelines I don't remember now. When I read the prompt, I was a bit peeved at how unfair it seemed, since I'd never formally complained about anything in my life.
So I decided that the complaint my "friend" was issuing was that his writing proficiency essay was about something he couldn't possibly write about well enough to fulfill the guidelines of the essay. I made it all pretty blatant, and for my personal example cited a particularly boneheaded public complaint I remembered someone making here on snopes to illustrate that it doesn't help one's case to directly compare the head of the administration to Hitler, and ended in (paraphrasing from memory) "One final word of advice: don't write your essay as a thinly-veiled complaint in and of itself. However if you do, I'm certain that the school's evaluators, being the level-headed, open-minded, good-looking people that they are, will approach it without bias and judge it according to its merits."
In the end, the essay passed with flying colors and I didn't have to take any English classes beyond what I'd already taken in community college. But I'm fairly certain that I passed not because of my somewhat outlandish approach to the essay, but because I managed to jump through all the hoops set before me by the prompt. Obviously in the case of the OP, the student not only didn't follow the guidelines (Maybe if the prompt were something like, "What is risk?", he might have a leg to stand on in that respect), but he also did nothing to prove that he was in any way a proficient writer.
-------------------- Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys, Bedlam boys are bonny, For they all go bare and they live by the air And they want no drink nor money! Posts: 107 | From: San Diego, CA | Registered: Jul 2006
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quote:Originally posted by ASL: Still... It's just that in the US, HS grades don't tend to mean much on their own.
This is probably a big difference between the U.S. and Canada (well, at least Ontario). High school grades are the determining factor in getting in. I don't recall anyone I know having to write an admissions test here.
Low grades can kill your application easy enough, don't get me wrong there, but high grades in and of themselves don't mean much to private or out of state schools (or even some public schools in states without mandatory admissions requirements).
In Texas, starting in 1997, states universities and colleges were and still are required to accept anyone in the top 10% of their high school class if they graduated from a public highschool in Texas under H.B. 588. But for anyone not in the top 10%, grades are just a check in the box, not a guarentee for admission. So, say you're 171st out of 1000 and you have a 97 average (or something like a 3.89 GPA), if you bomb the SAT and the ACT you damn well better take 'um again. But if you have a 73 average (barely a 2.0 GPA) and you're 772nd out of 1000 in your class, a good SAT score isn't going to save you.
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