Erin O’Connor presents the dilemma of a young man currently filling out the common college application, and asks for comments.
As part of the common app, he must choose among several prompts and craft a short–250-500 words–essay in response. One of the essay prompts is immensely leading. It runs: “A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.” This particular applicant has chosen to respond to this prompt–but to do so by questioning its premises and posing some of the problems that the applicant believes are created by our culture’s increasingly unquestioning acceptance of diversity as an unqualified good and an end in itself. The conundrum: Should the applicant actually submit this essay? Or should the applicant respond to another, less loaded prompt–like the one asking the applicant to write about a person who has influenced him, or the one asking him to reflect on a matter of national or personal concern–with a less inflammatory essay.
Be sure to read the comments.
ADDENDUM
Jessie faced a similar dilemma last year when she was applying for a National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship (which she ultimately won!). The question for one of the five essays she had to write invited, but did not require, the candidate to discuss how he or should would contribute to “diversity” (but other topics, such as integrating teaching with research or doing other good deeds, were also allowed).
Fortunately Jessie, who is both much wiser and calmer than I, did not follow my suggestion, offered only half in jest, that she say something like “I will contribute to diversity by being one of the few physicists wearing a skirt.”
I posed exactly this question to U-M officials after they created their essay application in fall 2003. No clear answer.
Does diversity include selecting people who question diversity?
Here’s what I wrote on Erin’s site.
First, I reported the following quote from a meeting in October 2003, following U-M’s implementation of its first “post-Grutter” essay system. Theodore Spencer, Director of Undergraduate Admissions at U-M, responding to a question: ( see http://chetlyzarko.com/essays/risky-essays.html )
“We will look for them [essay writers] to take a bit of risk, but we don’t want them to take too much risk to where they can offend the reader or someone else. We will look for all those kinds of things that the U still feels are important … The only thing we’ve done … we’ve rearranged them so that … they are no longer given points …”
TS’s recitation of Sun-Tzu, “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight,” is apt, but I think that sedgeways into which students would have the best fighting ability.
I think the best answer is that it depends on the strength of the applicant’s GPA and test scores.
If you had a 4.0 and SAT of 1600, I’d think the challenge would be highly appropriate, and your applying to an elite but not “super-elite” (Harvard, Yale). Let’s say that U-Michigan rejects you — you then, I think, have the next lawsuit, this time based on a First Amendment claim rather than 14th Amendment claim.
You could also not use the “common application,” and submit a “safer” essay to one school and riskier to another. If you’re qualifications are on the “bubble” the “risk” may also be worth it (to draw attention) or not worth it (to avoid the circular file). Obviously, if the risk fails, there is no lawsuit (provability would be low). There is no clear answer in this situation.