|
What to Make of Yale’s New Admission Essay Questions
In a rather scathing presidential election campaign year and against the backdrop of some of the most severe-or at least visible-racial tensions the U.S. has experienced in years, words matter. In a world where media both defines and reshapes the things we talk about, imagery is important.
There's scarcely a surface in this country that hasn't been scuffed by the dysfunctional race relationships driving discourse in America today. If you think college admissions is spared from the fray, you'd be sorely mistaken.
In the U.S. Supreme Court this year, affirmative action was challenged again. A coalition of Asian students brought a class action suit against dozens of U.S. universities claiming reverse discrimination. Last year at Harvard University School of Law, photographs of black professors were defaced with black tape. University of Missouri and Yale University struggled publicly against massive protests regarding systemic racial policies.
Which is just part of the reason why Yale's revised admission essay prompts are so pregnant with meaning. Among them "What is a community to which you belong? Reflect on the footprint that you have left."
These words don't matter because lots of people will be applying to Yale-roughly 2,000 of 30,000 applicants were admitted last year. They matter because, for better or worse, people pay attention to Ivy League universities and their policies.
Is a wave of change likely to flow from ivory towers down to the shores of the rest of the nation? Probably not. But the contours of college admissions continue to buy generic viagra dapoxetine online reveal themselves as a metaphor for society at large. At the very least, it's worth paying attention.
Labels: What to Make of Yale’s New Admission Essay Questions
|
|
|
|
