the college essay is not dead

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Opinion: The college essay is not dead

In a guest column today, Matthew Boedy , an associate professor of rhetoric and composition at the University of North Georgia , discusses the development of artificial intelligence programs that can spit out accurate and fluid essays in response to any prompt.

Boedy is responding to a column in the Atlantic by English teacher Daniel Herman who writes of the new OpenAI’s ChatGPT program that “may signal the end of writing assignments altogether — and maybe even the end of writing as a gatekeeper, a metric for intelligence, a teachable skill...But most jaw-dropping of all, on a personal level: It made quick work out of an assignment I’ve always considered absolutely ‘unhackable.’ ”

In another Atlantic essay on sophisticated generative AI, novelist and essayist Stephen Marche writes: “Practical matters are at stake: Humanities departments judge their undergraduate students on the basis of their essays. They give Ph.D.s on the basis of a dissertation’s composition. What happens when both processes can be significantly automated? Going by my experience as a former Shakespeare professor, I figure it will take 10 years for academia to face this new reality: two years for the students to figure out the tech, three more years for the professors to recognize that students are using the tech, and then five years for university administrators to decide what, if anything, to do about it.”

Here is Boedy’s take on whether AI programs endanger writing and writing instruction.

By Matthew Boedy

It’s that time of year when I read reflections by my students in my first year writing course. This course is part of a mandated two-semester program and is populated by many dual enrolled students.

By and large, they praise the class and my teaching. Though I suspect at times some are merely buttering me up for a better grade. But I also ask them to reflect on how my ways with reading and writing compares to their high school experiences.

Credit: Peggy Cozart

The overwhelming claim by these “cream of the crop” students about their high school experience is twofold. First, they are often assigned little to no writing beyond one to two pages. Second, the mechanical or formulaic teaching of writing they received often meant they learned nothing of consequence.

I can’t vouch for the complete veracity of those claims. But I bring this up because of two paired headlines racing across the parts of the internet recently where teachers like me meet: “The End of high school English” and its companion, “The College Essay Is Dead.”

On the website of the Atlantic, both muse about the impact of a new technology called ChatGPT which is an artificial intelligence software that can create essays that sound as good or better than the run-of-the-mill ones I read on a regular basis from students.

The basic claim of mortality here is that this software is the greatest plagiarism program of all time. And people like me still assigning essays will only get from this point on prose produced by a robotic output of what people in the AI business call language production algorithms. I won’t bore you with examples but basically not only can you ask the algorithm to write an essay on any topic but also in the style of any famous author. As if sounding like Hemingway gets you extra points.

Let me dispel any notion that the college essay is dead or that this new technology will end my career as a writing teacher.

Contrary to popular belief, we writing teachers believe more in the process of writing than the product. If we have done our jobs well and students have learned, reading that final draft during this time of year is often a formality. The process tells us the product will be amazing.

Writing is a process of learning not merely about a subject. It’s also a learning about how that subject can best be framed for an audience. It’s also a writer learning about themselves. What do they want to say? What do they want to sound like? What rhetorical tools best fit their own skill set?

Asking an algorithm to make you sound like Hemingway actually will raise the reddest of red flags for me for plagiarism because the paper doesn’t sound like a first-year student.

On that note, if we writing teachers are doing our job well, we are crafting assignments that simply can’t be plagiarized. That is, an essay for my assignments can’t be bought off the internet or created by an algorithm. For example, I ask students to write an essay about three to five pictures of their own choosing. Sure, students can and do select pictures from the internet. But many don’t, instead using pictures from their phone. And coming up with things to say thematically about those pictures can’t be done by an algorithm. Another assignment is a research essay where I give students two sources and they have to find two others. The plagiarism I find most now is students stealing from the examples I show from previous semesters or other students in the class when they post early drafts to a class discussion board.

But for the writing-to-learn process to work, students also have to do their jobs. They have to be willing to fail, to write badly, or simply admit they don’t know what to say. And that is extremely hard if indeed they have never been asked to fill a blank page with little to no guidance from the teacher. To think as they write, not already have thought and then write.

And yes, that initial failure does bring the temptation to cheat. But what I hear from students in these end-of-semester reflections is not the siren song of plagiarism but a fear of failure. Because many of these students have never failed.

And for the other students who all they have known is failure with writing, this process only reinforces that sense of dread.

The answer to that is not an algorithm but advice. It’s why I have conferences with my students roughly every two weeks.

This new technology may indeed be the end of high school English. A certain kind of high school English. And a certain kind of college essay.

But it isn’t the death of the kind of education you should expect from our state’s higher education institutions. It’s the opportunity to show why we need more faculty, not less. Why we need less students per class, not more.

The cost of college has exploded due to one sizable factor – the death of public support. Lawmakers think tuition is the burden students should pay to have skin in the game.

But we all as a collective have skin in this particular composition game because good writing is that key fundamental civic skill, one we so desperately need more of. And it must be and should only be taught by those who see it as learning, not keyboard strokes after learning.

Even the algorithm agrees. I asked ChatGPT “What is the best way to teach writing?” I don’t have space to share its whole answer. But it suggests “clear and detailed feedback,” helping “students develop their own writing process” through revision practice, and working to “encourage creativity and originality in students’ writing.”

Maybe though it is just telling me what I want to hear. Like some of my students.

About the Author

Maureen Downey has written editorials and opinion pieces about local, state and federal education policy since the 1990s.

Credit: TNS

Credit: Daniel Varnado

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Credit: Natrice Miller / [email protected]

The College Essay Is Still Very Much Alive

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Writer illustration.

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger, in his work The Question Concerning Technology , describes the ways in which technology shapes and orders the world through the example of a hydroelectric plant on the Rhine River. In the example, the beauty of the river is overshadowed by its modern role as a “water-power supplier,” which “derives from the essence of the power station.” The river thus becomes valuable only for the sake of its role in production—its output—rather than its inherent beauty.

The image of the power plant on the Rhine demonstrates the ways in which technology can shift from being a helpful tool to an ordering principle of human life. The tension between these two ways of approaching technology crops up with almost every significant innovation, and the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT is no exception. The unveiling of the software—an uncannily sophisticated large language model—was met with particular consternation (or, in some cases, celebration) for its potential impact on higher education. Stephen Marche’s December 6th article for The Atlantic is a prominent example of the sensationalized response to ChatGPT, in which Marche boldly argues that with the innovations in AI, “the college essay is dead.” However, rather than proclaiming the merits of AI as an educational tool (as he seems to have intended), Marche reduces students’ work to technological output, valuable for its product rather than its process.

Marche argues that the increasing sophistication of AI will not only create new opportunities for students to cheat or use language-generating software to write their essays, but that it will make the college essay obsolete altogether. The article takes particular aim at the unwillingness of the humanities to adapt to groundbreaking technologies. He writes that “In a tech-centered world, language matters, voice and style matter, the study of eloquence matters, history matters, ethical systems matter. But the situation requires humanists to explain why they matter, not constantly undermine their own intellectual foundations. The humanities promise students a journey to an irrelevant, self-consuming future; then they wonder why their enrollments are collapsing. Is it any surprise that nearly half of humanities graduates regret their choice of major?” Couching sweeping statements such as these in a broader argument about the lack of collaboration and mutual understanding between the fields of humanities and technology, Marche misrepresents the value of the humanities as a discipline and therefore the role that new technologies can and do play in humanities classrooms.

While critiques of Marche’s article have focused primarily on the role that AI will play in the changing landscape of academia, little attention has been directed to the article’s fundamental misunderstanding of the value of the college essay—and the substance of liberal arts education more broadly. If we cannot articulate the reason that the college essay has been the cornerstone of education in the humanities, it is impossible to determine whether it will be helped or hurt as we reach new horizons of technological advancement.

This is where Marche’s article falls short. He writes : “Practical matters are at stake: Humanities departments judge their undergraduate students on the basis of their essays. They give Ph.D.s on the basis of a dissertation’s composition. What happens when both processes can be significantly automated?”

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Ultimately, while an essay or dissertation is often the product of learning in the humanities, it is not the core substance. Seminar discussions, theoretical inquiries, stages of peer reviewing, oral defenses—these are the foundation upon which essays are constructed. And, during a time in which calls for diversity in higher academia have reached a fever pitch, these elements of an education in the humanities require students to investigate their unique identities and the role of those identities in the theoretical conversations into which they intend to enter. Because of this, the humanities are not simply an education in what to think, but how to think. As Plutarch famously stated : “[T]he mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.”

Perhaps, as Daniel Lametti argues in his own response to Marche’s article, ChatGPT can be used like other tools such as Grammarly or EasyBib. However, all of these automated tools are only as good as their input—bibliographic software will replicate whatever errors or stylistic formatting are present in the article cited (i.e., if a journal stylizes an author’s name in all capital letters or renders the volume and issue number in a way that the automated system cannot cleanly read). If students trust the software without ever bothering to learn the intricacies of Chicago or MLA styles, they could produce citations that are woefully incorrect without the ability to identify and correct errors. ChatGPT, likewise, produces language by replicating linguistic patterns found in millions of pages of data that have been input into the system—so, while it can produce a whole host of materials, from essays to poems to music, it cannot (to quell any fears of a technological dystopia) think for itself. A simple Twitter search for “AI malapropism” reveals hundreds of anecdotal examples of AI systems regurgitating text based on its probability of occurrence in lieu of the contextually-based wording intended by the author. Thus, if students do not understand what makes for good prose or stylistic academic writing, or if they cannot formulate a nuanced and original argument based on primary source material, how are they to judge whether the output of ChatGPT offers them a more compelling paper than what they have (or could have) written themselves?

Heidegger concludes his reflections on technology not by villainizing or valorizing technology, but instead by arguing that technology is valuable insofar as it is a tool to be used—not a manner of being in the world. Distilling the value of a student’s knowledge into simple output indicates that we have not made technology more human, but that we have come to regard humans as mere technology. ChatGPT and other AI innovations can certainly be tools in the arsenal of the humanist. But the humanist’s value, which Marche so adamantly questions, is in their ability to help students use the tools at their disposal rather than become merely machines of informational output.

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27 Outstanding College Essay Examples From Top Universities 2024

One of the best ways to write a successful college essay for your college application is by learning from real college essay examples that worked . I've compiled a few of my favorite essay examples here that cover a variety of college essay topics.

Need help writing your college essay? Click here for my ultimate guide .

Or, check out my complete guide for answering the most popular college essay prompts on the Common App.

Some essay samples below are by students who chose to write about a challenge, while other examples may be helpful if you’re looking to write about yourself more generally. And yes, a few of these essays did help these students get accepted into the Ivy League, (I’m not telling you which!) though these are all great essays regardless of where (or if) students were admitted to their top choice school.

Looking for more college admissions essay examples about yourself? Check out more personal statements here .

Behold, some of the best college essays of 2024 (in my humble opinion).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Personal Statement Examples         Burying Grandma         Laptop Stickers         Punk Rock Philosopher         Grandma's Kimchi         Travel and Language         Dead Bird         I Shot My Brother         Porcelain God

UC Essay Examples

• Supplemental Essay Examples         UChicago Supplemental Essay Examples         Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road         Rock, Paper, Scissors         U of Michigan Supplemental Essay Example         East Meets West

Common App Essay Prompts

According to the 2024/2025 Common Application , the common app essays topics are as follows:

Background Essay: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

Challenge Essay: The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

Belief Essay: Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?

Gratitude Essay: Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?

Accomplishment Essay: Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

Topic Essay: Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

Create-Your-Own Essay: Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

What Makes a Great College Essay?

These application essays show many sides of a person.

The key to many of these essays is that they describe a story or an aspect of the student’s life in a way that is dynamic: It reflects many of their values, strengths, interests, volunteer work, and life experiences. 

Many of these essays also demonstrate vulnerability. College admissions officers reading your college application will want to know how your values, qualities, and skills will flourish in college— and how good your writing skills are . 

Whether it’s a supplemental essay , personal statement , Common App essay , or diversity essay , the essays below can help you better understand what can result from following a college essay format or applying tips for how to write a college essay to help you get into your dream school. 

College Essay Tips

We asked dozens of experts on essay writing and test scores for their take on what makes a great college essay. Check out five of our favorite college essay tips below. 

1. Imagine how the person reading your essay will feel.

No one's idea of a good time is writing a college essay, I know. But if sitting down to write your essay feels like a chore, and you're bored by what you're saying, you can imagine how the person reading your essay will feel. On the other hand, if you're writing about something you love, something that excites you, something that you've thought deeply about, chances are I'm going to set down your application feeling excited, too—and feeling like I've gotten to know you.

This college essay tip is by Abigail McFee, Admissions Counselor for Tufts University and Tufts ‘17 graduate.

2. Write like a journalist.

"Don't bury the lede!" The first few sentences must capture the reader's attention, provide a gist of the story, and give a sense of where the essay is heading. Think about any article you've read—how do you decide to read it? You read the first few sentences and then decide. The same goes for college essays. A strong lede (journalist parlance for "lead") will place your reader in the "accept" mindset from the beginning of the essay. A weak lede will have your reader thinking "reject"—a mindset from which it's nearly impossible to recover.

This college essay tip is by Brad Schiller, MIT graduate and CEO of Prompt, which provides individualized feedback on thousands of students’ essays each year.

3. Don't read the Common Application prompts.

If you already have, erase them from memory and write the story you want colleges to hear. The truth is, admission reviewers rarely know—or care—which prompt you are responding to. They are curious to discover what you choose to show them about who you are, what you value , and why. Even the most fluid writers are often stifled by fitting their narrative neatly into a category and the essay quickly loses authentic voice. Write freely and choose a prompt later. Spoiler alert...one prompt is "Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design. " So have at it.

This college essay tip is by Brennan Barnard, director of college counseling at the Derryfield School in Manchester, N.H. and contributor to the NYT, HuffPost, and Forbes on intentionally approaching college admissions.

4. Show your emotions.

Adding feelings to your essays can be much more powerful than just listing your achievements. It allows reviewers to connect with you and understand your personality and what drives you. In particular, be open to showing vulnerability. Nobody expects you to be perfect and acknowledging times in which you have felt nervous or scared shows maturity and self-awareness.

This college essay tip is by Charles Maynard, Oxford and Stanford University Graduate and founder of Going Merry, which is a one-stop shop for applying to college scholarships

5. Revise often and early. 

Your admissions essay should go through several stages of revision . And by revisions, we don’t mean quick proofreads. Ask your parents, teachers, high school counselors or friends for their eyes and edits. It should be people who know you best and want you to succeed. Take their constructive criticism in the spirit for which they intend—your benefit.

This college essay tip is by Dhivya Arumugham, Kaplan Test Prep's director of SAT and ACT programs.

Personal Statement Examples

The "burying grandma" example college essay.

Written for the Common App college application essays "Tell us your story" prompt. This essay could work for prompts 1 and 7 for the Common App.

They covered the precious mahogany coffin with a brown amalgam of rocks, decomposed organisms, and weeds. It was my turn to take the shovel, but I felt too ashamed to dutifully send her off when I had not properly said goodbye. I refused to throw dirt on her. I refused to let go of my grandmother, to accept a death I had not seen coming, to believe that an illness could not only interrupt, but steal a beloved life.

When my parents finally revealed to me that my grandmother had been battling liver cancer, I was twelve and I was angry--mostly with myself. They had wanted to protect me--only six years old at the time--from the complex and morose concept of death. However, when the end inevitably arrived, I wasn’t trying to comprehend what dying was; I was trying to understand how I had been able to abandon my sick grandmother in favor of playing with friends and watching TV. Hurt that my parents had deceived me and resentful of my own oblivion, I committed myself to preventing such blindness from resurfacing.

I became desperately devoted to my education because I saw knowledge as the key to freeing myself from the chains of ignorance. While learning about cancer in school I promised myself that I would memorize every fact and absorb every detail in textbooks and online medical journals. And as I began to consider my future, I realized that what I learned in school would allow me to silence that which had silenced my grandmother. However, I was focused not with learning itself, but with good grades and high test scores. I started to believe that academic perfection would be the only way to redeem myself in her eyes--to make up for what I had not done as a granddaughter.  

However, a simple walk on a hiking trail behind my house made me open my own eyes to the truth. Over the years, everything--even honoring my grandmother--had become second to school and grades. As my shoes humbly tapped against the Earth, the towering trees blackened by the forest fire a few years ago, the faintly colorful pebbles embedded in the sidewalk, and the wispy white clouds hanging in the sky reminded me of my small though nonetheless significant part in a larger whole that is humankind and this Earth. Before I could resolve my guilt, I had to broaden my perspective of the world as well as my responsibilities to my fellow humans.   

Volunteering at a cancer treatment center has helped me discover my path. When I see patients trapped in not only the hospital but also a moment in time by their diseases, I talk to them. For six hours a day, three times a week, Ivana is surrounded by IV stands, empty walls, and busy nurses that quietly yet constantly remind her of her breast cancer. Her face is pale and tired, yet kind--not unlike my grandmother’s. I need only to smile and say hello to see her brighten up as life returns to her face. Upon our first meeting, she opened up about her two sons, her hometown, and her knitting group--no mention of her disease. Without even standing up, the three of us—Ivana, me, and my grandmother--had taken a walk together.

Cancer, as powerful and invincible as it may seem, is a mere fraction of a person’s life. It’s easy to forget when one’s mind and body are so weak and vulnerable. I want to be there as an oncologist to remind them to take a walk once in a while, to remember that there’s so much more to life than a disease. While I physically treat their cancer, I want to lend patients emotional support and mental strength to escape the interruption and continue living. Through my work, I can accept the shovel without burying my grandmother’s memory.

Tips + Analysis:

Make (Narrative) structure work for you. This essay uses what we call Narrative Structure, which focuses (in roughly equal word count) on a challenge + effects you’ve faced, what you did about it, and what you learned. Quick tip: one common and easy mistake is to spend most of the essay focused on the challenges + effects, but try to keep that to about a third—what your reader is generally more interested in is what you did about that challenge and what you learned/how you’ve grown. For a more complete guide to using Narrative Structure to shape your personal statement, check out that link.

Show insight and growth. This essay does so in a few different ways. One is by recognizing that they were wrong about something / had “done it wrong” (e.g. ...understand how I had been able to abandon my sick grandmother in favor of playing with friends and watching TV or However, I was focused not with learning itself, but with good grades and high test scores. ). We’re pointing this out because, fairly frequently, students are worried that acknowledging they were wrong in some way will be looked down upon by readers. Put those worries to rest—showing that you’re capable of reflecting, acknowledging your failings or where you were wrong, and growing through your new understanding is a sign of maturity that colleges value. (For more on insight/reflection , check out that link, which is focused on the UC PIQs but its content also applies to personal statements.)

Bring us into your world. You can do so through things like imagery (e.g., the towering trees blackened by the forest fire a few years ago, the faintly colorful pebbles embedded in the sidewalk, and the wispy white clouds hanging in the sky ) and through illustrating (or sometimes directly naming) your values and how your experiences have shaped them (e.g., I had to broaden my perspective of the world as well as my responsibilities to my fellow humans ). A personal statement isn’t simply a list of accomplishments (let your Activities List and Additional Info section do that lifting for you). Instead, it’s about helping a college understand who you are through the values, interests, insights, skills, and qualities you bring to their campus and community.

THE "Laptop Stickers" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

My laptop is like a passport. It is plastered with stickers all over the outside, inside, and bottom. Each sticker is a stamp, representing a place I've been, a passion I've pursued, or community I've belonged to. These stickers make for an untraditional first impression at a meeting or presentation, but it's one I'm proud of. Let me take you on a quick tour:

" We < 3 Design ," bottom left corner. Art has been a constant for me for as long as I can remember. Today my primary engagement with art is through design. I've spent entire weekends designing websites and social media graphics for my companies. Design means more to me than just branding and marketing; it gives me the opportunity to experiment with texture, perspective, and contrast, helping me refine my professional style.

" Common Threads ," bottom right corner. A rectangular black and red sticker displaying the theme of the 2017 TEDxYouth@Austin event. For years I've been interested in the street artists and musicians in downtown Austin who are so unapologetically themselves. As a result, I've become more open-minded and appreciative of unconventional lifestyles. TED gives me the opportunity to help other youth understand new perspectives, by exposing them to the diversity of Austin where culture is created, not just consumed.

Poop emoji , middle right. My 13-year-old brother often sends his messages with the poop emoji 'echo effect,' so whenever I open a new message from him, hundreds of poops elegantly cascade across my screen. He brings out my goofy side, but also helps me think rationally when I am overwhelmed. We don't have the typical "I hate you, don't talk to me" siblinghood (although occasionally it would be nice to get away from him); we're each other's best friends. Or at least he's mine.

" Lol ur not Harry Styles ," upper left corner. Bought in seventh grade and transferred from my old laptop, this sticker is torn but persevering with layers of tape. Despite conveying my fangirl-y infatuation with Harry Styles' boyband, One Direction, for me Styles embodies an artist-activist who uses his privilege for the betterment of society. As a $42K donor to the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund, a hair donor to the Little Princess Trust, and promoter of LGBTQ+ equality, he has motivated me to be a more public activist instead of internalizing my beliefs.

" Catapult ," middle right. This is the logo of a startup incubator where I launched my first company, Threading Twine. I learned that business can provide others access to fundamental human needs, such as economic empowerment of minorities and education. In my career, I hope to be a corporate advocate for the empowerment of women, creating large-scale impact and deconstructing institutional boundaries that obstruct women from working in high-level positions. Working as a women's rights activist will allow me to engage in creating lasting movements for equality, rather than contributing to a cycle that elevates the stances of wealthy individuals.

" Thank God it's Monday ," sneakily nestled in the upper right corner. Although I attempt to love all my stickers equally (haha), this is one of my favorites. I always want my association with work to be positive.

And there are many others, including the horizontal, yellow stripes of the  Human Rights Campaign ; " The Team ," a sticker from the Model G20 Economics Summit where I collaborated with youth from around the globe; and stickers from " Kode with Klossy ," a community of girls working to promote women's involvement in underrepresented fields.

When my computer dies (hopefully not for another few years), it will be like my passport expiring. It'll be difficult leaving these moments and memories behind, but I probably won't want these stickers in my 20s anyways (except Harry Styles, that's never leaving). My next set of stickers will reveal my next set of aspirations. They hold the key to future paths I will navigate, knowledge I will gain, and connections I will make.

Make (Montage) structure work for you. This essay uses what we call Montage Structure, which uses a “thematic thread” (in this case, laptop stickers ) to connect different, perhaps otherwise seemingly disconnected sides of who a student is. One strength (among many) of this structural approach is that it can allow a student to demonstrate a broad range of values and experiences that have shaped them, which in turn helps a college understand who you are through the values, interests, insights, skills, and qualities you bring to their campus and community. For a more complete guide to using Montage Structure to shape your personal statement, check out that link.

Show (and probably also tell a little). “Show don’t tell” is generally solid writing advice, but for college essays, we’d recommend leaning a bit more toward the “Mostly show but than maybe also tell a little, just to be sure your reader gets it” approach (Though that’s clearly not as catchy a phrase).  So show us your experiences and values through specific moments and details, but also include some language that more directly states those values and what they mean to you, like Working as a women's rights activist will allow me to engage in creating lasting movements for equality, rather than contributing to a cycle that elevates the stances of wealthy individuals .

Get a little vulnerable. Being vulnerable in writing is a great way to help a reader feel closer to you. And it’s useful to keep in mind that there’s actually a pretty great variety of ways to be vulnerable. One nice moment of vulnerability in this essay comes with …in we're each other's best friends. Or at least he's mine —it’s a nice, soft moment in which the author offers up something that could feel a little tender, or maybe scary to share (because hey, acknowledging that you might care about someone more than they care about you can feel that way). 

THE "PUNK ROCK PHILOSOPHER" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

This was written for the Common App college application essays, and works for prompts 1 and 7 (or none of them, because the author is that cool):

I am on Oxford Academy’s Speech and Debate Team, in both the Parliamentary Debate division and the Lincoln-Douglass debate division. I write screenplays, short stories, and opinionated blogs and am a regular contributor to my school literary magazine, The Gluestick. I have accumulated over 300 community service hours that includes work at homeless shelters, libraries, and special education youth camps. I have been evaluated by the College Board and have placed within the top percentile.

But I am not any of these things. I am not a test score, nor a debater, nor a writer. I am an anti-nihilist punk rock philosopher. And I became so when I realized three things:

1) That the world is ruled by underwear. There is a variety of underwear for a variety of people. You have your ironed briefs for your businessmen, your soft cottons for the average, and hemp-based underwear for your environmental romantics. But underwear do not only tell us about who we are, they also influence our daily interactions in ways most of us don't even understand. For example, I have a specific pair of underwear that is holey, worn out but surprisingly comfortable. And despite how trivial underwear might be, when I am wearing my favorite pair, I feel as if I am on top of the world. In any case, these articles of clothing affect our being and are the unsung heroes of comfort.

2) When I realized I cannot understand the world. I recently debated at the Orange County Speech League Tournament, within the Parliamentary Division. This specific branch of debate is an hour long, and consists of two parties debating either side of a current political issue. In one particular debate, I was assigned the topic: “Should Nation States eliminate nuclear arms?” It so happened that I was on the negative side and it was my job to convince the judges that countries should continue manufacturing nuclear weapons. During the debate, something strange happened: I realized that we are a special breed of species, that so much effort and resources are invested to ensure mutual destruction. And I felt that this debate in a small college classroom had elucidated something much more profound about the scale of human existence. In any case, I won 1st place at the tournament, but as the crowd cheered when my name was called to stand before an audience of hundreds of other debaters, and I flashed a victorious smile at the cameras, I couldn’t help but imagine that somewhere at that moment a nuclear bomb was being manufactured, adding to an ever-growing stockpile of doom. And that's when I realized that the world was something I will never understand.

3) When I realized I was a punk rocker philosopher. One summer night, my friend took me to an underground hardcore punk rock show. It was inside a small abandoned church. After the show, I met and became a part of this small community. Many were lost and on a constant soul-search, and to my surprise, many, like myself, did not have a blue Mohawk or a nose piercing. Many were just ordinary people discussing Nietzsche, string theory, and governmental ideologies. Many were also artists creating promotional posters and inventive slogans for stickers. They were all people my age who could not afford to be part of a record label and did something extraordinary by playing in these abandoned churches, making their own CDs and making thousands of promotional buttons by hand. I realized then that punk rock is not about music nor is it a guy with a blue Mohawk screaming protests. Punk rock is an attitude, a mindset, and very much a culture. It is an antagonist to the conventional. It means making the best with what you have to contribute to a community. This was when I realized that I was a punk rock philosopher.

The world I come from consists of underwear, nuclear bombs, and punk rockers. And I love this world. My world is inherently complex, mysterious, and anti-nihilist. I am David Phan, somebody who spends his weekends debating in a three piece suit, other days immersed within the punk rock culture, and some days writing opinionated blogs about underwear.

But why college? I want a higher education. I want more than just the textbook fed classrooms in high school. A community which prizes revolutionary ideals, a sharing of multi-dynamical perspectives, an environment that ultimately acts as a medium for movement, similar to the punk rock community. I do not see college as a mere stepping stone for a stable career or a prosperous life, but as a supplement for knowledge and self-empowerment; it is a social engine that will jettison us to our next paradigm shift.

Illustrate how you’ve become you. One way you can do so is by showing us a community or communities you’ve been a part of, and how that community has shaped you and how you in turn have impacted that community. (Side note: one of the most common supplemental essay prompts is what we call the “Community” essay , which basically asks you to reflect on your contributions to a community—be sure to build a tracker with the essay prompts of the various schools you plan to apply to; if you have a lot with “community” prompts, be sure you don’t paint yourself into a corner by writing about your primary option for “community” in your personal statement). Initially, many students tend to have a fairly narrow view of what “community” means, limiting themselves largely to sports teams or art clubs or physical locations. But this writer is writing about his place in a community too, yes? One of the essay’s greatest strengths is its ability to reveal the writer’s overlapping experiences in seemingly disparate places: the debate floor and the punk rock concert. So you might take this writer’s lead and broaden your understanding of your communities.

Identity can be a thread . One of the essential elements of a montage essay is a clear, guiding thread. That thread is the thing that ties all of your examples together. Threads can be ideas, physical objects, or (almost) anything, really. They can even simply be aspects of your identity. That’s what this writer does: They announce the identity they’re going to explore in paragraph two: “I am an anti-nihilist punk rock philosopher.” And then in the next three paragraphs they explain how it is they came to embody that identity. Notice how that thread enables them to tie together examples that are quite different from one another: underwear, debating about nuclear weapons, and punk rock.

Use your “voice” and play with tone . And since “voice” can feel a bit nebulous, we mean that even though you’ll be writing about similar things to other students (cause that’s unavoidable), write about them using language, phrasing, imagery, and sentence structure that’s specific to you (For a bigger guide to voice , check that link out). For example, you may have cracked a smile a few times while reading this essay. The writer achieves humor in a variety of ways, but many of them have something to do with their confident control of tone (a word English teachers may have said to you before). In writing, tone has many definitions. A popular one is this: the speaker’s attitude towards the subject. You might also just think of tone as how you hear the author’s voice in your head. In this essay, the forthright tone’s interaction with silly content results in some funny moments. The plainness with which he asserts that “the world is ruled by underwear,” for example, builds some humor. This is not easy to do well. But if you can control your essay’s tone, you can get great moments to pop off the page, just like this writer does with that underwear assertion.

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The "Grandma's Kimchi" College Essay Example

This essay could work for prompts 1 and 7 for the Common App.

Every Saturday morning, I’d awaken to the smell of crushed garlic and piquant pepper. I would stumble into the kitchen to find my grandma squatting over a large silver bowl, mixing fat lips of fresh cabbages with garlic, salt, and red pepper. That was how the delectable Korean dish, kimchi, was born every weekend at my home.

My grandma’s specialty always dominated the dinner table as kimchi filled every plate. And like my grandma who had always been living with us, it seemed as though the luscious smell of garlic would never leave our home. But even the prided recipe was defenseless against the ravages of Alzheimer’s that inflicted my grandma’s mind.

Dementia slowly fed on her memories until she became as blank as a brand-new notebook. The ritualistic rigor of Saturday mornings came to a pause, and during dinner, the artificial taste of vacuum-packaged factory kimchi only emphasized the absence of the family tradition. I would look at her and ask, “Grandma, what’s my name?” But she would stare back at me with a clueless expression. Within a year of diagnosis, she lived with us like a total stranger.

One day, my mom brought home fresh cabbages and red pepper sauce. She brought out the old silver bowl and poured out the cabbages, smothering them with garlic and salt and pepper. The familiar tangy smell tingled my nose. Gingerly, my grandma stood up from the couch in the living room, and as if lured by the smell, sat by the silver bowl and dug her hands into the spiced cabbages. As her bony hands shredded the green lips, a look of determination grew on her face. Though her withered hands no longer displayed the swiftness and precision they once did, her face showed the aged rigor of a professional. For the first time in years, the smell of garlic filled the air and the rattling of the silver bowl resonated throughout the house.

That night, we ate kimchi. It wasn’t perfect; the cabbages were clumsily cut and the garlic was a little too strong. But kimchi had never tasted better. I still remember my grandma putting a piece in my mouth and saying, “Here, Dong Jin. Try it, my boy.”

Seeing grandma again this summer, that moment of clarity seemed ephemeral. Her disheveled hair and expressionless face told of the aggressive development of her illness.

But holding her hands, looking into her eyes, I could still smell that garlic. The moments of Saturday mornings remain ingrained in my mind. Grandma was an artist who painted the cabbages with strokes of red pepper. Like the sweet taste of kimchi, I hope to capture those memories in my keystrokes as I type away these words.

A piece of writing is more than just a piece of writing. It evokes. It inspires. It captures what time takes away.

My grandma used to say: “Tigers leave furs when they die, humans leave their names.” Her legacy was the smell of garlic that lingered around my house. Mine will be these words.

Illustrate insight through less common connections . We think one of the key elements of a great college essay is demonstrating insight through reflection. There are a lot of ways to add insight into an essay, but one of the most accessible and successful ways involves creating less common connections. Here’s an example of a common connection: football taught me about hard work . Maybe it did, and if so, that’s great, but that’s also a story that has been told many, many times. Here’s an example of a less common connection: my grandmother’s kimchi taught me about the value of writing stories. That connection is one of the central claims of this essay, and it raises the question, “how?” This writer’s essay is centered on answering that question. By contrast, if you told someone that football taught you about hard work, they’re probably a lot less likely to want to know “how” because they already know that story . Because of this, that football-story would require less insight to tell than the less common kimchi one.

Know which moments to develop . Paragraph four is quite a significant moment, yes? It must prove how kimchi accesses some integral part of the grandmother that transcends conscious memory. That’s a big task. The writer rises to it by using powerful imagery . Notice how key  details put us in that kitchen: “...tangy smell tingled my nose,” “rattling of the silver bowl,” “dug her hands into the spiced cabbage.” The amount of detail the writer uses to develop this moment is a testament to how important it is in the story. There’s a version of that paragraph that could simply read something like this: when we made kimchi again, my grandmother immediately remembered how to do it. That’s basically what happened in that paragraph, right? But the significance of that moment requires more attention, here achieved through imagery. 

Varying sentence structure to achieve “craft.” We think another key component of a great college essay is “craft.” There are a lot of ways to add craft to a story, but they essentially boil down to how effectively a story is told. The imagery mentioned in the tip above is one way the writer achieves craft. But another way involves use of sentence structure. Let’s take a look at the second to last paragraph for an example: 

Putting aside terms from English class like “compound” or “compound-complex”, simply notice that the length of these^ sentences are different from one another; we get a medium-ish sentence, a very short sentence, another very short sentence, and then end with a short-ish sentence. Playing with rhythm and cadence this way is a tried and true method to make your writing more dynamic and interesting. If you find that your sentences all seem same-ish in terms of length, try switching up your phrasing to add more variability.

The "Travel and Language" College Essay Example

When I was very little, I caught the travel bug. It started after my grandparents first brought me to their home in France and I have now been to twenty-nine different countries. Each has given me a unique learning experience.

At five, I marveled at the Eiffel Tower in the City of Lights. When I was eight, I stood in the heart of Piazza San Marco feeding hordes of pigeons, then glided down Venetian waterways on sleek gondolas. At thirteen, I saw the ancient, megalithic structure of Stonehenge and walked along the Great Wall of China, amazed that the thousand-year-old stones were still in place.

It was through exploring cultures around the world that I first became interested in language.

It began with French, which taught me the importance of pronunciation. I remember once asking a store owner in Paris where Rue des Pyramides was. But when I pronounced it PYR–a–mides instead of pyr–A–mides, with more accent on the A, she looked at me bewildered.

In the eighth grade, I became fascinated with Spanish and aware of its similarities with English through cognates. Baseball in Spanish, for example, is béisbol, which looks different but sounds nearly the same. This was incredible to me as it made speech and comprehension more fluid, and even today I find that cognates come to the rescue when I forget how to say something in Spanish.

Then, in high school, I developed an enthusiasm for Chinese. As I studied Chinese at my school, I marveled how if just one stroke was missing from a character, the meaning is lost. I loved how long words were formed by combining simpler characters, so Huǒ (火) meaning fire and Shān (山) meaning mountain can be joined to create Huǒshān (火山), which means volcano. I love spending hours at a time practicing the characters and I can feel the beauty and rhythm as I form them.

Interestingly, after studying foreign languages, I was further intrigued by my native tongue. Through my love of books and fascination with developing a sesquipedalian lexicon (learning big words), I began to expand my English vocabulary. Studying the definitions prompted me to inquire about their origins, and suddenly I wanted to know all about etymology, the history of words. My freshman year I took a world history class and my love for history grew exponentially. To me, history is like a great novel, and it is especially fascinating because it took place in my own world.

But the best dimension that language brought to my life is interpersonal connection. When I speak with people in their native language, I find I can connect with them on a more intimate level. I’ve connected with people in the most unlikely places, finding a Bulgarian painter to use my few Bulgarian words with in the streets of Paris, striking up a conversation in Spanish with an Indian woman who used to work at the Argentinian embassy in Mumbai, and surprising a library worker by asking her a question in her native Mandarin.

I want to study foreign language and linguistics in college because, in short, it is something that I know I will use and develop for the rest of my life. I will never stop traveling, so attaining fluency in foreign languages will only benefit me. In the future, I hope to use these skills as the foundation of my work, whether it is in international business, foreign diplomacy, or translation.

I think of my journey as best expressed through a Chinese proverb that my teacher taught me, “I am like a chicken eating at a mountain of rice.” Each grain is another word for me to learn as I strive to satisfy my unquenchable thirst for knowledge.

Today, I still  have the travel bug, and now, it seems, I am addicted to language too.

Show meaning through values . This is ostensibly an essay about love of travel and languages. But as with all effective college essays, there’s other stuff the essay is really about—the values of the writer. When trying to identify the values in your essay, or the essays of others, ask yourself this question: why is X important to the writer? Here, let’s say “X” is learning languages. Some answers to this question are explicit (e.g., learning languages allows for “interpersonal communication”), others are inferred (e.g., “cognates come to the rescue” reveals something about the writer’s resourcefulness). See what the writer is doing? It’s not just that they’re writing about learning languages, but they’re reflecting on what learning languages means to them . 

Develop in complexity. So if they have a handful of values associated with learning languages, you might consider how they order the revelation of those values. Notice how the first example focuses on an aspect of language learning that is more tangible and clear: pronunciation. But then by the time we get to the essay’s later examples, we’re focusing on more abstract concepts like “interpersonal connection.” Going from more-surface level to more abstract ideas reveals something about the development of the writer’s insights. This enables us to understand the “how” behind their love of language learning.

The one-sentence ending . Yes, you can have one-sentence paragraphs in your personal statement (If anyone tells you that you can’t, you can politely ignore them). Here, the writer ends with one, but other writers use one-liners as transitional moves, too (just read the “Dead Bird” essay below, or the “THE “NOT BLACK ENOUGH” EAST-ASIAN INFLUENCED BIBLIOPHILE” essay to see some examples of that). The brevity of moves like this help add a sense of “punchiness” to the writing. The one-sentence ending works here because the writer is essentially clarifying an idea already introduced in the previous paragraph. In that second-to-last paragraph, they used the “mountain of rice” metaphor to describe their unquenchable thirst for knowledge. To end by admitting that they are “addicted to language” is to add a bit more flair to their affinity for languages in a pithy, punchy way.

Side note: Click here  for this student's amazing Instagram photos.

The "Dead Bird" Example College Essay Example

This was written for a Common App college application essay prompt that no longer exists, which read: Evaluate a significant experience, risk, achievement, ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.

 Smeared blood, shredded feathers. Clearly, the bird was dead. But wait, the slight fluctuation of its chest, the slow blinking of its shiny black eyes. No, it was alive.

I had been typing an English essay when I heard my cat's loud meows and the flutter of wings. I had turned slightly at the noise and had found the barely breathing bird in front of me.

The shock came first. Mind racing, heart beating faster, blood draining from my face. I instinctively reached out my hand to hold it, like a long-lost keepsake from my youth. But then I remembered that birds had life, flesh, blood.

Death. Dare I say it out loud? Here, in my own home?

Within seconds, my reflexes kicked in. Get over the shock. Gloves, napkins, towels. Band-aid? How does one heal a bird? I rummaged through the house, keeping a wary eye on my cat. Donning yellow rubber gloves, I tentatively picked up the bird. Never mind the cat's hissing and protesting scratches, you need to save the bird. You need to ease its pain.

But my mind was blank. I stroked the bird with a paper towel to clear away the blood, see the wound. The wings were crumpled, the feet mangled. A large gash extended close to its jugular rendering its breathing shallow, unsteady. The rising and falling of its small breast slowed. Was the bird dying? No, please, not yet. 

Why was this feeling so familiar, so tangible?

Oh. Yes. The long drive, the green hills, the white church, the funeral. The Chinese mass, the resounding amens, the flower arrangements. Me, crying silently, huddled in the corner. The Hsieh family huddled around the casket. Apologies. So many apologies. Finally, the body  lowered to rest. The body. Kari Hsieh. Still familiar, still tangible.

Hugging Mrs. Hsieh, I was a ghost, a statue. My brain and my body competed. Emotion wrestled with fact. Kari Hsieh, aged 17, my friend of four years, had died in the Chatsworth Metrolink Crash on Sep. 12, 2008. Kari was dead, I thought. Dead.

But I could still save the bird.

My frantic actions heightened my senses, mobilized my spirit. Cupping the bird, I ran outside, hoping the cool air outdoors would suture every wound, cause the bird to miraculously fly away. Yet there lay the bird in my hands, still gasping, still dying. Bird, human, human, bird. What was the difference? Both were the same. Mortal.

But couldn't I do something? Hold the bird longer, de-claw the cat? I wanted to go to my bedroom, confine myself to tears, replay my memories, never come out. 

The bird's warmth faded away. Its heartbeat slowed along with its breath. For a long time, I stared thoughtlessly at it, so still in my hands.

Slowly, I dug a small hole in the black earth. As it disappeared under handfuls of dirt, my own heart grew stronger, my own breath more steady.

The wind, the sky, the dampness of the soil on my hands whispered to me, “The bird is dead. Kari has passed. But you are alive.” My breath, my heartbeat, my sweat sighed back, “I am alive. I am alive. I am alive.”

The "I Shot My Brother" College Essay Example

This essay could work for prompts 1, 2 and 7 for the Common App.

From page 54 of the maroon notebook sitting on my mahogany desk:

“Then Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth and whoever finds me will kill me.” - Genesis 4:13

Here is a secret that no one in my family knows: I shot my brother when I was six. Luckily, it was a BB gun. But to this day, my older brother Jonathan does not know who shot him. And I have finally promised myself to confess this eleven year old secret to him after I write this essay.

The truth is, I was always jealous of my brother. Our grandparents, with whom we lived as children in Daegu, a rural city in South Korea, showered my brother with endless accolades: he was bright, athletic, and charismatic.

“Why can’t you be more like Jon?” my grandmother used to nag, pointing at me with a carrot stick. To me, Jon was just cocky. He would scoff at me when he would beat me in basketball, and when he brought home his painting of Bambi with the teacher’s sticker “Awesome!” on top, he would make several copies of it and showcase them on the refrigerator door. But I retreated to my desk where a pile of “Please draw this again and bring it to me tomorrow” papers lay, desperate for immediate treatment. Later, I even refused to attend the same elementary school and wouldn’t even eat meals with him.

Deep down I knew I had to get the chip off my shoulder. But I didn’t know how.

That is, until March 11th, 2001.

That day around six o’clock, juvenile combatants appeared in Kyung Mountain for their weekly battle, with cheeks smeared in mud and empty BB guns in their hands. The Korean War game was simple: to kill your opponent you had to shout “pow!” before he did. Once we situated ourselves, our captain blew the pinkie whistle and the war began. My friend Min-young and I hid behind a willow tree, eagerly awaiting our orders.

Beside us, our comrades were dying, each falling to the ground crying in “agony,” their hands clasping their “wounds.” Suddenly a wish for heroism surged within me: I grabbed Min-young’s arms and rushed towards the enemies’ headquarters, disobeying our orders to remain sentry duty. To tip the tide of the war, I had to kill their captain. We infiltrated the enemy lines, narrowly dodging each attack. We then cleared the pillars of asparagus ferns until the Captain’s lair came into view. I quickly pulled my clueless friend back into the bush.

Hearing us, the alarmed captain turned around: It was my brother.

He saw Min-young’s right arm sticking out from the bush and hurled a “grenade,” (a rock), bruising his arm.

“That’s not fair!” I roared in the loudest and most unrecognizable voice I could manage.

Startled, the Captain and his generals abandoned their post. Vengeance replaced my wish for heroism and I took off after the fleeing perpetrator. Streams of sweat ran down my face and I pursued him for several minutes until suddenly I was arrested by a small, yellow sign that read in Korean: DO NOT TRESPASS: Boar Traps Ahead. (Two summers ago, my five year old cousin, who insisted on joining the ranks, had wandered off-course during the battle; we found him at the bottom of a 20 ft deep pit with a deep gash in his forehead and shirt soaked in blood) “Hey, stop!” I shouted, heart pounding. “STOP!” My mind froze. My eyes just gazed at the fleeing object; what should I do?

I looked on as my shivering hand reached for the canister of BBs. The next second, I heard two shots followed by a cry. I opened my eyes just enough to see two village men carrying my brother away from the warning sign. I turned around, hurled my BB gun into the nearby Kyung Creek and ran home as fast as I could.

Days passed. My brother and I did not talk about the incident.

‘Maybe he knew it was me,’ I thought in fear as I tried to eavesdrop on his conversation with grandpa one day. When the door suddenly opened, I blurted, “Is anything wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said pushing past me, “Just a rough sleep.”

But in the next few weeks, something was happening inside me.

All the jealousy and anger I’d once felt had been replaced by a new feeling: guilt.

That night when my brother was gone I went to a local store and bought a piece of chocolate taffy, his favorite. I returned home and placed it on my brother’s bed with a note attached: “Love, Grandma.”

Several days later, I secretly went into his room and folded his unkempt pajamas.

Then, other things began to change. We began sharing clothes (something we had never done), started watching Pokémon episodes together, and then, on his ninth birthday, I did something with Jon that I hadn’t done in six years: I ate dinner with him. I even ate fishcakes, which he loved but I hated. And I didn’t complain.

Today, my brother is one of my closest friends. Every week I accompany him to Carlson Hospital where he receives treatment for his obsessive compulsive disorder and schizophrenia. While in the waiting room, we play a noisy game of Zenga, comment on the Lakers’ performance or listen to the radio on the registrar’s desk.

Then, the door to the doctor’s office opens.

“Jonathan Lee, please come in.”

I tap his shoulder and whisper, “Rock it, bro.”

After he leaves, I take out my notebook and begin writing where I left off.

Beside me, the receptionist’s fingers hover over the radio in search of a new station, eventually settling on one. I hear LeAnn Rimes singing “Amazing Grace.” Her voice slowly rises over the noise of the bustling room.

“’Twas Grace that taught my heart to fear. And Grace, my fears relieved...”

Smiling, I open Jon’s Jansport backpack and neatly place this essay inside and a chocolate taffy with a note attached.

Twenty minutes have passed when the door abruptly opens.

“Guess what the doctor just said?” my brother cries, unable to hide his exhilaration.

I look up and I smile too.

For analysis of what makes this essay amazing , go here.

The "Porcelain God" College Essay Example

Essay written for the "topic of your choice" prompt for the 2012 Common Application college application essays.

Bowing down to the porcelain god, I emptied the contents of my stomach. Foaming at the mouth, I was ready to pass out. My body couldn’t stop shaking as I gasped for air, and the room started spinning.

Ten minutes prior, I had been eating dinner with my family at a Chinese restaurant, drinking chicken-feet soup. My mom had specifically asked the waitress if there were peanuts in it, because when I was two we found out that I am deathly allergic to them. When the waitress replied no, I went for it. Suddenly I started scratching my neck, feeling the hives that had started to form. I rushed to the restroom to throw up because my throat was itchy and I felt a weight on my chest. I was experiencing anaphylactic shock, which prevented me from taking anything but shallow breaths. I was fighting the one thing that is meant to protect me and keep me alive – my own body.

At five years old, I couldn’t comprehend what had happened. All I knew was that I felt sick, and I was waiting for my mom to give me something to make it better. I thought my parents were superheroes; surely they would be able to make well again. But I became scared when I heard the fear in their voices as they rushed me to the ER.

After that incident, I began to fear. I became scared of death, eating, and even my own body. As I grew older, I became paranoid about checking food labels and I avoided eating if I didn’t know what was in the food. I knew what could happen if I ate one wrong thing, and I wasn’t willing to risk it for a snack. Ultimately, that fear turned into resentment; I resented my body for making me an outsider.

In the years that followed, this experience and my regular visits to my allergy specialist inspired me to become an allergy specialist. Even though I was probably only ten at the time, I wanted to find a way to help kids like me. I wanted to find a solution so that nobody would have to feel the way I did; nobody deserved to feel that pain, fear, and resentment. As I learned more about the medical world, I became more fascinated with the body’s immune responses, specifically, how a body reacts to allergens. This past summer, I took a month-long course on human immunology at Stanford University. I learned about the different mechanisms and cells that our bodies use in order to fight off pathogens. My desire to major in biology in college has been stimulated by my fascination with the human body, its processes, and the desire to find a way to help people with allergies. I hope that one day I can find a way to stop allergic reactions or at least lessen the symptoms, so that children and adults don’t have to feel the same fear and bitterness that I felt.

To find out if your essay passes the Great College Essay Test like this one did, go here .

The "Five Families" College Essay Example

This essay could work for prompts 1, 2, 5 and 7 for the Common App.

When I was 16, I lived with the Watkins family in Wichita, Kansas. Mrs. Watkins was the coordinator of the foreign exchange student program I was enrolled in. She had a nine year old son named Cody. I would babysit Cody every day after school for at least two to three hours. We would play Scrabble or he would read to me from Charlotte’s Web or The Ugly Duckling. He would talk a lot about his friends and school life, and I would listen to him and ask him the meanings of certain words. He was my first friend in the New World.

My second family was the Martinez family, who were friends of the Watkins’s. The host dad Michael was a high school English teacher and the host mom Jennifer (who had me call her “Jen”) taught elementary school. She had recently delivered a baby, so she was still in the hospital when I moved into their house. The Martinez family did almost everything together. We made pizza together, watched Shrek on their cozy couch together, and went fishing on Sunday together. On rainy days, Michael, Jen and I would sit on the porch and listen to the rain, talking about our dreams and thoughts. Within two months I was calling them mom and dad.

After I finished the exchange student program, I had the option of returning to Korea but I decided to stay in America. I wanted to see new places and meet different people. Since I wasn’t an exchange student anymore, I had the freedom--and burden--of finding a new school and host family on my own. After a few days of thorough investigation, I found the Struiksma family in California. They were a unique group.

The host mom Shellie was a single mom who had two of her own sons and two Russian daughters that she had adopted. The kids always had something warm to eat, and were always on their best behavior at home and in school. It would be fair to say that this was all due to Shellie’s upbringing. My room was on the first floor, right in front of Shellie’s hair salon, a small business that she ran out of her home. In the living room were six or seven huge amplifiers and a gigantic chandelier hung from the high ceiling. The kitchen had a bar. At first, the non-stop visits from strangers made me nervous, but soon I got used to them. I remember one night, a couple barged into my room while I was sleeping. It was awkward.

After a few months I realized we weren’t the best fit. In the nicest way possible, I told them I had to leave. They understood.

The Ortiz family was my fourth family. Kimberly, the host mom, treated me the same way she treated her own son. She made me do chores: I fixed dinner, fed their two dogs Sassy and Lady, and once a week I cleaned the bathroom. I also had to follow some rules: No food in my room, no using the family computer, no lights on after midnight, and no ride unless it was an emergency. The first couple of months were really hard to get used to, but eventually I adjusted.

I lived with the Ortiz family for seven months like a monk in the deep forest. However, the host dad Greg’s asthma got worse after winter, so he wanted to move to the countryside. It was unexpected and I only had a week to find a new host family. I asked my friend Danielle if I could live with her until I found a new home. That’s how I met the Dirksen family, my fifth family.

The Dirksen family had three kids. They were all different. Danielle liked bitter black coffee, Christian liked energy drinks, and Becca liked sweet lemon tea. Dawn, the host mom didn’t like winter, and Mark, the host dad, didn’t like summer. After dinner, we would all play Wii Sports together. I was the king of bowling, and Dawn was the queen of tennis. I don’t remember a single time that they argued about the games. Afterward, we would gather in the living room and Danielle would play the piano while the rest of us sang hymns.

Of course, those 28 months were too short to fully understand all five families, but I learned from and was shaped by each of them. By teaching me English, nine year-old Cody taught me the importance of being able to learn from anyone; the Martinez family showed me the value of spending time together as a family; the Struiksma family taught me to reserve judgment about divorced women and adopted children; Mrs. Ortiz taught me the value of discipline and the Dirksen family taught me the importance of appreciating one another’s different qualities.

Getting along with other people is necessary for anyone and living with five families has made me more sensitive to others’ needs: I have learned how to recognize when someone needs to talk, when I should give advice and when to simply listen, and when someone needs to be left alone; in the process, I have become much more adaptable. I’m ready to change, learn, and be shaped by my future families.

ANALYSIS OF THE "FIVE FAMILIES" ESSAY

Remember that movie “The Sixth Sense”?

I won't ruin it for you, but I will tell you that there’s a moment toward the end when a crucial piece of information is revealed that triggers in the mind of the audience a series of realizations that have been leading up to this Big Revelation.

That’s kind of what this writer does: he buries a series of hints (one in each paragraph) that he “explodes” in the final paragraph. In short:

He buries a series of essence images in his first paragraphs (one per family).

He doesn’t tell us what they mean until the end of the essay, when he writes “I learned and was shaped by each of them.” Note that each essence image is actually a lesson--something he learned from each family.

When he reveals each lesson at the end, one after the other, we sense how all these seemingly random events are connected. We realize this writer has been carefully constructing this piece all along; we see the underlying structure. And it’s a pretty neat one.

Each of the first five paragraphs works to SHOW . (He waits to TELL us what they mean ‘til that second to last paragraph.)

See how distinct each family is? He does this through specific images and objects.

The second to last paragraph answers the “So what?” question. (Q: Why did he just show us all these details? A: To demonstrate what each family has taught him.)

He also goes one step further. He answers the “So what?” question once more in the final paragraph. (Q: So what am I going to do with all these lessons? A: I’m going to use them to adapt to my next family--in college.)

The beauty of this is that he’s demonstrating (showing not telling) that he has an extremely valuable quality that will be useful for doing well at any college: adaptability.

TIP: And that’s one more way to write your essay . Identify your single greatest strength (in this case, it was his ability to adapt to whatever life gave him). Ask: how did I learn this? How can I SHOW that I’m good at this?

Here are all the “Show” and “Tell” moments clearly marked:

When I was 16, I lived with the Watkins family in Wichita, Kansas. Mrs. Watkins was the coordinator of the foreign exchange student program I was enrolled in. She had a nine year old son named Cody. I would babysit Cody every day after school for at least two to three hours. We would play Scrabble or he would read to me from Charlotte’s Web or The Ugly Duckling. He would talk a lot about his friends and school life, and I would listen to him and ask him the meanings of certain words.  He was my first friend in the New World.

Show 1: "By teaching me English, nine year-old Cody taught me the importance of being able to learn from anyone."

My second family was the Martinez family, who were friends of the Watkins’s. The host dad Michael was a high school English teacher and the host mom Jennifer (who had me call her “Jen”) taught elementary school. She had recently delivered a baby, so she was still in the hospital when I moved into their house. The Martinez family did almost everything together. We made pizza together, watched Shrek on their cozy couch together, and went fishing on Sunday together.  On rainy days, Michael, Jen and I would sit on the porch and listen to the rain, talking about our dreams and thoughts. Within two months I was calling them mom and dad.

Show 2: "the Martinez family showed me the value of spending time together as a family" (implication: he doesn't have this with his own family)

The host mom Shellie was a single mom who had two of her own sons and two Russian daughters that she had adopted.  The kids always had something warm to eat, and were always on their best behavior at home and in school. It would be fair to say that this was all due to Shellie’s upbringing. My room was on the first floor,  right in front of Shellie’s hair salon, a small business that she ran out of her home. In the living room were six or seven huge amplifiers and a gigantic chandelier hung from the high ceiling. The kitchen had a bar. At first, the non-stop visits from strangers made me nervous, but soon I got used to them. I remember one night, a couple barged into my room while I was sleeping. It was awkward.

Show 3: "the Struiksma family taught me to reserve judgment about divorced women and adopted children."

The Ortiz family was my fourth family. Kimberly, the host mom, treated me the same way she treated her own son.  She made me do chores: I fixed dinner, fed their two dogs Sassy and Lady, and once a week I cleaned the bathroom. I also had to follow some rules: No food in my room, no using the family computer, no lights on after midnight, and no ride unless it was an emergency.  The first couple of months were really hard to get used to, but eventually I adjusted.

I lived with the Ortiz family for seven months like a monk in the deep forest.  However, the host dad Greg’s asthma got worse after winter, so he wanted to move to the countryside. It was unexpected and I only had a week to find a new host family. I asked my friend Danielle if I could live with her until I found a new home. That’s how I met the Dirksen family, my fifth family.

Show 4: "Mrs. Ortiz taught me the value of discipline."

The Dirksen family had three kids.  They were all different. Danielle liked bitter black coffee, Christian liked energy drinks, and Becca liked sweet lemon tea. Dawn, the host mom didn’t like winter, and Mark, the host dad, didn’t like summer. After dinner, we would all play Wii Sports together. I was the king of bowling, and Dawn was the queen of tennis. I don’t remember a single time that they argued about the games.  Afterward, we would gather in the living room and Danielle would play the piano while the rest of us sang hymns.

Show 5: "and the Dirksen family taught me the importance of appreciating one another’s different qualities."

Of course, those 28 months were too short to fully understand all five families, but I learned from and was shaped by each of them.  By teaching me English, nine year-old Cody taught me the importance of being able to learn from anyone; the Martinez family showed me the value of spending time together as a family; the Struiksma family taught me to reserve judgment about divorced women and adopted children; Mrs. Ortiz taught me the value of discipline and the Dirksen family taught me the importance of appreciating one another’s different qualities.

The "Tell" / "So What":

THE "FOOD" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Montage Essay, “I Love/I Know” Type

I’ve spent most of my life as an anti-vegetable carboholic.  For years, processed snack foods ruled the kitchen kingdom of my household and animal products outnumbered plant-based offerings. 

My transformation began with my mom’s cancer diagnosis. My mom went on a 100% whole food plant-based diet. I fully embraced this new eating philosophy to show my support. Eager to figure out the whole “vegan” thing, the two of us started binge-watching health documentaries such as “What the Health” and “Forks Over Knives”. We read all the books by the featured doctors like “The China Study” and “How Not To Die”. I became entranced by the world of nutritional science and how certain foods could help prevent cancer or boost metabolism. 

Each new food I discovered gave me an education on the role diet plays on health. I learned that, by eating sweet potatoes and brown rice, you could cure acne and heart disease. I discovered eating leafy greens with citrus fruits could boost iron absorption rates. I loved pairing my foods to create the perfect macronutrient balance. Did you know beans and rice make a complete protein? 

Food has also turned me into a sustainability nut. Living plant-based also saves the planet from the impact of animal agriculture. For the same amount of land space, a farmer can produce 200 kilograms of soybeans versus 16 kilograms of beef. I do my part to have as small of an ecological footprint as I can. I stopped using plastic snack bags and instead turned to reusable beeswax wraps. My favorite reusable appliance is my foldable straw. If I am going to nourish my body, shouldn’t I also want to nourish the earth? 

My journey toward healthy living led me to becoming co-leader of the Northern Nevada PlantPure Pod, “Biggest Little Plant Pod”, a group dedicated to spreading the message about the whole food plant-based lifestyle. We are currently working on a restaurant campaign to encourage local eateries to create a plant-based, oil-free menu option and become PlantPure certified. After discovering how many restaurants use oil in their cooking, I decided I needed to open a plant-based oil free cafe to make up for this gap. My dream is to open up my very own affordable oatmeal cafe based on my Instagram page, morning_mOATivations. And I know that oatmeal isn’t the sexiest superfood out there, so here’s my sales pitch: I’m going to make oatmeal the Beyonce of the breakfast world- sweet, sassy, and power packed. This allows me to educate people about nutritional science through the stomach. 

Finally, I am a strong proponent of hands-on experience for learning what good food looks and tastes like, so cooking is one of my favorite ways to teach the benefits of a plant-based lifestyle. Using my taste buds as my textbook to learn which flavors work together and which ones don’t helps me educate, as I’ve found that information tends to stick in a person’s mind once they’ve experienced healthy, delicious foods with their own senses. Our society has taught us that delicious food has to make us feel guilty, when that is simply not the case. The best feeling in the world is falling in love with a dish and then learning all the health benefits that it provides the body.

While my classmates complain about being tired, I have more energy because my body is finally getting the right macros, vitamins, and minerals it needs. This has allowed me to push myself harder physically, excelling in running and earning my high school Cross Country team’s Most Improved award. I’m still a picky eater. But the foods I am particular about have changed. Rather than a carboholic, I choose to call myself a vegeholic.

THE "HAPPINESS SPREADSHEET" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Montage Essay, “Essence Object” Type

Meditation over a flaxen sunset with a friend and parmesan-topped spaghetti for dinner — “14.” Assignments piling up on my desk as a high fever keeps me sick at home — “3.” Taking a photo excursion through downtown Seattle for a Spanish project — “15.” For the past 700 days and counting, the Happiness Spreadsheet has been my digital collection for documenting numerical, descriptive, and graphical representations of my happiness. Its instructions are simple: Open the Google Sheet, enter a number between 1 and 20 that best represents my level of happiness, and write a short comment describing the day. But the practical aspect of the spreadsheet is only a piece of what it has represented in my life.

A “14” etched on November 15, 2018, marked the first Lakeside Cooking on the Stove Club meeting. What had started as a farcical proposition of mine transformed into a playground where high school classmates and I convene every two weeks to prepare a savory afternoon snack for ourselves. A few months later, a “16” scribbled on February 27, 2019, marked the completion of a fence my Spanish class and I constructed for the dusty soccer field at a small Colombian village. Hard-fought days of mixing cement and transporting supplies had paid off for the affectionate community we had immediately come to love. The Happiness Spreadsheet doesn’t only reflect my own thoughts and emotions; it is an illustration of the fulfillment I get from gifting happiness to others.

If happiness paves the roads of my life, my family is the city intertwined by those roads — each member a distinct neighborhood, a distinct story. In times of stress, whether it be studying for an upcoming derivatives test or presenting my research at an international conference, I dash to my father for help. Coming from the dusty, people-packed backstreets of Thiruvananthapuram, India, he guides me in looking past the chaos and noticing the hidden accomplishments that lie in the corners. When in need of confidence, I find my mother, who taps her experiences living in her tranquil and sturdy tatami-covered home in Hiroshima, Japan, helping me prepare for my first high school dance or my final match in a tennis tournament. Whenever my Happiness Spreadsheet numbers touch lows, my family is always there to level me out to “10.”

The Happiness Spreadsheet is also a battery monitor for enthusiasm. On occasion, it is on full charge, like when I touched the last chord on the piano for my composition's winner recital or when, one frosty Friday morning, I convinced a teacher to play over the school speakers a holiday medley I’d recorded with a friend. Other times, the battery is depleted, and I am frustrated by writer's block, when not a single melody, chord, or musical construct crosses my mind. The Happiness Spreadsheet can be a hall of fame, but it can likewise be a catalog of mistakes, burdens, and grueling challenges.

The spreadsheet began on a typical school day when I left my physics class following the most confusing test I’d taken. The idea was born spontaneously at lunch, and I asked two of my friends if they were interested in pursuing this exercise with me. We thought the practice would last only a couple of weeks or months at most, but after reaching 700 days, we now wonder if we’ll ever stop. To this day, I ponder its full importance in my life. With every new number I enter, I recognize that each entry is not what defines me; rather, it is the ever-growing line connecting all the data points that reflects who I am today. With every valley, I force myself onward and with every mountain's peak, I recognize the valleys I’ve crossed to reach the summit. Where will the Happiness Spreadsheet take me next?

THE "TRANSLATING" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Montage Essay, “Skill/Superpower” Type

".miK ijniM" This is how I wrote my name until I was seven . I was a left-handed kid who wrote from right to left, which made my writing comprehensible only to myself. Only after years of practice did I become an ambidextrous writer who could translate my incomprehensible writing. As I look back on my life, I realized that this was my first act of translation. 

Translation means reinterpreting my Calculus teacher’s description of L’hospital’s rule into a useful tool for solving the limits . As I deciphered complex codes into comprehensible languages like rate of change and speed of an object, I gained the ability to solve even more complicated and fascinating problems. My Calculus teacher often told me, “It’s not until you can teach math concepts to somebody that you understand them completely.” Before I discovered the joy of teaching, I often explained difficult math concepts to my friends as a tool for reviewing what I’d learned. Now, I volunteer to tutor others: as a Korean tutor for friends who love Korean culture and a golf tutor for new team members. Tutoring is how I integrate and strengthen new concepts for myself.  

My talent for translating also applies to my role as a “therapist” for my family and friends . I’m able to identify their real feelings beneath superficial words by translating hand-gestures, facial expressions, and tones. I often put myself into their situation and ask, "What emotional support would I want or need if I was in this situation?" Through these acts of translation, I’ve grown into a more reliable and perceptive friend, daughter, and sister. 

However, my translation can't accurately account for the experiences I have yet to go through . After realizing the limitations of my experience, I created a bucket list full of activities out of my comfort zone, which includes traveling abroad by myself, publishing my own book, and giving a lecture in front of a crowd. Although it is a mere list written on the front page of my diary, I found myself vividly planning and picturing myself accomplishing those moments. By widening my experiences, I’ll be a therapist who can empathize fully and give meaningful advice based on rich experiences.

My knack for translating has led me to become a real-life Korean language translator . As an English to Korean letter translator in a non-profit organization, Compassion , I serve as a communication bridge between benefactors and children in developing countries, who communicate through monthly letters. I’ve translated hundreds of letters by researching each country to provide context that considers both cultural aspects and nuances of the language. This experience has motivated me to learn languages like Spanish and Mandarin. I’ve realized that learning various languages has been a journey of self-discovery: the way I talk and interact with people changed depending on the language I used. As I get to know more about myself through different languages, I grew more confident to meet new people and build new friendships.

While translating has been a huge part of my life, a professional translator is not my dream job . I want to be an ambulatory care clinical pharmacist who manages the medication of patients with chronic diseases. In fact, translating is a huge part of the job of a clinical pharmacist. I should substitute myself into patients’ situations to respond to their needs effectively, which requires my translating skill as a “therapist.” Moreover, as a clinical pharmacist, I’ll be the patients’ private tutor who not only guides them through the right use of medication but also gives them emotional support. As my qualities as a “therapist” and a “tutor” shaped me into a great translator, I will continue to develop my future as a clinical pharmacist by enhancing and discovering my qualities. In one form or another, I've always been and will be a translator.

THE "WHY BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Montage Essay, “Career” Type

I sit, cradled by the two largest branches of the Newton Pippin Tree, watching the ether. The Green Mountains of Vermont stretch out indefinitely, and from my elevated vantage point, I feel as though we are peers, motionless in solidarity. I’ve lost my corporeal form and instead, while watching invisible currents drive white leviathans across the sky, have drifted up into the epistemological stream; completely alone with my questions, diving for answers. But a few months ago, I would have considered this an utter waste of time. 

Prior to attending Mountain School, my paradigm was substantially limited; opinions, prejudices, and ideas shaped by the testosterone-rich environment of Landon School. I was herded by result-oriented, fast-paced, technologically-reliant parameters towards psychology and neuroscience (the NIH, a mere 2.11 mile run from my school, is like a beacon on a hill). I was taught that one’s paramount accomplishment should be specialization. 

Subconsciously I knew this was not who I wanted to be and seized the chance to apply to the Mountain School. Upon my arrival, though, I immediately felt I did not belong. I found the general atmosphere of hunky-dory acceptance foreign and incredibly unnerving. 

So, rather than engage, I retreated to what was most comfortable: sports and work. In the second week, the perfect aggregate of the two, a Broomball tournament, was set to occur. Though I had never played before, I had a distinct vision for it, so decided to organize it.

That night, the glow-in-the-dark ball skittered across the ice. My opponent and I, brooms in hand, charged forward. We collided and I banana-peeled, my head taking the brunt of the impact. Stubborn as I was, even with a concussion, I wanted to remain in class and do everything my peers did, but my healing brain protested. My teachers didn’t quite know what to do with me, so, no longer confined to a classroom if I didn’t want to be, I was in limbo. I began wandering around campus with no company except my thoughts. Occasionally, Zora, my English teacher’s dog, would tag along and we’d walk for miles in each other's silent company. Other times, I found myself pruning the orchard, feeding the school’s wood furnaces, or my new favorite activity, splitting wood. Throughout those days, I created a new-found sense of home in my head.

However, thinking on my own wasn’t enough; I needed more perspectives. I organized raucous late-night discussions about everything from medieval war machines to political theory and  randomly challenged my friends to “say something outrageous and defend it.” And whether we achieve profundity or not, I find myself enjoying the act of discourse itself. As Thoreau writes, “Let the daily tide leave some deposit on these pages, as it leaves, the waves may cast up pearls.” I have always loved ideas, but now understand what it means to ride their waves, to let them breathe and become something other than just answers to immediate problems. 

I am most enamored by ideas that cultivate ingenious and practical enrichments for humanity. I enjoy picking some conundrum, large or small, and puzzling out a solution. Returning from a cross country meet recently, my friend and I, serendipitously, designed a socially responsible disposable water bottle completely on accident. Now we hope to create it.

I am still interested in psychology and neuroscience, but also desire to incorporate contemplative thought into this work, analyzing enigmas from many different perspectives. My internships at the NIH and the National Hospital for Neuroscience and Neurosurgery in London have offered me valuable exposure to research and medicine. But I have come to realize that neither of my previous intended professions allow me to expand consciousness in the way I would prefer. 

After much soul-searching, I have landed on behavioral economics as the perfect synergy of the fields I love. All it took was a knock on the head.

THE "5 FAMILY IDENTITIES" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Montage, “Identity” Type

“Chris, what would you like to have for Christmas Dinner? ”

Suddenly, a miniature gathering of the European Commission glares straight at me. I feel the pressure of picking one option over the other.

 What do I choose? The Roast Duck of Denmark, the Five Fish of Italy, the Turkey of Great Britain, or the Ham of the U.S.? Like the various nations of the European Union, the individual proponents of these culinary varieties are lobbying their interests to me, a miniature Jean-Claude Junker.

Now, you may be asking yourselves: why would I be so pensive over a meal choice?

See, I have been blessed to be a part of what my mother calls the “melting pot of Europe.”  While I was born in England, my brothers were born in Denmark and New York. I have a Swedish sister-in-law, Italian Aunts, an English Uncle, Romanian cousins and an Italo-Danish immigrant father. Every year, that same family gathers together in New York City to celebrate Christmas. While this wonderful kaleidoscope of cultures has caused me to be the ‘peacekeeper’ during meal arbitrations, it has fundamentally impacted my life.  

Our family’s ethnic diversity has meant that virtually each person adheres to a different position on the political spectrum. This has naturally triggered many discussions, ranging from the merits of European single-payer healthcare to those of America’s gun laws, that have often animated our meals. These exact conversations drove me to learn more about what my parents, grandparents, and other relatives were debating with a polite and considerate passion. This ongoing discourse on current events not only initiated my interests in politics and history, but also prepared me greatly for my time as a state-champion debater for Regis’s Public Forum team. In turn, participating in debate has expanded my knowledge regarding matters ranging from civil rights reparations to American redeployment in Iraq, while enriching my capacities to thoughtfully express my views on those and other issues, both during P.F. rounds and at the dinner table.

Just as I’ve learned to understand and bridge the divides between a rich tapestry of cultures in order to develop my familial relations, society’s leadership must also do the same on a grander scale. This awareness incited a passion for statecraft within me – the very art of balancing different perspectives - and therefore a desire to actively engage in government. With my experiences in mind, I felt there was no better place to start than my own neighborhood of Bay Ridge. Young hipsters, a high concentration of seniors, Italian & Irish middle class families, and a growing population of Middle-Eastern Americans help to comprise a district that I have begun serving as the first teenaged member of my local Community Board.  Within my public service capacity, I am committed to making policy judgments (for example, regarding hookah bars, zoning regulations, and park renovation expenses) that are both wise and respectful of my community’s diversity. 

Most importantly, my family has taught me an integral life lesson. As our Christmas Dinner squabbles suggest, seemingly insurmountable impasses can be resolved through respect and dialogue, even producing delicious results! On a grander scale, it has elucidated that truly inclusive discourse and toleration of diverse perspectives render tribalism, sectarianism, and the  divisive aspects of identity politics powerless over our cohesion. I fundamentally value cultural, political, and theological variety; my own microcosm reflecting our global society at large has inspired me to strive to solve the many conflicts of bitterness and sectionalism in our world today. This vocation may come in the form of political leadership that truly respects all perspectives and philosophies, or perhaps as diplomacy facilitating unity between the various nations of the world. The problems I would need to help remedy are numerous and daunting, but our annual Christmas feasts will forever remind me that they can be overcome, and that humanity’s diversity is not a weakness, but a definitive strength.

THE "Coffeeshops + Coffee" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Montage Essay, “Home” Type

Before I came to America, I drank Puer Tea with my father every morning in my bedroom, sitting cross-legged on Suzhou-silk mats beside a view of the Lakeside reservoir. Beside a dark end table, we picked up teacups as the mild aroma greeted our noses. As we faced the French window, my father would share the news he read in China Daily : the Syrian civil war, climate change, and gender equality in Hollywood. Most of the time, I only listened. With each piece of news, my curiosity piqued. Secretly, I made a decision that I wanted to be the one to discuss the news with him from my perspective. So, I decided to study in America to learn more about the world.   

After one year’s extensive research and hours of interviews, I came to America for 9th grade and moved in with a host family. But, my new room lacked stories and cups of tea. Fortunately, I found Blue House Cafe on my walk home from church, and started studying there. With white walls, comfortable sofas, and high stools, Blue House is spacious and bright. Hearing people’s stories and looking at their warm smiles when they taste various pastries as I sat by the window, I watched as a production designer scouted locations for his film, or a painter took notes while brainstorming for his freehand brushwork of Blue House. With a cup of coffee, I dig into differential and parametric equations for my upcoming AP Calculus test, learn the nuances of public speaking by watching Michael Sandel’s Justice lectures on my laptop, and plan fundraising events for my non-profit. 

I’ve also learned by watching leaders host meetings at the rectangle conference table at the back of the cafe and I learn from the leaders of meetings, watching as they hold the edge of the table and express their ideas. Similarly, as president of the International Students Club, I invited my teammates to have meetings with me at the cafe. Coordinating the schedule with other members in Blue House has become a frequent event. Consuming several cups of coffee, my team and I have planned Lunar New Year events, field trip to the Golden Gate Bridge, and Chinese lunch in school to help international students feel more at home. Straightening my back and bracing my shoulders, I stood up behind the conference table and expressed my creative ideas passionately. After each meeting, we shared buttermilk coffee-cake.

In my spot next to the window, I also witnessed different kinds of people. I viewed visitors dragging their luggage, women carrying shopping bags, and people wandering in tattered clothes --the diversity of San Francisco. Two years ago I saw volunteers wearing City Impact shirts offering sandwiches and hot chocolate to homeless people outside of the cafe. I investigated more about City Impact and eventually signed up to volunteer. No longer was I a bystander. At holiday outreach events, I prepared and delivered food to homeless people. While sharing my coffee, I listened to a story from an older Chinese man who told me, in Mandarin, how he had been abandoned by his children and felt lonely.

Last summer, I returned to Xiamen, China, and taught my father how to drink coffee. Now, a Chemex and teapot are both on the end table. Instead of simply listening, I shared my experiences as a club president, a community leader, and a volunteer. I showed him my business plan and prototypes. My father raised his cup of coffee and made a toast to me, “Good girl! I am so proud of you.” Then, he patted my head as before. Together, we emptied our cups while the smell of coffee lingered.

THE "KOMBUCHA CLUB" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Montage Essay, “Uncommon Extracurricular Activity” Type

I add the critically measured sugary tea mixture to the gallon jar containing the slimy, white, disc-shaped layers of the symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast.

Now to wait.  

After exactly seven days, I pour the liquid into a fermentation-grade glass bottle with a ratio of 20% pomegranate juice and 80% fermented tea. I place it on my kitchen counter, periodically checking it to relieve the built-up CO2.

Finally, after an additional seventy-two hours, the time comes to try it. I crack the seal on the bottle, leaning over to smell what I assume will be a tangy, fruity, delicious pomegranate solution. and it smells like rotten eggs. The insufferable stench fills my nostrils and crushes my confidence. I'm momentarily taken aback, unable to understand how I went wrong when I followed the recipe perfectly. 

My issue wasn't misreading the recipe or failing to follow a rule, it was bypassing my creative instincts and forgetting the unpredictable nature of fermentation. I needed to trust the creative side of kombucha— the side that takes people's perfectionist energy and explodes it into a puddle of rotten egg smelling 'booch (my preferred name for the drink- not "fermented, effervescent liquid from a symbiotic culture of acetic acid bacteria and yeast"). I was too caught up in the side that requires extreme preciseness to notice when the balance between perfectionism and imperfectionism was being thrown off. The key, I have learned, is knowing when to prioritize following the recipe and when to let myself be creative. Sure, there are scientific variables such as proximity to heat sources and how many grams of sugar to add. But, there's also person-dependent variables like how long I decide to ferment it, what fruits I decide will be a fun combination, and which friend I got my first SCOBY from (taking "symbiotic" to a new level).

I often find myself feeling pressured to choose one side or the other, one extreme over the alternative. I've been told that I can either be a meticulous scientist or a messy artist, but to be both is an unacceptable contradiction. However, I choose a grey area; a place where I can channel my creativity into the sciences, as well as channel my precision into my photography.

I still have the first photo I ever took on the first camera I ever had. Or rather, the first camera I ever made. Making that pinhole camera was truly a painstaking process: take a cardboard box, tap it shut, and poke a hole in it. Okay, maybe it wasn't that hard. But learning the exact process of taking and developing a photo in its simplest form, the science of it, is what drove me to pursue photography. I remember being so unhappy with the photo I took; it was faded, underexposed, and imperfect. For years, I felt incredibly pressured to try and perfect my photography. It wasn't until I was defeated, staring at a puddle of kombucha, that I realized that there doesn't always have to be a standard of perfection in my art, and that excited me. 

So, am I a perfectionist? Or do I crave pure spontaneity and creativity? Can I be both?

Perfectionism leaves little to be missed. With a keen eye, I can quickly identify my mistakes and transform them into something with purpose and definitude. On the other hand, imperfection is the basis for change and for growth. My resistance against perfectionism is what has allowed me to learn to move forward by seeing the big picture; it has opened me to new experiences, like bacteria cross-culturing to create something new, something different, something better. I am not afraid of change or adversity, though perhaps I am afraid of conformity. To fit the mold of perfection would compromise my creativity, and I am not willing to make that sacrifice.

THE "MOMENTS WHERE THE SECONDS STAND STILL" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Montage Essay, “Other/Advanced” type

I hold onto my time as dearly as my Scottish granny holds onto her money. I’m careful about how I spend it and fearful of wasting it. Precious minutes can show someone I care and can mean the difference between accomplishing a goal or being too late to even start and my life depends on carefully budgeting my time for studying, practicing with my show choir, and hanging out with my friends. However, there are moments where the seconds stand still.

It is already dark when I park in my driveway after a long day at school and rehearsals. I can’t help but smile when I see my dog Kona bounce with excitement, then slide across the tile floor to welcome me as I open the door. I run with him into my parent’s bedroom, where my mom, dad, and sister are waiting for me. We pile onto my parents’ bed to talk about what’s going on in our lives, plan our next trip to the beach, tell jokes, and “spill tea.” They help me see challenges with a realistic perspective, grounding me in what matters. Not paying attention to the clock, I allow myself to relax for a brief moment in my busy life.

Laughter fills the show choir room as my teammates and I pass the time by telling bad jokes and breaking out in random bursts of movement. Overtired, we don’t even realize we’re entering the fourth hour of rehearsal. This same sense of camaraderie follows us onstage, where we become so invested in the story we are portraying we lose track of time. My show choir is my second family. I realize I choreograph not for recognition, but to help sixty of my best friends find their footing. At the same time, they help me find my voice.

The heavy scuba gear jerks me under the icy water, and exhilaration washes over me. Lost in the meditative rolling effect of the tide and the hum of the vast ocean, I feel present. I dive deeper to inspect a vibrant community of creatures, and we float together, carefree and synchronized. My fascination with marine life led me to volunteer as an exhibit interpreter for the Aquarium of the Pacific, where I share my love for the ocean. Most of my time is spent rescuing animals from small children and, in turn, keeping small children from drowning in the tanks. I’ll never forget the time when a visiting family and I were so involved in discussing ocean conservation that, before I knew it, an hour had passed. Finding this mutual connection over the love of marine life and the desire to conserve the ocean environment keeps me returning each summer. 

“Why don’t we have any medical supplies?” The thought screams through my mind as I carry a sobbing girl on my back across campus in search of an ice pack and ankle wrap. She had just fallen while performing, and I could relate to the pain and fear in her eyes. The chaos of the show becomes distant, and I devote my time to bringing her relief, no matter how long it may take. I find what I need to treat her injury in the sports medicine training room. I didn’t realize she would be the first of many patients I would tend to in this training room. Since then, I’ve launched a sports medicine program to provide care to the 500-person choir program.  

Saturday morning bagels with my family. Singing backup for Barry Manilow with my choir. Swimming with sea turtles in the Pacific. Making my teammate smile even though he’s in pain. These are the moments I hold onto, the ones that define who I am, and who I want to be. For me, time isn’t just seconds ticking by on a clock, it’s how I measure what matters.

THE "IDENTIFYING AS TRANS" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Narrative Essay, “Challenges” Type

“Mommy I can’t see myself.”  

I was six when I first refused/rejected girl’s clothing, eight when I only wore boy’s clothing, and fifteen when I realized why. When gifted dresses I was told to “smile and say thank you” while Spiderman shirts took no prompting from me, I’d throw my arms around the giver and thank them. My whole life has been others invading my gender with their questions, tears signed by my body, and a war against my closet. Fifteen years and I finally realized why, this was a girl’s body, and I am a boy. 

Soon after this, I came out to my mom. I explained how lost I felt, how confused I was, how “I think I’m Transgender.” It was like all those years of being out of place had led to that moment, my truth, the realization of who I was. My mom cried and said she loved me. 

The most important factor in my transition was my mom’s support. She scheduled me an appointment with a gender therapist, let me donate my female clothes, and helped build a masculine wardrobe. With her help, I went on hormones five months after coming out and got surgery a year later. I finally found myself, and my mom fought for me, her love was endless. Even though I had friends, writing, and therapy, my strongest support was my mother.

On August 30th, 2018 my mom passed away unexpectedly. My favorite person, the one who helped me become the man I am today, ripped away from me, leaving a giant hole in my heart and in my life.

Life got dull. Learning how to wake up without my mom every morning became routine. Nothing felt right, a constant numbness to everything, and fog brain was my kryptonite. I paid attention in class, I did the work, but nothing stuck. I felt so stupid, I knew I was capable, I could solve a Rubik’s cube in 25 seconds and write poetry, but I felt broken. I was lost, I couldn’t see myself, so stuck on my mother that I fell into an ‘It will never get better’ mindset.

It took over a year to get out of my slump. 25 therapy sessions, over 40 poems, not a single one didn’t mention my mom. I shared my writing at open mics, with friends, and I cried every time. I embraced the pain, the hurt, and eventually, it became the norm. I grew used to not having my mom around.

My mom always wanted to change the world, to fix the broken parts of society. She didn’t get to. Now that I’m in a good place, mentally and physically, I’m going to make that impact. Not just for her, but for me, and all the people who need a support branch as strong as the one my mom gave me.

I’m starting with whats impacted me most of my life, what’s still in front of me, being Transgender in the school system. For my senior project, I am using my story and experience as a young Transgender man to inform local schools, specifically the staff, about the do’s and dont’s of dealing with a Transgender student. I am determined to make sure no one feels as alone as I did. I want to be able to reach people, and use motivational speaking as the platform. 

After experiencing many twists and turns in my life, I’m finally at a good spot. I know what I want to do with my life, and I know how I’m going to get there. 

Mom, I can see myself now. Thank you.

If you’d like to see more sample essays + a guide to “ Should I come out in my personal statement (and if so, how?) ” please check out that link.

THE "iTaylor" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Narrative Essay, Undefined Type

Are you tired of seeing an iPhone everywhere? Samsung glitchy? It’s time for a change. I present to you, the iTaylor. I am the iTaylor. On the outside, I look like any smart phone, but when you open my settings and explore my abilities, you will find I have many unique features.

The iTaylor’s best feature is its built-in optimism. Thanks to my positivity, I was chosen to give the morning announcements freshman year. Now, I am the alarm clock for the 1,428 students of Fox Lane High School. For the past three years, I have been starting everyone’s morning with a bubbly, “Good morning, foxes!” and ending with “Have a marvelous Monday,” “Terrific Tuesday” or “Phenomenal Friday!”  My adjective-a-day keeps people listening, gives me conversation starters with faculty, and solicits fun suggestions from my friends.

Next up, language settings. I’ve worked hard to be bilingual so the iTaylor can be set to either English or Spanish. Fun fact: In middle school, I set my phone to Spanish so that messages like “ Alexis te envió un mensaje en Instagram ,” would increase my fluency. I learned nuances of the language by watching Spanish sitcoms like Siete Vidas and Spanish movies like Como Agua Para Chocolate . I appreciate the emphasis Spanish culture places on relationships, the way siblings take care of each other, and how grandparents’ wisdom is valued. Inspired, I began creating family events and even making efforts to grow closer to my second cousins.

At eight years old, I was diagnosed with what some might call a glitch: epilepsy. Fortunately, a new IOS software update cured my condition by the age of 15, but through epilepsy, I gained a love of exploration. Whereas at 10, I couldn’t bathe without supervision, I now enjoy snorkeling in unknown waters. While at 11, I couldn’t be left alone with my friends, I now explore the subways, crowded streets, and Broadway shows of New York City. Overcoming epilepsy taught me to take risks and explore new places.

This brings us to the iTaylor location settings. Two summers ago, I travelled to Ecuador to live with a friend’s family and teach Spanish theater to third graders. The experience implanted a “cookie” in me, filling me with a desire to learn about different cultures. I brought this desire home to a volunteer position at a local program for immigrant children. I helped the kids make presentations about their places of origin, including Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras. Also, as resident tour guide and ambassador for exchange students at my school, I’ve discovered North African fusion music from Selima, learned German slang from Henrike, and helped Saidimar prepare his Mr.Sulu campaign, a regional pageant in the Philippines. It became clear that the English language, one I took for granted, is the central feature that brings groups together.

This past summer, I brought my talents to Scotland, playing the dual role of  Artistic Director and leading character for Geek the Musical . I worked to promote the show in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival against 53,232 shows, reinventing ways to motivate the cast and connect with strangers from all over the world. We learned the more we connected, the more our audience grew. I applied these skills to my leadership positions at home, including my High School Theater Group, Players. I’m now better at creating a marketing strategy that includes door-to-door sales, print advertising, and identifying broader target audiences to fill seats.

The rollout plan for the iTaylor is to introduce it to the theater market. My goal is to use performance and storytelling to expose audiences to different cultures, religions, and points of view. Perhaps if we all learned more about each other's lifestyles, the world would be more empathetic and integrated. 

So what do you think? Would you like an iTaylor of your own? The iTaylor College Edition is now available for pre-order. It delivers next fall.

THE "FIGURING OUT WHAT REALLY MATTERED CHALLENGE" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Narrative Essay

"Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air." --Ivan Pavlov 

Upon graduation, I will be able to analyze medieval Spanish poems using literary terms and cultural context, describe the electronegativity trends on the periodic table, and identify when to use logarithmic differentiation to simplify a derivative problem. Despite knowing how to execute these very particular tasks, I currently fail to understand how to change a tire, how to do my taxes efficiently, or how to obtain a good insurance policy. A factory-model school system that has been left essentially unchanged for nearly a century has been the driving force in my educational development.

I have been conditioned to complete tasks quickly, efficiently, and with an advanced understanding. I measured my self-worth as my ability to outdo my peers academically, thinking my scores were the only aspect that defined me; and they were. I was getting everything right. Then, I ran for Student Government and failed. Rejection. I didn’t even make it past the first round of cuts. How could that be? I was statistically a smart kid with a good head on my shoulders, right? Surely someone had to have made a mistake. Little did I know, this was my first exposure to meaning beyond numbers.

As I was rejected from StuGo for the second year in a row, I discovered I had been wrongfully measuring my life through numbers--my football statistics, my test scores, my age, my height (I’m short). I had the epiphany that oh wait, maybe it was my fault that I had never prioritized communication skills, or open-mindedness (qualities my fellow candidates possessed). Maybe it was me. That must be why I always had to be the one to approach people during my volunteer hours at the public library to offer help--no one ever asked me for it. I resolved to alter my mindset, taking a new approach to the way I lived. From now on I would emphasize qualitative experiences over quantitative skills. 

I had never been more uncomfortable. I forced myself to learn to be vulnerable by asking questions even if I was terrified of being wrong. My proficiency in using data evidence could not teach me how to communicate with young children at church, nor could my test scores show me how to be more open to criticism. The key to all of these skills, I was to discover, happened to be learning from those around me. Turns out, I couldn’t do everything by myself.

The process of achieving this new mindset came through the cultivation of relationships. I became fascinated by the new perspectives each person in my life could offer if I really took the time to connect. Not only did I improve my listening skills, but I began to consider the big-picture consequences my engagements could have. People interpret situations differently due to their own cultural contexts, so I had to learn to pay more attention to detail to understand every point of view. I took on the state of what I like to call collaborative independence, and to my delight, I was elected to StuGo after my third year of trying.

Not long ago, I would have fallen apart at the presence of any uncertainty. As I further accept and advance new life skills, the more I realize how much remains uncertain in the world. After all, it is quite possible my future job doesn’t exist yet, and that’s okay. I can’t conceivably plan out my entire life at the age of 17, but what I can do is prepare myself to take on the unknown, doing my best to accompany others. Hopefully, my wings continue enabling me to fly, but it is going to take more than just me and my wings; I have to continue putting my faith in the air around me.

THE "PARENTS' RELATIONSHIP" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Narrative Essay, “Challenge” Type

My mom opened Kanishka’s Gastropub in 2013. I was ecstatic. We would become the first Mother-Son Indian duo on Food Network peeling potatoes, skinning chicken, and grinding spices, sharing our Bengali recipes with the world. 

However, the restaurant tore apart my parent’s relationship. Two years after opening, my dad started coming home late most nights, plastered from “happy hour with work colleagues.” My mom, trying to balance her day job at Kaiser and owning a restaurant, poured her stress on me,“What the hell is wrong with you! Always watching YouTube and never talking!” 

The worst time came when my parents tried to fix their relationship. Repeated date nights induced more arguments. Enduring the stress of her restaurant, my father, and her mistakes, my mom attempted to end her life. Fortunately, I found her just in time.  

Over the next two years, things were at times still hard, but gradually improved. My parents decided to start anew, took some time apart, then got back together. My mom started to pick me up from activities on time and my dad and I bonded more, watching Warriors and 49ers games. 

But at times I still had to emotionally support my mom to avoid sudden India trips, or put my siblings to bed if my parents weren’t home at night. Over time, I found it difficult being my family’s glue. I wanted back the family I had before the restaurant--the one that ate Luchi Mongsho together every Sunday night.

So I looked for comfort in creation. I began spending more time in our garage , carefully constructing planes from sheets of foam. I found purpose balancing the fuselage or leveling the ailerons to precisely 90 degrees. I loved cutting new parts and assembling them perfectly. Here , I could fix all the mistakes. 

In high school, I slowly began to forge a community of creators with my peers. Sophomore year, I started an engineering club and found that I had a talent for  managing people and encouraging them to create an idea even if it failed. I also learned how to take feedback and become more resilient. Here, I could nerd-out about warp drives and the possibility of anti-matter without being ignored. I would give a weekly report on new technology and we would have hour-long conversations about the various uses a blacker material could have. 

While building a community at school rebuilt my confidence, I still found I enjoyed being alone at times. While driving in my car, I’d let my mind wander to movies like Big Hero Six and contemplate if a zero-friction bike really was possible. I’d create ideas like an AI highway system that tells drivers exactly when to switch lanes based on timing and calculus to prevent braking from nearby cars. Or I’d blueprint a new classroom with interactive desks, allowing students to dive deep into historical events like a VR game. I found outlining complex ideas like these sometimes provide insights into something I’m researching or could one day materialize into future projects. 

Looking back (and perhaps inadvertently), the conflicts from the restaurant days have taught me valuable lessons. Helping my mom through her relationship taught me to watch out for those in emotional distress. Spending nights alone made me more independent--after all, it was then that I signed up for advanced math and programming courses and decided to apply for software internships. Most of all, seeing my mom start her restaurant from no food-industry experience inspired me to found two clubs and a Hydrogen Car Team. 

Even though we eat Luchi Monsho on a monthly basis now, I know my family will never be the way it was. My mom and I won’t become a Food Network mother-son duo. I can’t fix all the mistakes. But I can use them to improve the present.

THE "THREATENED BY ISIS" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

In 8th grade while doing a school project I Googled my dad's name and it came up in US military documents posted on the Snowden/NSA documents on WikiLeaks. I stayed up all night reading through documents related to Army support contracts in Iraq and Kuwait in 2003. I asked my dad about it the next day and he said, "It was a mistake I made that has been resolved." Turns out it hadn't been.

Saudi Arabia in the 2000s wasn’t the most ideal place to grow up. I was always scared of terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. My school was part of the US Consulate in Dhahran, and when I was in the 8th grade it was threatened by ISIS. Violence has always surrounded me and haunted me. 

After 14 years of living in a region destroyed by violence, I was sent away to boarding school in a region known for peace, Switzerland. That year my father was found guilty and imprisoned for the charges related to his Army support contract. I felt as if I was Edgar in Shakespeare’s King Lear and this could not get worse, but yet it did.

My parents got divorced and my childhood home was bulldozed to the ground by the Saudi government after my father was sent to prison. My mom had always been a hub of stability, but she was too overwhelmed to support me. I started eating to cope with my anxiety and gained 100 pounds in a year and a half. As I gained weight, my health started to deteriorate, and my grades started to drop. 

Things began to change at the beginning of my sophomore year, however, when I met my new roommate, Nico. He had grown up with someone whose father was also in prison, and was able to help me better understand the issues I was facing. Through my friendship with Nico, I learned how to open up and get support from my friends. 

I started to make new friends with more people at my school and was surprised to find out that 90% of their parents were divorced. Because we faced similar issues, we were able to support one and other, share tactics, and give advice. One of my friends, John, gave me advice on how to help my mother emotionally by showing her love, something I hadn’t been able to do before. My friends gave me a family and a home, when my own family was overwhelmed and my home was gone.

Slowly, I put my life back on track. I started playing basketball, began working on a CubeSAT, learned to program, changed my diet, and lost all the weight I had gained. 

 Now my friends in Switzerland come to me asking me for advice and help, and I feel as if I am a vital member of our community. My close friend Akshay recently started stressing about whether his parents were going to get divorced. With John’s advice, I started checking in on Akshay, spending more time with him, and coaching him before and after he talked to his parents. 

Leaving home in the beginning of my adolescence, I was sent out on a path of my own. While for some, high school is the best time of their lives, for me, high school has represented some of the best and, hopefully, worst times. Even with the struggles I’ve faced with my family, I am grateful for this path. It has brought me to a place that I only thought was fictional. In this new place I feel like a real person, with real emotions. This place is somewhere where I can express myself freely and be who I want to be. I am a much stronger, healthier, and more resilient person than I was two years ago. While it hasn’t been easy, I am glad to be where I am today.

For a ton of UC Essay Examples, head to my blog post here.

Supplemental essay examples, uchicago: the "why did the chicken cross the road" essay.

This essay was written for the U of Chicago "Create your own prompt" essay. The author included the following explanatory note:

I plan to double major in biochemistry and English and my main essay explains my passion for the former; here is a writing sample that illustrates my enthusiasm for the latter.

In my AP Literature class, my teacher posed a question to which students had to write a creative response. My response is framed around the ideas of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.”

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

A: A manicured green field of grass blades cut to perfectly matched lengths; a blue expanse ornamented with puffy cotton clouds; an immaculately painted red barn centered exactly at the top of a hill--the chicken gazes contentedly at his picturesque world. Within an area surrounded by a shiny silver fence, he looks around at his friends: roosters pecking at a feast of grains and hens lounging on luxurious cushions of hay. As the nice man in a plaid shirt and blue jeans collects the hens’ eggs, the chicken feels an overwhelming sense of indebtedness to him for providing this idyllic lifestyle.

On a day as pristine as all the others, the chicken is happily eating his lunchtime meal as the nice man carefully gathers the smooth white eggs when it notices that the man has left one behind. Strangely located at the empty end of the metal enclosure, highlighted by the bright yellow sun, the white egg appears to the chicken different from the rest. The chicken moves towards the light to tacitly inform the man of his mistake. But then the chicken notices a jagged gray line on the otherwise flawless egg. Hypnotized and appalled, the chicken watches as the line turns into a crack and a small beak attached to a fuzzy yellow head pokes out. Suddenly a shadow descends over the chicken and the nice man snatches the egg--the baby chick--and stomps off.

The chicken--confused, betrayed, disturbed--slowly lifts its eyes from the now empty ground. For the first time, it looks past the silver fence of the cage and notices an unkempt sweep of colossal brown and green grasses opposite its impeccably crafted surroundings. Cautiously, it inches closer to the barrier, farther from the unbelievable perfection of the farm, and discovers a wide sea of black gravel.  Stained with gray stones and marked with yellow lines, it separates the chicken from the opposite field.

The curious chicken quickly shuffles to Mother Hen, who has just settled on to her throne of hay and is closing her eyes. He is sure that the always composed and compassionate chicken will help him make sense of what he’s just seen.

“Mother Hen, Mother Hen! I-I just saw one of those eggs, cracking, and there was a small yellow bird inside. It was a baby. Are those eggs that the nice man takes away babies? And that black ground! What is it?” the chicken blurts out.

Her eyes flick open. “BOK BOK! Don’t you ever dare speak of what you have seen again,” Mother Hen snaps in a low and violent whisper, “or all of this will be taken away.” Closing her eyes again, she dismisses the chicken.

Frozen in disbelief, the chicken tries to make sense of her harsh words. It replays the incident in its head. “All the food, the nice soft hay, the flawless red barn--maybe all of this isn’t worth giving up. Maybe Mother Hen is right. She just wants to protect me from losing it all.” The chicken replays the incident again. “But it was a baby. What if it was hers? She still wouldn’t care. She’s being selfish; all she cares about is this perfect life.” A final replay, and the chicken realizes and accepts that Mother Hen knows, has known, that the man is doing something wrong; yet she has yielded to the cruelty for her own comfort. A fissure in the chicken’s unawareness, a plan begins to hatch. The chicken knows it must escape; it has to get to the other side.

“That man in the plaid shirt is stealing the eggs from their mothers again,” the chicken thinks the next day as he unlocks the cage. Then the man reaches into the wooden coop, his back to the entrance. “Now!” At its own cue, the chicken scurries towards the opening and exits unseen. With a backwards glance at his friends, the chicken feels a profound sadness and pity for their ignorance. It wants to urge them to open their eyes, to see what they are sacrificing for materialistic pleasures, but he knows they will not surrender the false reality. Alone, the chicken dashes away.

The chicken stands at the line between green grass and black gravel. As it prepares to take its first step into the unknown, a monstrous vehicle with 18 wheels made of metal whizzes by, leaving behind a trail of gray exhaust. Once it regains its breath, it moves a few inches onto the asphalt. Three more speeding trucks stop its chicken heart.

“I can’t do this,” it says to itself. “These monsters are a sign. They’re telling me to go back. Besides, a few lost chicks aren’t so bad. The man’s not that evil. He gives us food, and a home.”

But the chicken dismisses the cowardly voice in its head, reminding itself of the injustice back in the deceptively charming prison. Over the next several hours, it learns to strategically position itself so that it is in line with the empty space between the tires of passing trucks. It reaches the yellow dashes. A black blanket gradually pushes away the glowing sun and replaces it with diamond stars and a glowing crescent. It reaches the untouched field.

With a deep breath, the chicken steps into the swathe, a world of tall beige grass made brown by the darkness. Unsure of what it may discover, it determines to simply walk straight through the brush, out on to the other side. For what seems like forever, it continues forward, as the black sky turns to purple, then blue, then pink. Just as the chicken begins to regret its journey, the grass gives way to a vast landscape of trees, bushes, flowers--heterogeneous and variable, but nonetheless perfect. In a nearby tree, the chicken spots two adult birds tending to a nest of babies--a natural dynamic of individuals unaltered by corrupt influence.

And then it dawns on him. It has escaped from a contrived and perverted domain as well as its own unawareness; it has arrived in a place where the pure order of the world reigns.

“I know the truth now,” it thinks to himself as the sun rises. “But here, in Nature, it is of no use. Back home, I need to try to foster awareness among my friends, share this understanding with them. Otherwise, I am as cruel as the man in the plaid shirt, taking away the opportunity to overcome ignorance.”

“I must return now; I have to get to the other side.”

For more, here’s a guide to the U Chicago supplemental essays , and an in-depth guide to U Chicago’s extended essay .

We also analyze why we think this essay works in The Complete Guide , Session 6.

The "Rock, Paper, Scissors" UChicago Supplemental Essay Example

Essay written for the University of Chicago prompt, which gives you the option to create your own prompt..

Prompt: Dear Christian, the admissions staff at the University of Chicago would like to inform you that your application has been “put on the line.” We have one spot left and can’t decide if we should admit you or another equally qualified applicant. To resolve the matter, please choose one of the following:

Rock, paper, or scissors.

You will be notified of our decision shortly.

Rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, and paper beats rock.  Wait... paper beats rock? Since when has a sheet of loose leaf paper ever defeated a solid block of granite? Do we assume that the paper wraps around the rock, smothering the rock into submission? When exposed to paper, is rock somehow immobilized, unable to fulfill its primary function of smashing scissors?  What constitutes defeat between two inanimate objects?

Maybe it’s all a metaphor for larger ideals. Perhaps paper is rooted in the symbolism of diplomacy while rock suggests coercion. But does compromise necessarily trump brute force? And where do scissors lie in this chain of symbolism?

I guess the reasoning behind this game has a lot to do with context. If we are to rationalize the logic behind this game, we have to assume some kind of narrative, an instance in which paper might beat rock. Unfortunately, I can’t argue for a convincing one.

As with rock-paper-scissors, we often cut our narratives short to make the games we play easier, ignoring the intricate assumptions that keep the game running smoothly. Like rock-paper-scissors, we tend to accept something not because it’s true, but because it’s the convenient route to getting things accomplished. We accept incomplete narratives when they serve us well, overlooking their logical gaps. Other times, we exaggerate even the smallest defects and uncertainties in narratives we don’t want to deal with. In a world where we know very little about the nature of “Truth,” it’s very easy—and tempting—to construct stories around truth claims that unfairly legitimize or delegitimize the games we play.

Or maybe I’m just making a big deal out of nothing...

Fine. I’ll stop with the semantics and play your game.

But who actually wants to play a game of rock-paper-scissors?  After all, isn’t it just a game of random luck, requiring zero skill and talent? That’s no way to admit someone!

Studies have shown that there are winning strategies to rock-paper-scissors by making critical assumptions about those we play against before the round has even started. Douglas Walker, host of the Rock-Paper-Scissors World Championships (didn’t know that existed either), conducted research indicating that males will use rock as their opening move 50% of the time, a gesture Walker believes is due to rock’s symbolic association with strength and force. In this sense, the seemingly innocuous game of rock-paper-scissors has revealed something quite discomforting about gender-related dispositions in our society. Why did so many males think that brute strength was the best option? If social standards have subliminally influenced the way males and females play rock-paper-scissors, than what is to prevent such biases from skewing more important decisions? Should your decision to go to war or to feed the hungry depend on your gender, race, creed, etc?

Perhaps the narratives I spoke of earlier, the stories I mistakenly labeled as “semantics,” carry real weight in our everyday decisions. In the case of Walker’s study, men unconsciously created an irrational narrative around an abstract rock. We all tell slightly different narratives when we independently consider notions ranging from rocks to war to existence. It is ultimately the unconscious gaps in these narratives that are responsible for many of the man-made problems this world faces. In order for the “life of the mind” to be a worthwhile endeavor, we must challenge the unconscious narratives we attach to the larger games we play—the truths we tell (or don’t tell), the lessons we learn (or haven’t really learned), the people we meet (or haven’t truly met).

But even after all of this, we still don’t completely understand the narrative behind rock-paper-scissors.  

I guess it all comes down to who actually made this silly game in the first place... I’d like to think it was some snotty 3rd grader, but then again, that’s just another incomplete narrative.

U of Michigan Supplemental Essay Example

The "east meets west" example essay.

This was written for the U. of Michigan supplemental "community" essay prompt, then adapted for a (no longer existent) essay for Brown. The Michigan prompt reads:

Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by (among other things) shared geography, religion, ethnicity, income, cuisine, interest, race, ideology, or intellectual heritage. Choose one of the communities to which you belong, and describe that community and your place within it.

Here's the essay:

I look around my room, dimly lit by an orange light. On a desk in the left corner, a framed picture of an Asian family is beaming their smiles, buried among US history textbooks and The Great Gatsby. A Korean ballad streams from a pair of tiny computer speakers. Pamphlets of American colleges are scattered about on the floor. A cold December wind wafts a strange infusion of ramen and leftover pizza. On the wall in the far back, a Korean flag hangs besides a Led Zeppelin poster.

Do I consider myself Korean or American?

A few years back, I would have replied: “Neither.” The frustrating moments of miscommunication, the stifling homesickness, and the impossible dilemma of deciding between the Korean or American table in the dining hall, all fueled my identity crisis.

Standing in the “Foreign Passports” section at JFK, I have always felt out of place. Sure, I held a Korean passport in my hands, and I loved kimchi and Yuna Kim and knew the Korean Anthem by heart. But I also loved macaroni and cheese and LeBron and knew all the Red Hot Chili Peppers songs by heart. Deep inside, I feared that I would simply be labeled as what I am categorized at airport customs: a foreigner in all places.

This ambiguity of existence, however, has granted me the opportunity to absorb the best of both worlds. Take a look at my dorm room. This mélange of cultures in my East-meets-West room embodies the diversity that characterizes my international student life.

I have learned to accept my “ambiguity” as “diversity,” as a third-culture student embracing both identities in this diverse community that I am blessed to be a part of.

Now, I can proudly answer: “Both.”

Want help on your college essays?

The CEG mission is to bring more ease, purpose, and joy to the college application process via our library of free resources (much like this blog post).

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A.I. Could Be Great for College Essays

Every year, the artificial intelligence company OpenAI improves its text-writing bot, GPT. And every year, the internet responds with shrieks of woe about the impending end of human-penned prose. This cycle repeated last week when OpenAI launched ChatGPT —a version of GPT that can seemingly spit out any text, from a Mozart-styled piano piece to the history of London in the style of Dr. Seuss . The response on Twitter was unanimous: The college essay is doomed. Why slave over a paper when ChatGPT can write an original for you?

Chatting with ChatGPT is fun. (Go play with it !) But the college essay isn’t doomed, and A.I. like ChatGPT won’t replace flesh and blood writers. They may make writing easier, though.

GPT-3, released by OpenAI in 2020, is the third and best-known version of OpenAI’s Generative Pre-trained Transformer—a computer program known as a large language model. Large language models produce language in response to language—typically, text-based prompts (“Write me a sonnet about love”). Unlike traditional computer programs that execute a series of hard-coded commands, language models are trained by sifting through large datasets of text like Wikipedia. Through this training, they learn patterns in language that are then used to generate the most likely completions to questions or commands.

Language is rife with repetition. Our ability to recognize and remember regularities in speech and text allows us to do things like complete a friend’s sentence or solve a Wordle in three tries. If I asked you to finish the sentence, The ball rolled down the … you’d say hill, and so would GPT-3. Large language models are, like people, great at learning regularities in language, and they use this trick to generate human-like text. But when tested on their ability to understand the language they produce, they often look more like parrots than poets.

Gary Marcus, an emeritus professor at NYU and the author of Rebooting AI , is a vocal critic of the idea that bots like GPT-3 understand what they’re writing . In a recent preprint (an academic paper that hasn’t been peer-reviewed), Marcus and two co-authors used OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 to demonstrate the limitations of large language models. DALL-E 2 , like GPT-3, responds to text-based prompts. But instead of producing language, it creates images. DALL-E 2 was trained to learn associations between images and their captions to produce entirely new images based on the text users enter. If you ask it for, say, “an impressionist painting of Albert Einstein surfing” you get the four images below.

Not bad, right? DALL-E 2 was recently used to win an art competition .

But as Marcus and his co-authors point out in their paper , DALL-E 2 doesn’t understand the relationship between the words that users enter. If, for instance, you ask it to produce an image of “an old man talking to his parents,” you get four images of three people talking. The AI fails to understand that, however old the old man looks, the people he’s talking to must, by definition of being his parents, look older.

Compared with DALL-E 2, ChatGPT appears to have a better grasp of the text users enter and the responses it spits out. This might be why the Internet responded to its release so enthusiastically. ChatGPT “is causing jaws to drop and brows to furrow,” wrote Axios .

I had trouble stumping it with some classic riddles from cognitive psychology. Take the Lily Pad problem:

Prompt: A lily pad, in a pond, doubles in size every day. On the 20 th day, it covers the entire pond. On what day did it cover half the pond?

ChatGPT: A lily pad in a pond that doubles in size every day will cover half the pond on the 19 th day, one day before it covers the entire pond.

The A.I. got that the question described exponential growth—a phenomenon that, as the pandemic demonstrated, many humans fail to understand. But I did fool ChatGPT with the bat and ball problem made famous by Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow :

Prompt: A bat and ball cost $1.10. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

ChatGPT: If the bat costs $1 more than the ball, and the bat and ball cost $1.10 in total, then the ball must cost $1.10 - $1.00 = $0.10.

The correct answer is 5 cents. (Trust me.)

ChatGPT might fail at tests of reasoning, but it’s great at generating humanlike text to different lengths and in various styles. This brings us back to the college essay—an easy task for ChatGPT, many commentators claimed on Twitter. “We’re witnessing the death of the college essay in realtime,” tweeted one Google employee . Ethan Mollick, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania, had ChatGPT write an essay question , create a grading rubric for said question, answer the question, and grade its own answer. (It got an A minus.) How could the essay not be doomed?

This isn’t the first time that large language models have been predicted to fell the essay or worse. “To spend ten minutes with Sudowrite [a GPT-3-based A.I.] is to recognize that the undergraduate essay, the basic pedagogical mode of all humanities, will soon be under severe pressure,” wrote journalist Stephen Marche in a 2021 New Yorker piece. (On Tuesday, Marche wrote an article for the Atlantic titled “ The College Essay Is Dead .”) And in 2019, when GPT-2 was created, OpenAI withheld it from the public because the “fear of malicious applications” was too high .

If any group were to put an A.I. to malicious use, essay-burdened undergraduates would surely be the first. But the evidence that A.I. is being used to complete university assignments is hard to find. (When I asked my class of 47 students recently about using A.I. for schoolwork, they looked at me like I was mad.) It could be a matter of time and access before A.I. is used more widely by students to cheat; ChatGPT is the first free text-writing bot from OpenAI (although it won’t be free forever). But it could also be that large language models are just not very good at answering the types of questions professors ask.

If you ask ChatGPT to write an essay contrasting socialism and capitalism, it produces what you expect: 28 grammatical sentences covering wealth distribution, poverty reduction, and employment stability under these two economic systems. But few professors ask students to write papers on broad questions like this. Broad questions lead to a rainbow of responses that are impossible to grade objectively. And the more you make the question like something a student might get—narrow, and focused on specific, course-related content—the worse ChatGPT performs.

I gave ChatGPT a question about the relationship between language and colour perception, that I ask my third-year psychology of language class, and it bombed . Not only did its response lack detail, but it attributed a paper I instructed it to describe to an entirely different study. Several more questions produced the same vague and error-riddled results. If one of my students handed in the text ChatGPT generated, they’d get an F.

Large language models generate the most likely responses based on the text they are fed during training, and, for now, that text doesn’t include the reading lists of thousands of college classes. They also prevaricate. The model’s calculation of the most probable text completion is not always the most correct response—or even a true response. When I asked Gary Marcus about the prospect of ChatGPT writing college essays his answer was blunt: “It’s basically a bullshit artist. And bullshitters rarely get As—they get Cs or worse.”

If these problems are fixed—and, based on how these models work, it’s unclear that they can be—I doubt A.I. like ChatGPT will produce good papers. Even humans who write papers for money struggle to do it well. In 2014, a department of the U.K. government published a study of history and English papers produced by online-essay writing services for senior high school students. Most of the papers received a grade of C or lower. Much like the work of ChatGPT, the papers were vague and error-filled. It’s hard to write a good essay when you lack detailed, course-specific knowledge of the content that led to the essay question.

ChatGPT may fail at writing a passable paper, but it’s a useful pedagogical tool that could help students write papers themselves. Ben Thompson, who runs the technology blog and newsletter Stratechery, wrote about this change in a post about ChatGPT and history homework. Thompson asked ChatGPT to complete his daughter’s assignment on the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes; the A.I. produced three error-riddled paragraphs. But, as Thompson points out, failures like this don’t mean that we should trash the tech. In the future, A.I. like ChatGPT can be used in the classroom to generate text that students then fact-check and edit. That is, these bots solve the problem of the blank page by providing a starting point for papers. I couldn’t agree more.

I frequently used ChatGPT while working on this piece. I asked for definitions that, after a fact-check, I included. At times, I threw entire paragraphs from this piece into ChatGPT to see if it produced prettier prose. Sometimes it did, and then I used that text. Why not? Like spell check, a thesaurus, and Wikipedia, ChatGPT made the task of writing a little easier. I hope my students use it.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate , New America , and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

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Is the college essay dead? AI apps write scripts, speeches and so much more

Plus, the house of representatives will vote on a new speaker today. how does that work.

I want you to experience some artificial intelligence applications that I have been trying recently. You will see some jaw-dropping potential in these apps to disrupt, create and even cheat. Let’s start with ChatGPT, which, with just a little prompting, can write an essay or even a TV script. I asked it to create a Seinfeld scene in which George decides to become a journalist. In 10 seconds, the script appeared:

(OpenAI.com)

The New York Times can’t seem to rave enough about ChatGPT saying, “ChatGPT is, quite simply, the best artificial intelligence chatbot ever released to the general public. It was built by OpenAI, the San Francisco A.I. company that is also responsible for tools like GPT-3 and  DALL-E 2 , the breakthrough image generator that came out this year.” In case you were wondering, GPT stand for “generative pre-trained transformer.”

I asked it how I could know if a racehorse would become a champion:

I asked ChatGPT to write a sermon that a United Methodist minister might deliver about lotteries. I asked it to explain quantum physics at a fourth-grade level. After it gives a response, you can ask for another response, and it will compose a new answer. And, according to the Times, “It can  write jokes  (some of which are actually funny),  working computer code  and  college-level essays . It can also  guess at medical diagnoses ,  create text-based Harry Potter games  and  explain scientific concepts at multiple levels of difficulty .” 

Recently, an essay in The Atlantic suggested that artificial intelligence technology makes it easy for a program to produce a logical, conversational article or essay. One student who was caught using AI to produce an essay said it was not unlike using a spellcheck program.  

They don’t feel like they’re cheating, because the student guidelines at their university state only that you’re not allowed to get somebody else to do your work for you. GPT-3 isn’t “somebody else”—it’s a program. The world of generative AI is progressing furiously. Last week, OpenAI released an advanced chatbot named ChatGPT that has spawned a new wave of  marveling and hand-wringing , plus an  upgrade  to GPT-3 that allows for complex rhyming poetry; Google  previewed  new applications last month that will allow people to describe concepts in text and see them rendered as images; and the creative-AI firm Jasper received a  $1.5 billion valuation  in October. It still takes a little initiative for a kid to find a text generator, but not for long. Kevin Bryan, an associate professor at the University of Toronto,  tweeted  in astonishment about OpenAI’s new chatbot last week: “You can no longer give take-home exams/homework … Even on specific questions that involve combining knowledge across domains, the OpenAI chat is frankly better than the average MBA at this point. It is frankly amazing.” Neither the engineers building the linguistic tech nor the educators who will encounter the resulting language are prepared for the fallout.

Hyperwrite is another interesting program that includes templates.  Look at all of the options just under “marketing”

(HyperWrite)

Hyperwrite allows the user to build documents step by step. I asked HyperWrite to explain World War 2 in language that a 5-year-old might understand. Here are three possibilities it offered:

And I built a 322-word essay about the importance of submarines from World War II to today in 30 seconds. Here’s part of a finished essay:

Here are some other places you can go to learn how AI is moving into journalism.

• The future of content creation with AI is closer than you might think – Poynter 
• A news photo editor’s nightmare is an art director’s dream – Poynter
• These projects are using AI to fight misinformation – Poynter
• How news organizations used automated news to cover COVID-19 – Poynter
• What is the future of automated fact-checking?  – Poynter
• Here’s how publishers around the world are using automated news – NiemanLab
• “Look at the robot as your new colleague”: what automation can do for sports reporting – Journalism.co.uk
• How a local paper in Argentina uses AI to publish hundreds of sports pieces a month – Reuters Institute for Journalism
• Runway – an example of text for video editing. This is their latest trailer for 2023.

The battle over today’s vote for Speaker of the House

Let’s keep in mind that this has to do with one of the most powerful and important positions in U.S. government, and hours before the House of Representatives is to vote on who holds that position, the outcome is uncertain. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has the backing of almost all his Republican colleagues, but 15 Republicans don’t back him and that is enough to send the leadership vote to a second round, which hasn’t happened in a century.

Since today’s vote will not be the formality it usually is, you should know the rules . PBS explained some of the details that you might not expect, including that the speaker does not have to be a member of Congress, and to be elected, the speaker does not have to get 218 of the 435 House votes (a majority.) The vote only requires a majority of those who are present and vote by name. 

All candidates for speaker must be nominated by members of the House, but they don’t need to be elected lawmakers of the House.  Article I, section II  of the Constitution says only that the House “shall choose their Speaker and other officers.” So far, the chamber has only chosen its own members as speaker, but a non-lawmaker is possible. Earlier this year, former Secretary of State Colin Powell received a vote for speaker, as did Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. To be the next speaker, a person needs a majority of the votes from House members who are present and voting. (See this useful  Congressional Research Service (CRS) report  for more detail.) That means that while a majority is 218 votes in the House, a person could become speaker with fewer votes if several members do not attend the vote. That happened in 2021 when Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., won with just 216 votes after three members voted “present.”

The House has been deadlocked 14 times before. The House historian traces the floor fights back to 1793 when it took three ballots to choose a Leader.

Most House Speaker floor battles happened before the Civil War. But for sheer drama, read about the House Speaker vote from 1917 , or the nine ballots required to elect Rep. Frederick Gillett  of Massachusetts to be speaker in 1923. 

CNN reminds us:

In 1855 and 1856, it took 133 separate votes for Rep. Nathaniel Banks of Massachusetts to be elected, again by a plurality and not a majority. The process stretched over more than a month and included a sort of inquisition on the House floor of the three contenders. They answered questions about their view of the expansion of slavery.  Read more from the House historian’s website . It’s also interesting to  read about Banks ; his official House biography notes he was elected to office as a Republican, an independent, a member of the America Party and as a Democrat.

The Congressional Institute explains the House meets today: 

• Establish that there is a quorum. If a member in attendance declines to vote, they do not count toward the quorum.
• The clerk calls for speaker candidate nominations.
• Chairs of the Republican Conference and Democratic Caucus make short speeches on behalf of their parties’ nominees.
• The clerk then asks for any other nominations. 
• The clerk then appoints tellers to record the votes, and the voting begins. 
• Each member-elect has the opportunity to vote when the clerk calls his or her name. Typically, the member-elect responds by calling out the last name of the person they wish to be speaker. They may also answer “present,” which does not count as a vote but does contribute to a quorum. Or they could decline to respond at all.

Many print readers looking for Sunday coverage of the assassination attempt found ‘zippo’

Early press deadlines and remote printing combined to leave a huge story out of many newspapers

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This 22-year-old is trying to save us from ChatGPT before it changes writing forever

Greg Rosalsky

Emma Peaslee

While many Americans were nursing hangovers on New Year's Day, 22-year-old Edward Tian was working feverishly on a new app to combat misuse of a powerful, new artificial intelligence tool called ChatGPT.

Given the buzz it's created, there's a good chance you've heard about ChatGPT. It's an interactive chatbot powered by machine learning. The technology has basically devoured the entire Internet, reading the collective works of humanity and learning patterns in language that it can recreate. All you have to do is give it a prompt, and ChatGPT can do an endless array of things: write a story in a particular style, answer a question, explain a concept, compose an email — write a college essay — and it will spit out coherent, seemingly human-written text in seconds.

The technology is both awesome — and terrifying.

"I think we're absolutely at an inflection point," Tian says. "This technology is incredible. I do believe it's the future. But, at the same time, it's like we're opening Pandora's Box. And we need safeguards to adopt it responsibly."

Tian is a senior at Princeton University, where he majors in computer science and minors in journalism. Before his recent foray into the limelight, Tian's biggest plans were graduating college and getting his wisdom teeth pulled. Now he's fielding calls from venture capital firms, education leaders, and global media outlets.

Over the last couple years, Tian has been studying an AI system called GPT-3, a predecessor to ChatGPT that was less user-friendly and largely inaccessible to the general public because it was behind a paywall. As part of his studies this fall semester, Tian researched how to detect text written by the AI system while working at Princeton's Natural Language Processing Lab.

Then, as the semester was coming to a close, OpenAI, the company behind GPT-3 and other AI tools, released ChatGPT to the public for free. For the millions of people around the world who have used it since, interacting with the technology has been like getting a peek into the future; a future that not too long ago would have seemed like science fiction.

Despite having studied AI, Tian, like the rest of us, was gobsmacked by the power of ChatGPT. He and his friends used it to write poems and raps about each other. "And it was like: 'Wow, these results are pretty good,'" Tian says. It seemed like everyone on campus was talking about how remarkable this new technology was. Sure, the text it generates is pretty formulaic and not always accurate. But it also feels like the beginning of a revolution.

For many users of the new technology, wonderment quickly turned to alarm. How many jobs will this kill? Will this empower nefarious actors and further corrupt our public discourse? How will this disrupt our education system? What is the point of learning to write essays at school when AI — which is expected to get exponentially better in the near future — can do that for us?

Stephen Marche, writing in The Atlantic last month, declared "The College Essay Is Dead." He paints ChatGPT and the AI revolution as part of an existential crisis for the humanities. "The essay, in particular the undergraduate essay, has been the center of humanistic pedagogy for generations," Marche writes. "It is the way we teach children how to research, think, and write. That entire tradition is about to be disrupted from the ground up."

Edward vs The Machine

After the fall semester ended, Tian traveled home to Toronto for the holidays. He hung out with his family. He watched Netflix. But he couldn't shake thoughts about the monumental challenges confronting humanity due to rapidly advancing AI.

And then he had an idea. What if he applied what he had learned at school over the last couple years to help the public identify whether something has been written by a machine?

Tian already had the know-how and even the software on his laptop to create such a program. Ironically, this software, called GitHub Co-Pilot, is powered by GPT-3 . With its assistance, Tian was able to create a new app within three days. It's a testament to the power of this technology to make us more productive.

On January 2nd, Tian released his app. He named it GPTZero. It basically uses ChatGPT against itself, checking whether "there's zero involvement or a lot of involvement" of the AI system in creating a given text.

When Tian went to bed that night, he didn't expect much for his app. "When I put this out there, I just thought maybe a few dozen people at best might try it," Tian says. "I was not expecting what happened."

When Tian woke up, his phone had blown up. He saw countless texts and DMs from journalists, principals, teachers, you name it, from places as far away as France and Switzerland. His app, which is hosted by a free platform, became so popular it crashed. Excited by the popularity and purpose of his app, the hosting platform has since granted Tian the resources needed to scale the app's services to a mass audience.

Fighting The Hallmarkization Of Everything

Tian says he has a couple primary motivations for creating GPTZero. The first is transparency. "Humans deserve to know when something is written by a human or written by a machine," he says.

Along these lines, one obvious application for GPTZero is to help teachers identify whether their students are plagiarizing their essays from ChatGPT. "Teachers from all over the world are worried about this," Tian says.

Some in the technology world, however, are not quite sold that copying and pasting what ChatGPT spits out is even a problem. "'ChatGPT plagiarism,' is a complete non-issue," tweeted Marc Andreessen , a venture capitalist and Internet pioneer, earlier this month. "If you can't out-write a machine, what are you doing writing?"

Elon Musk, one of the original co-founders of OpenAI, recently tweeted , "It's a new world. Goodbye homework!" in response to reports that schools were imposing strict new measures against ChatGPT plagiarism.

Of course, these are just flippant tweets. But it really does feel like we've entered a new world where we're being forced to re-evaluate our education system and even the value — or at least the method — of teaching kids how to write.

Many of us lost our will — even our ability — to remember phone numbers when cell phones came along. By outsourcing memorization to a machine, we've become dependent on it to call our friends and family. You might say it's been for the best, and it's freed our minds to concentrate on other matters. Or you might consider it a kind of de-evolution, a dumbing down of our mental abilities. Don't lose your cell phone!

Now humanity faces the prospect of an even greater dependence on machines. It's possible we're heading towards a world where an even larger swath of the populace loses their ability to write well. It's a world in which all of our written communication might become like a Hallmark card, written without our own creativity, personality, ideas, emotions, or idiosyncrasies. Call it the Hallmarkization of everything.

But at least when we give people Hallmark cards, people know we're giving them Hallmark cards. If you use ChatGPT to write your friend a congratulations or an apology, they might not even know it was written by a machine.

Which brings us to the other purpose that Tian envisions for his app: to identify and incentivize originality in human writing. "We're losing that individuality if we stop teaching writing at schools," Tian says. "Human writing can be so beautiful, and there are aspects of it that computers should never co-opt. And it feels like that might be at risk if everybody is using ChatGPT to write."

Tian is no Luddite. He isn't trying to stop AI in its tracks. He believes that's impossible, and, he says, he opposes blanket bans against use of ChatGPT, like the one recently announced by New York City public schools. Students, he believes, will use the technology anyway. And, he says, it's important they're able to learn how to use it. They need to be aware of the technological changes that are sweeping our world. "It doesn't make sense that we go into that future blindly," he says. "Instead, you need to build the safeguards to enter that future."

As for his plans after college, Tian says, the excitement — and clear demand — for his new app has convinced him that he should concentrate on making it a better, more accurate product. "If you're a teacher or an educator, our team — which right now is just me and my best friend from college, who just joined yesterday — we would love to talk to you," Tian says.

So if you encounter some text that you suspect may be written by a machine, maybe run it through Tian's new app? You can find it at GPTZero.me .

Editor's Note Jan. 18, 2023

We updated this article to be more in line with our naming standards.

The College Essay Is Dead - Nobody is prepared for how AI will transform academia (The Atlantic, Dec 6, 2022)

Summary: The impact of the recent and sudden improvements in AI text-generation systems, driven by large language models, will challenge and transform the humanities, interactions between disciplines, and higher education more generally.

Thanks to Jaya Kannan, Director of Technology for Curriculum and Research, for the pointer.

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• Made by History

How the College Application Essay Became So Important

S chool is out and summer is here. Yet future high school seniors and their families are likely already thinking about applying to college — a process that can be as labor-intensive and time-consuming as it is confusing. Students submit SAT scores, grades, references, personal essays, and more, often without a clear sense of what counts most.

The challenges facing college applicants today aren’t new. For over a century, Americans seeking higher education have had to navigate complicated admissions requirements including exams and grades as well as qualitative metrics of assessment, such as references, interviews, and essays.

Collecting so much academic and personal information has given colleges and universities greater control over the kinds of students they admit. In the first half of the 20th century, this information was mainly used to bar some applicants based on race, gender, and religion. Since the social movements of the 1960s and 70s, however, it has been used to do nearly the opposite by expanding access to previously excluded groups. In this process, personal essays have been especially valuable for the unique insights they can offer into applicants’ backgrounds and perspectives. In the context of today’s narrowing national diversity agenda, they are key to promoting inclusion in American higher education.

In the late 19th century, college admission standards were relatively low in America, even at the “Big Three” private universities, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. In an era when few Americans had more than an eighth-grade education, and even fewer could afford the cost of higher education, there was little competition for admission. Applicants needed only to pass subject matter exams, tests that were rudimentary and could be taken repeatedly until passed. Even those who failed their entrance exams might be admitted if they had elite standing and could pay tuition.

Read More: How to Talk About Race on College Applications, According to Admissions Experts

By the turn of the 20th century, however, demand for higher education was growing. Colleges worked intentionally to admit a broader range of students, dropping archaic requirements like knowledge of Latin and Greek that had previously barred all but the most privileged high school students from applying. More and more qualified applicants competed for fewer available spots, which meant that colleges and universities could be more selective. 

But with more applicants passing exams and earning entry to higher education, private universities became increasingly concerned about the demographics of their student bodies. By the 1910s, as immigration increased, and more public high schools were better preparing students of all backgrounds to meet private entrance requirements, rising numbers of Jewish students were landing spots at the historically Protestant and upper-class universities. With antisemitism on the rise, many private colleges adopted new metrics of admission that could be used to limit the number of “undesirable” students, especially Jewish ones. 

It was at this juncture that selective colleges introduced the application essay to assess students for the amorphous category of "fit." Applications in general became much more involved and intrusive. 

For instance, beginning in 1919, Columbia required prospective students to complete an eight-page form, submit a photo, list their mother’s maiden name, and provide information about their religious background. Even standardized tests could be used to screen students by cultural background. Early entrance exams were heavily biased toward American customs and colloquialisms, putting first-generation immigrants at a disadvantage.

In the wake of World War II, the passage of the GI Bill created a surge in demand for higher education across the country. Between 1950 and 1970, enrollment in colleges and universities in the U.S. nearly quadrupled. 

Although public and private universities expanded in response, they still came under new pressures to bolster selective criteria that would allow them to limit the growth of their student bodies. To ensure spots for students long considered the natural recipients of higher education — especially white, middle-class, Protestant men — private colleges continued to use quotas and other forms of preference such as legacy status to effectively limit the numbers of Jewish students, people of color, and women admitted. Meanwhile, admissions were far from need blind; applying for a scholarship could damage your chance of acceptance.

Public universities like the University of California, Berkeley charted a different course. In the post-war period, the UC system admitted all students who met basic requirements — graduation from an accredited high school along with a principal's recommendation, acceptance by exam, or completion of an Associate’s degree. But public universities now also faced more demand than they could accommodate. Indeed, the 1960s California Master Plan for Higher Education acknowledged that state universities, too, might well have to introduce a selective process for choosing applicants in the face of expanded access across much wider class, geographic, and ethnic backgrounds. 

By the 1960s, a selective application process became common across major private and public universities. But the social movements of the 1960s and 70s forced private universities to drop their formal practices of discrimination and changed the use of personal essays and other qualitative metrics of evaluation in the process. 

For the first time, in the 1960s, admissions officers at historically white and Protestant universities acknowledged that applicants’ academic profiles were deeply shaped by the opportunities — educational, economic, and cultural — available to them, and that these in turn were shaped by students’ race, ethnicity, and sex. 

While special considerations about background had once been used to systematically exclude minorities, in the 1960s they were invoked for the first time to do the opposite, albeit with some striking limitations. 

By looking at applicants from a comprehensive standpoint, which included these markers of identity, even the most selective private universities made major strides in achieving racial diversity in this period. They also dropped quotas and began to admit women on an equal basis with men. Class diversity, however, was another matter — to this day private universities continue to be comparatively socio-economically homogenous despite meaningful shifts in other areas. 

Since the 1970s, the admissions system has only grown increasingly competitive, with more students than ever before applying to college. That forced universities to choose between strong applicants while building their own brands and competitive profiles. This competitive environment has turned the college application essay into a particularly important vehicle in the admissions process for learning about students’ backgrounds and human qualities.

Read More: How the End of Affirmative Action Could Affect the College Admissions Process

In 1975, a small group of mostly East Coast colleges came together to form the Common App — today used by more than 1,000 universities. The Common App led the way in formulating what we now think of as the personal statement, aimed at understanding the inner world of each student.

For more than 50 years now, universities both private and public have evaluated essays for a range of qualities including leadership capacity, creativity, service to the community, and ability to overcome hardship, as part of their admissions decisions. The kinds of questions universities ask, the qualities they seek, and the responses they receive have changed many times and have been shaped by the cultural trends of our times. 

In 2021 for example, following the spread of a global pandemic, the Common App introduced a question about gratitude for the first time. And while the prompts remained unchanged following the 2023 Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. (SFFA) v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and SFFA v. University of North Carolina , which formally excluded race as a factor in admissions, universities began to read them for the role of race, ethnicity, and other identities in students’ profiles. In these and many other ways, the essay has only gained value as a way for students to explain the important ways their experiences and identities have shaped their academic profiles.

Still, there have been calls to eliminate the college essay from admissions requirements from both the right and the left, as either frivolously inclusive, or potentially exclusionary. Now, at a time when there are major political constraints on supporting diversity and inclusion at the national level, personal essays give admissions committees important flexibility. They also allow colleges to evaluate students for underrated but essential intellectual and personal qualities hard to observe elsewhere, including the capacity for growth, self-reflection, and awareness of the world around them. 

The history of modern admissions shows how institutions of higher education have sought to engineer their classes, often reinforcing harmful racial, class, and gender hierarchies. There is little objectivity in the metric of “fit” that has shaped American admissions practices. But the Civil Rights era has had a powerful and long-lasting legacy in broadening access through an assessment of applicants that is attentive to identity. However flawed the system, the essay offers something no other metric can: an account of a student’s lived experience, in their own words.

Sarah Stoller is a writer and historian. She also tutors college essay writing.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here . Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors .

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Ethical College Admissions: ‘I Am Not a Robot’

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“I am not a robot.” How many of us have been asked by Google or other websites to prove that? It is tempting to say that being forced to check the “I am not a robot” box is dehumanizing, but it’s actually humanizing.

The “I am not a robot” checkbox is an example of a captcha (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), a tool designed to filter out spam and bots. I prefer to think that its real aim is to inconvenience me. Having to find the kitty pictures among a mass of images is annoying, although it’s still an improvement on having to type distorted text into a box. Does the fact that I have a hard time determining whether that’s a 0 (zero) or a capital O mean that I’m not human or that I might need glasses?

Will “Are you a robot?” soon be a required question on college applications? That question is raised by the recent introduction of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence app that interacts conversationally, giving it the ability to “write.” A New York Times article describes ChatGPT (the GPT stands for “generative pre-trained transformer”) as “the best artificial intelligence chatbot ever released to the general public.” More than one million people signed up to test it in the first five days after its release.

To borrow from the title of a recent “Ethical College Admissions” column, it’s “ too early to tell ” what this means. Is this another example of technological advances making our lives both simpler and simultaneously more complicated? Another instance of science fiction turning into nonfiction? Another chapter in the age-old philosophical debate about what qualities distinguish us as human? Or the next step down the road leading to servitude to our smarter and hopefully benevolent machine overlords?

ChatGPT poses particular challenges for those of us who love the written word and those of us who work in education. The New York Times columnist Frank Bruni asked in his most recent column whether ChatGPT will make him irrelevant. (I’d like to think not.) What happens to take-home essay assignments when you can’t be sure that the essay was written by Johnny and not his AI app? In higher education, the humanities are already under threat. What happens to the humanities when the human component is removed? “Machinities,” anyone?

That brings those of us in the college admissions and counseling worlds to consider the college application essay. Does ChatGPT signify the end of the application essay?

I was interviewed for a Forbes article with the title “A Computer Can Now Write Your College Essay—Maybe Better Than You Can.” Forbes fed ChatGPT two college essay prompts, one the 650-word Common Application prompt—“Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story”—and the other the “Why Wisconsin?” essay from the University of Wisconsin at Madison supplement. According to the article, each essay took ChatGPT less than 10 minutes to complete. That is both far less time than we hope students would spend composing essays and far more time than most admissions officers spend reading essays.

I was asked to weigh in on whether the AI-produced essays were convincing, whether they looked similar to essays from actual high school seniors and whether anything in the essay suggested that they were written by AI rather than a human being. My answer was that I probably couldn’t detect the AI authorship, but that I also wouldn’t label the essays as convincing.

I found both essays to resemble cliché essays, with neither answering the prompt in a convincing way. They also didn’t sound like an essay a teenager would write, but rather an essay a teenager might write with major assistance and editing by an adult.

The Forbes reporter, Emma Whitford, had provided ChatGPT with the following factoids for use in the “identity” essay—competitive swimmer who broke his shoulder in 10th grade; interested in majoring in business; parents from Bangalore, India, who now own a restaurant in Newton, Mass. ChatGPT threw all that at the wall in formulating the essay, with some interesting creative embellishments. The writer began swimming competitively at the age of nine, the broken shoulder came in a swimming accident and the interest in business came from working in the family restaurant, where he helped his parents with “inventory management, staff scheduling, and customer relations,” as well as marketing and advertising and developing new menu items.

The “identity” essay did exactly what many student essays do, throwing out lots of things in hopes that something will stick. But it didn’t really address the prompt. The weakest part of the essay, in fact, is the part dealing with the student’s Indian heritage. It consists of vague generalities about “a deep appreciation for Indian culture” and “the challenges and opportunities that come with being a first-generation immigrant,” but there is nothing in that paragraph showing how coming from an Indian background has influenced the student’s experience or worldview. Can I imagine a student writing such an essay? Yes. Are my standards for what makes an essay compelling too high? Possibly.

The “Why Wisconsin?” essay had similar characteristics. The information provided to ChatGPT included an intended major in business administration and marketing, part-time work at the family restaurant and a love for Badger football. Again, the bot showed some creativity in expanding on those themes. It referenced the student’s starting as a dishwasher and progressing to researching the restaurant’s competition and identifying its “unique selling points,” and included a Camp Randall Stadium reference. But, like many student first drafts of the “Why …?” essay, there is nothing that shows any real familiarity with the university or that would prevent one from inserting any other university’s name into the essay.

Nevertheless, the quality of these essays is either impressive or scary, depending upon your perspective. This seems like a major leap beyond learning that a computer could defeat a human world champion in chess.

So what are the ethical implications? That, after all, is the focus of “Ethical College Admissions.”

The low-hanging-fruit answer is that it is clearly unethical for a student to submit an essay written by ChatGPT. The more complicated question is whether it is unethical for a college to require an application essay or make the essay a significant factor in evaluating a student’s application. How can you use an application essay to help make admission decisions when you can’t tell whether the student actually wrote the essay?

Then again, in how many cases is an essay determinative for an admissions decision? I think essays, like test scores, are overrated by the public. Personal statements and essays are important for some students at some colleges. Mos colleges are not selective enough to give attention to a student’s essay unless it contains some kind of red flag. It is only at the very highly selective/rejective colleges and universities, where the vast majority of applicants have superb transcripts and scores, that the voice piece of the application, including essays, becomes important and differentiating.

It is already clear that ChatGPT is capable of composing a passable essay, and that may be enough to augur the end of the personal essay as an admissions factor. Just how good an essay AI can produce may be dependent on the quality of information given it. My father was a pioneer in the computer field, and I learned early the concept of GIGO—garbage in, garbage out.

I’m far from convinced that ChatGPT can produce great college essays. Great essays have a spark to them that is not about the ability to write but rather the ability to think. Great personal essays are clever and insightful, with an authenticity and a sincerity that’s—well, personal. As Roger Ailes once said about public speaking, you either have to be sincere or fake sincerity, and it’s very hard to fake sincerity.

That skepticism toward ChatGPT’s writing abilities may label me as either a dinosaur or a dreamer. It wouldn’t be the first time. But I’ll take either over being a robot.

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POV: With ChatGPT’s Arrival, Should Educators Be Mourning the End of the College Essay?

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“With these advances in AI technology, we have an opportunity to think deeply about our ‘why’ and reevaluate what we can and should be teaching in a changing world”

Naomi caselli, christina dobbs, derry wijaya.

In the weeks since the release of ChatGPT , a new AI technology that can write convincingly humanlike passages of text, we have seen a flood of worry among educators that students will use AI to write their term papers and that “ ChatGPT will make cheating easier than ever .” While this technology will certainly impact how we use writing assignments, plagiarism isn’t high on our list of concerns. Rather than focusing on work-arounds—so we can use the same assignments we have always used—we think we need to have a much bigger conversation. In the midst of a changing world, we need to ask ourselves what we teach students and why, and sort out which learning objectives we should retain, which will become obsolete, and which we should add to the curriculum. 

Automated text generation has the potential to be as transformative as the printing press. Trying to prevent students from using this technology, as the New York City education department has attempted , seems as impossible and unnecessary as trying to force people to travel by horse and buggy after cars were invented. Moreover, trying to maintain the status quo might actually do a disservice to our students. This technology will change many of the professions where our students will ultimately work. They’ll have to navigate a world that makes use of language generation technology once they graduate, and we should let them explore how to use these tools appropriately in spaces designed for learning and exploration.

Instead of trying to preserve writing assignments just because it is how we’ve always done things, let’s look at the purposes these assignments serve and consider how best to achieve these functions. Through writing, students learn to organize their thoughts, draw together evidence, synthesize complex ideas, develop compelling arguments, and much more. While AI can help with some of the mechanics of writing, students will still need to hone many of these skills. In one course this semester, we spent several class meetings on how to prepare and format a research manuscript. If formatting a paper is not a skill students will need in the future, perhaps that time could have been better spent working on these deeper intellectual skills. Writing assignments are also a way for instructors to evaluate what students have learned, and what more we need to teach them. In some cases, we imagine writing assignments are still the best means of serving these functions, but in other cases, other kinds of assignments might be more useful.

Just as society had to build literal guardrails to make driving cars safe, we are going to need to figure out how to prepare students to handle risks inherent to the new technology. With the ability to generate text instantly, we will have to redouble our efforts to teach students how to wade through the coming influx of text to identify misinformation. ChatGPT can make spectacular mistakes that students will need to learn to spot. In an essay where we asked it to write about American Sign Language, it wrote, “A sign for ‘I’m scared’ might be made by pressing a flat hand against the forehead.” This gesture—::facepalm::—is not correct. Students will need to know when AI works well, and when it doesn’t (e.g., in smaller fields, like deaf education, the technology doesn’t have much text to learn from and so it doesn’t work very well). We will need to teach (and create) conventions for properly attributing sources so readers can differentiate between AI- and human-written text. AI is trained to write based on human writing, and so it has learned to reproduce our ableism, racism, sexism, and other biases , especially in response to biased prompts. We will need to teach students how to root out and respond to toxic, biased, and harmful text , no matter how it is produced. Students will also need to learn strategies for getting useful output, and employing it in constructive ways. For fun, we tried to prompt ChatGPT to write this essay, and while the essays were not very creative (they shared much of the same content, structure, and words), the prompt makes a big difference in essay quality. These are just some of the foreseeable skills students will need to learn.

This is hardly the first time educators have had to grapple with how and when to use a new technology, or the first time people have feared that new technologies would destroy students’ thinking. Even Socrates worried that teaching students to write at all would lead to a populace with weak memories. Before calculators and computers, statistics was taught by paper and pencil. Now most statistics courses not only allow students to use computers, they explicitly teach students how to use the software. Certainly, there are times when it is pedagogically important to ask students to put their calculators away, but we have also made space for technology in our instruction. By delegating the tedious parts of the calculations to a computer, statistics courses can spend more time on “why” and delve into much more sophisticated techniques that would be impractical to carry out by hand. With these advances in AI technology, we have an opportunity now to think deeply about our “why” and reevaluate what we can and should be teaching in a changing world. In the end, making our assignments more meaningful to students may actually be a very effective way of dealing with plagiarism, as students are less likely to cheat when they are engaged in work they believe will help them become the future selves they envision.

Note: This essay was generated by human beings, with the help of spell-check. 

Naomi Caselli (Wheelock’09, GRS’10) is a Wheelock College of Education & Human Development assistant professor of deaf studies and deaf education and codirector of BU’s AI and Education Initiative . She can be reached at [email protected] . Christina Dobbs is a Wheelock assistant professor and codirector of the English Education for Equity & Justice program. She can be reached at [email protected] . Derry Wijaya is a College of Arts & Sciences professor of computer science and codirector of the AI and Education Initiative. She can be reached at [email protected] . 

“POV” is an opinion page that provides timely commentaries from students, faculty, and staff on a variety of issues: on-campus, local, state, national, or international. Anyone interested in submitting a piece, which should be about 700 words long, should contact John O’Rourke at [email protected] . BU Today reserves the right to reject or edit submissions. The views expressed are solely those of the author and are not intended to represent the views of Boston University.

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There are 9 comments on POV: With ChatGPT’s Arrival, Should Educators Be Mourning the End of the College Essay?

Absolutely great article Thanks for tackling this topic

I still remember grade school teachers warning us against cheating: “The only person you are cheating is yourself, because you didn’t learn the material.”

If the student’s only objective is to complete a class, then AI can probably help with that. However, there is still no substitute for genuine learning.

Remember what the A stands for in AI!

I couldn’t agree more that education reform is a necessary step forward rather than a push back against new technology. It’s important to focus on improving the education system and incorporating technology in a way that enhances the learning experience, rather than being resistant to change. This is the key to ensuring that students are well-equipped for the future.

I really appreciated the unique perspective the writer brought to the piece. It was not at all what I had expected and it made for a refreshing read. Great job!

-this message was written with ChatGPT

I don’t believe that AI will be used to cheat in essays for college. While AI technology is rapidly advancing it still lacks the ability to fully replicate human thought and creativity. Additionally, measures such as plagiarism detection software and the expertise of professors and teachers will likely be able to detect any attempts to cheat via AI.

-This message was written by ChatGPT

I don’t really agree with this. One of the biggest concerns I have is that students might use AI to cheat on assignments, and the article doesn’t really address that. Instead, it talks about how we should embrace this technology in education. But in my opinion, we should be focusing on teaching students how to do their own research and how to avoid plagiarism.

Another thing that worries me is that if we rely too much on AI-generated text, students might stop thinking for themselves and just take whatever the AI tells them. It is important that we still teach students how to think critically and how to write well.

Also, The article doesn’t mention anything about how AI-generated text can be biased. It’s important to remember that the AI is only as unbiased as the data it was trained on. So, it’s crucial to be aware of this when using AI-generated text in any context.

I think that while AI-generated text could be useful in some cases, we should be careful about how we use it in education. We should focus on teaching students how to use it responsibly and how to identify and avoid biases and misinformation.

–message written by ChatGPT

Excellent article. I completely agree that we need to be having these conversations and not get too obsessed with the “plagiarism” aspect. But I would add that we also need to be looking at the proliferation of AI-powered writing tools that integrate tightly into Google Docs and Word, and that encourage what we might call “micro-generations.” There’s a huge gray area here, and we need to help students understand how to use them appropriately and how much help is too much help.

Thank you for the insightful and concise article. You captured it as part of a continuum of challenges educators had to face and will continue to do so in the future. It is a good test for our academic society’s adaptability to waves of change. I envision that these events will determine the projection of an academic environment. I wonder if we may have to rethink “cheating,” which I prefer to think of as misappropriation (misusing resources in our care), requiring a conducive trio of incentive, opportunity, and rationalization. Now that there is a tectonic shift in the landscape, how will institutions and society re-establish a new norm? I would enjoy reading follow-up perspectives as the discussion continues.

This is a great take on ChatGPT, as it is really controversial in classrooms. However, I think it is also important to note that education systems can use it to their benefit. I did a project on this previously and there were many ways to implement ChatGPT in classrooms, like for essay editors and personalized essay prompts. While ChatGPT can’t be prevented to write these essays, we definitely can alter the way essays are assigned. AI is very powerful, but lacks genuine emotion. We can use this to our advantage to prevent cheating and plagiarism to have assignments that require creativity, emotion, and personalized experience. Additionally, many writing assignments rely on other readings, like books and articles. Doing this encourages original thinking and not using AI to write these essays.

As a student who has made use of chatGPT for various tasks, writing essays is not one of them. The voice of an AI pales in comparison to the amount of imagery, emotion, and feeling that you can derive from reading human-generated work. Therefore, while they may pose a threat to certain curriculums, I feel as though teachers will be able to know whether or not such a resource was used in the first place, especially following the implementation of AI detection software for submission platforms like turnitin. I think that the goal for educators should not be to prevent the use of ChatGPT, because it is inevitable. Rather, implementing it into curriculum in a creative way or constructing essay ideas that can only be poorly created by ChatGPT.

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'The college essay is dead': Academics react to ChatGPT

Openai recently released chatgpt, an artificial intelligence robot that can write essays when given a prompt., some professors worry that ai will allow students to cheat without fear of being caught, while others see it as a useful advancement..

“The GPT models are a series of large language models that are trained to generate human-like text. The first version, GPT, was released in 2018 and was followed by several updated versions, including GPT-2 in 2019 and GPT-3 in 2020.”

“There is some concern among educators about the potential impacts of chatbots like ChatGPT on education. Some people are worried that chatbots could replace human educators or be used to automate certain teaching tasks, potentially leading to job losses.”

Interestingly, the first two paragraphs of this article were written by ChatGPT as I was experimenting with it before starting this article. The bot is free to use online and provided me with detailed answers to my questions within seconds. 

[RELATED: University writing instructors are no longer grading students’ writing]

ChatGPT has made quite a stir in academic circles. “The college essay is dead,” Stephen Marche states in an article for  The Atlantic . “Nobody is prepared for how AI will transform academia.”  

Others are more relaxed on the subject. “Math didn’t disappear when calculators came along,” said Arizona State University Professor Dan Gillmor to Campus Reform . “But the machines did probably change how much arithmetic students do.”

Gillmor teaches journalism and mass communication. 

[RELATED: University writing center prefers applicants have experience in anti-racism]

“It’s clear to me that schools will need to adapt in several ways, and will need the help of the AI industry. We need to be able to tell, as much as possible, whether someone’s writing is AI-assisted or not,” Gillmor continued. 

He added, “And, more usefully, we need to find other ways to ensure that students can communicate -- and learn – - no matter what tools they’re using.”

Follow the author on Twitter: @emily_fowler18 

Emily Fowler '24

Emily is a junior at The Master's University. She previously received her associate's degree at Wabash Valley College. Emily was a Campus Reform intern in 2022. Along with writing, Emily enjoys art, music, and spending time with family and friends.

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AI and the Death of the College Essay

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The Atlantic’s December issue has an essay “ The College Essay Is Dead: Nobody is prepared for how AI will transform academia ” by Stephen Marche that says that AI is going to make the college essay irrelevant. I say good riddance. I write this as a former English and Adult Basic Education Community College teacher. The formal essay has its uses but for why most of our students are going to school, it is an anachronistic barrier. Most are at college to get a credential for work, not to become academics. At the last college I taught at, I routinely replaced papers with group projects. I would tell the students (especially those who didn’t like group work) that your future employers are going to be more interested in how you work in a team and less interested in your ability to write a 10 page research paper. We use writing in my classes as another tool for thinking and expression, not as an end in itself. My classes were portfolio assessed. Students would have a concept map or outline, a discovery draft created in small groups, a draft for the tutor or tutoring center, and a final copy. We also used things like Pecha Kucha to present papers to the rest of the class. Coming from a Constructivist teaching background, many of my formative writing prompts begin “based on past knowledge and your personal experience, what approach would you take to solving the problem of…” You can’t download someone else’s experiences. Teaching should also be a process of relationship building, so you know your students and have some idea about their experiences.

By emphasizing writing as a product instead of a process, we only encourage the students to go to places like Course Hero or use AI tools to write. The goal of education is to meet the outcome of 5000 words right? Who cares how you get there? The fact that someone can give a chatbot a writing prompt and get an acceptable essay (in some cases) just means that teaching is really broken right now. We have commodified teaching and learning to such an extent that anything that can produce something can “get” a grade.

There may be some legitimate uses for these bots: translation, rewriting code; Bryan Alexander and Stephen Downes were talking on Mastodon about having it create lab reports. I think I have read some furniture assembly instructions that were not human generated.

There is the claim that AI can produce art. If your definition of art is the production of a picture, then I question your definition of art. If producing a picture is art then my Xerox machine is every bit as good as Leonardo Da Vinci.

If a student is turning to places like Course Hero or bots for homework, it means that they feel like they do not have ownership of their own education.

• Get rid of grading. If you are not familiar with ungrading, check out “ So, you want to take the grades out of teaching? A beginner’s guide to ungrading ” by Susan Blum, and then take a deeper dive into the work of Jesse Stommel .
• Emphasize process, not products. I use concept mapping and/or outlines with students depending on the students inclination. This should not just be about ferrying a student through drafts. It is an opportunity for the student to make connections with their peers, tutors, and their own knowledge and experience. The important thing is to help the student find their own process.
• Mix papers with presentations, podcasts, or video. Once the student has a process for writing, for organizing and presenting their thoughts and research, let them explore other media: blogs, wikis, audio, video, presentations that are pure images.
• Have the students create assignments in a collaborative process. Teach them to think and work together. Explore open pedagogical practices and courses like DS106 for alternative approaches to the traditional idea of curriculum.

The bot at Open.AI.com said it succinctly enough for a “C-“:

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the essay writing process has become increasingly popular in recent years. AI has been used to help students compose essays, from grammar and spell checking to providing more personalized feedback. AI has a number of advantages over traditional essay writing methods, including faster turnaround times and a more efficient process. But despite its advantages, AI will not end the essay writing process.

First, AI can only do so much. AI works best when it is given a specific set of instructions and data to work with. It is not capable of the same level of creativity and critical thinking that a human can bring to the essay writing process. AI can help to identify errors and provide suggestions for improvement, but it cannot provide the same level of insight and feedback as a person can. AI cannot replace the process of brainstorming, outlining and drafting that are essential for creating a successful essay.

Second, AI is not yet sophisticated enough to understand the nuances of language and writing style. AI is often used to check for grammar and spelling errors, but it is not able to understand the context of a sentence or the implications of certain words and phrases. A human can use their knowledge and experience to create a more effective essay, while AI is limited by its programming.

Knowledge is Power

It is important that we understand as much as we can about AI. Read and learn about this. Follow the stories. The real ethical issues come when we leave things like AI and learning analytics to “experts”: we risk losing the ability to make decisions about how and when AI should be used.

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DS106 for Life!

The Countdown!

July 16, 2024

published by phi beta kappa

Print or web publication, words, words, words.

What does the advent of ChatGPT mean for already beleaguered teachers?

Have you heard the one about the two English professors who walk into a bar while lamenting their professional demise thanks to ChatGPT? They order a couple of beers, and the bartender says, “Why so glum, my friends? ChatGPT is just a tool. Don’t let it define you.”

No? Well, neither had I—until I asked ChatGPT to fill in the blank after “and the bartender says.” For the heck of it, I also asked the program to generate the answer as a koan. It’s hardly a knee-slapper, granted, but no worse than my own lame effort: “What’ll it be, gents? / Wait, no need to tell me / I’ll ask ChatGPT.”

The joke, it seemed, was on me.

But no one in the academy is laughing.

ChatGPT, released in November, is a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence that, according to its creators, “interacts in a conversational way” and can “admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.” The implications of this, particularly for the education field, are huge. So much so that several contributors to The Atlantic foresee in this latest spawn of Silicon Valley, the future of teaching. The reason is simply that ChatGPT works all too well.

In one essay , high school teacher (and former professor) Daniel Herman declares that with the advent of ChatGPT, his life “and the lives of thousands of other teachers and professors, tutors and administrators is about to drastically change.” In another , Stephen Marche, also a former professor, offers a timeline for the coming apocalypse: “Two years for students to figure out the tech, three more years for professors to recognize that students are using the tech, and then five more years for university administrators to figure out what, if anything, to do about it.”

Marche and Herman believe that they did the right thing by getting out of the humanities profession. But is the situation so dire for those of us who are still in it?

Not necessarily, according to Zeynep Tufekci. In her New York Times column , she observes that this is hardly the first time that the world has been upended by seismic changes in the transmission of knowledge. More than two millennia ago, Plato fretted over the shift from oral to written culture. Referring to what she calls Plato’s “Dialogues,” Tufekci cites the myth of Thamus, the Egyptian god who warned that writing, shunting aside memory, would breed “forgetfulness.” More ominously Tufekci continues, Plato believed this would allow anyone—even fools and knaves—to pretend they are someone “omniscient and wise.” But rather than, like Plato, lament these “supplanted skills,” as Plato did, Tufekci concludes, we should look for ways to create with these new technologies.

As I stare as my laptop, which rests on a table littered with student exams and papers, a coffee mug, my iPhone, and scattered books, including an old copy of the Phaedrus , I wonder if either of these camps has got it right. The subtitle to Marche’s essay is: “The College Essay is Dead.” Perhaps because Marche no longer teaches, he does not realize that the obit is a bit late: the college essay died years ago. During my three decades of teaching at a public university, I have encountered a dwindling number of students who can write a declarative sentence, much less a clear thesis. Perhaps more important, they have no desire to learn how.

The essay is dead, yes, but it is not yet buried. Instead, it has become the lifeless star of “Weekend with Bernie in the Groves of Academe,” a corpse that students and teachers have an equal interest in pretending is still alive. It’s a mug’s game in which a student sends me an electronic file that, when open, spills out a jumble of words that the sender propounds to be a finished paper. A week later, I send back the file, which, when open, spills out a cascade of red markings underscoring that the student’s words amounted to, well, a jumble. In determining grades, I try to find the elusive mean between the papers that my students wrote and the ones they thought they had written.

To paraphrase Dr. Who, memory is a wibbly-wobbly thing. But I do not think I am being overly nostalgic when I remember how students wrote when I first began teaching in the 1980s. Bad writers abounded back then, too. The difference was that writing—or, for that matter, reading—was a familiar, not a foreign, activity. Writing was as much a part of my students’ world as it was of mine—so essential a part that they most often took up my standing offer to comment on drafts.

Today, that offer still stands, but it stands mostly alone. The current generation of students has moved on from writing. Literally. Most students fail to see the relevance of writing in a world—their world—that is largely post-literate. They are at home in media not yet born when I began teaching, media that privilege images and sounds over written text. This does not spell the end of the world, but it does spell “tbh, dwbi.”

“Don’t worry ’bout it” is part of the appeal to Tufekci’s position. Just as we adapted to earlier leaps in communications technology, she writes, we can do so with artificial intelligence and language models. By flipping the classroom—the practice where students listen to recorded lectures at home and draft their essays in class—teachers can remain relevant.

Lol. Given the sheer irrelevance of writing in their world, one defined by mumblecore and memes, texting and TikTok, students will mostly flip the finger at such solutions.

Tufecki perhaps unwittingly points to a different approach. When she refers to the “Dialogues” of Plato, she means a specific dialogue, the Phaedrus . Yet the passage she quotes, the myth of Thamus, comes at the dialogue’s end and cannot be understood without knowing the rest of the text. Socrates and his sole interlocutor, Phaedrus, begin by agreeing to discuss what kind of speech—scripted or spontaneous—is truer to knowledge of ourselves and our world. Walking outside the city, with its streets channeling traffic, and into the countryside, where one is free to roam, the two interlocutors take turns trading claims and counterclaims. Just as their steps wander, so too do their words.

The spontaneous nature of this stroll mirrors Plato’s fundamental point about language: the superiority of an unscripted conversation to written words, which Plato calls “images.” As the interlocutors, who chose to join each other in this philosophical activity, pursue this dialectical back and forth, they stumble across—though do not always welcome—new perspectives on old matters. These shifts, Plato believed, cannot happen when one reads a written text. How could it be otherwise? Unlike a teacher or student, a book can no more protect itself against misinterpretation, the Platonic scholar Thomas Szlezak has observed, than it can choose its readers.

There is an irony too obvious for Tufekci to note: Plato writes to warn us against writing. Compounding the irony is that Plato writes so well. Szlezak might well be right when he asserts that Plato “never thought of entrusting his entire philosophy to writing.” But although he and countless other commentators debate such matters, Plato’s written words remain wordless. No matter how brilliantly Plato re-creates the artlessness of dialogue, his written words remain only that, re-creations—pale images of a free-flowing conversation between two people who, in the moment, were able to react to each other’s comments and further explain themselves.

What if ChatGPT spells not the end of the academy, but instead a revival—a return to its beginnings? The late Pierre Hadot, whose work revolutionized our understanding of the ancient Greek and Hellenistic schools of philosophy, contended that their goals were wholly unlike our own. Students enrolled in these schools, including Plato’s Academy, to be formed, not simply informed, by their teachings. Rather than studying in order to exchange their degrees for jobs, these students studied to change their lives.

According to Hadot, the Academy was not the ancient equivalent of a moot court, a place where students were taught effective debating techniques. They were taught, instead, to engage in dialogues, or dialectics. Ultimately, such dialogues—which cannot be scripted—are an exercise in humility, even a kind of wisdom, for they teach students (and teachers) “to put themselves in one another’s place and thereby transcend their own point of view.” In short, they entail “spiritual exercises which demanded that the interlocutors undergo an askesis , or self-transformation.”

Of course, the crisis facing the academy, apparently heralded by the invention of language models, will not be saved by trying to scale up this ancient approach. But while we debate the place of writing at the academy, it might help to recall that writing did not have much of a place at all in the original academies. Like most everything else, ChatGPT might prove to be little more than a footnote to Plato.

Robert Zaretsky  teaches in the Honors College at the University of Houston. He is the author most recently of Victories Never Last: Reading and Caregiving in a Time of Plague.

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What to avoid in college application essays | College Connection

An important part of the Common Application, which is accepted by more than 1,000 colleges, is the personal essay. Students are given six options as prompts, as well as a seventh option which is to share an essay on a topic of choice.  So, students can write about anything at all.

The essay is an integral part of the application, as it is typically viewed by all the schools to which a student applies.  It is the one section where students have the opportunity to share what is unique about them and what qualities they will bring to their future college community.

To make their essay stand out, students should avoid some common pitfalls.

Do not cheat. That means students should not turn to ChatGPT or to another person  to write their essay. This should go without saying but, sadly, it does need to be said. College admissions officers know what the “voice” of a teenager sounds like, and that’s exactly what they’re looking for.

More: Top colleges where 'B' students are accepted | College Connection

Do not write about mental health issues. Although many young people, as well as those in every age group, deal with such issues, it is important not to share that information. Due to privacy laws, colleges are not able to contact parents if students struggle with depression, substance abuse, or any other troubling behavior. Therefore, students should not raise a red flag, or they will most likely find their applications in the “rejected” pile.

Do not be redundant. One’s personal essay is not the place to itemize the extracurricular, volunteer, and work experiences that are all included in the Activities section of the Common App. If there is one activity that dominated a student’s high school experience and is particularly compelling, it can be the topic of the essay. But students must elaborate on how they were profoundly impacted by their engagement. 

More: How where you live affects your college admissions chances | College Connection

Do not recycle successful essays that were submitted by prior applicants. Often, students turn to the multitude of articles showcasing essays written by students who were admitted to Ivy League and other elite institutions. What worked for a prior student will not be effective for another as it’s not their story. It’s vital for students to share their genuine story using their authentic voice.   The key to writing a thoughtful, introspective essay is to start early, carefully consider the story you want to share, and then do so in your very own style.

Susan Alaimo is the founder & director of Collegebound Review, offering PSAT/SAT ® preparation & private college advising by Ivy League educated instructors. Visit CollegeboundReview.com or call 908-369-5362 .

Police investigating hazing after Dartmouth student is found dead in river

Police are looking into whether hazing played a role in the death of a Dartmouth College student whose body was found in a river over the weekend. 

Won Jang was last seen around 9:30 p.m. Saturday by docks on the Connecticut River, and he was reported missing Sunday afternoon, police in Hanover, New Hampshire, said.

His body was found at about 7:30 p.m. Sunday in the water about 65 feet offshore, police said.

Jang, 20, was a member of the class of 2026 and a biomedical engineering major from Middletown, Delaware, who "enthusiastically took part in the Dartmouth community," Dartmouth's dean of the college, Scott Brown, said in a statement offering condolences to the community.

Two of Jang's friends wrote in an email to The Dartmouth , the college's student newspaper, that he had attended a joint event Saturday night of his fraternity, Beta Alpha Omega, and Alpha Phi, a sorority. The event had involved alcohol, the two friends said.

Police Chief Charles Dennis told WMUR-TV of Manchester that they would be looking into whether hazing was involved.

"There is some evidence of alcohol involved, certainly from witnesses and talking with things like that," he told the station. "Again, that’s all part of our investigation. We did receive an anonymous email this morning through the college that there may be some hazing involved, so we certainly will look into that aspect, too."

The assistant to the chief of police, Elizabeth Rathburn, confirmed on the phone that investigators are looking into hazing, among other things.

Police have said that a cause of death has not been determined but that foul play is not suspected after an initial investigation.

“The Hanover Police Department’s investigation into this death remains active and ongoing. The Department has interviewed numerous people and is reviewing all evidence collected,” police said in a statement Wednesday afternoon.

The department said it was awaiting autopsy results "as part of reaching its determination."

Police have not mentioned any allegations of hazing in a pair of news releases. The police department said that the matter is part of an active investigation and that it would have no further immediate comment.

A spokesperson for the college said in a statement Tuesday that Beta Alpha Omega and Alpha Phi were suspended amid the investigation.

At the time of Jang's death, Beta Alpha Omega had been on alcohol probation after a suspension that spanned the fall, winter and spring terms, a spokesperson said. The school is in its summer term.

Alpha Phi had been on alcohol suspension during the fall 2023 term but had returned to good standing, the spokesperson said.

Beta Alpha Omega and Alpha Phi did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Jang’s girlfriend, Dartmouth sophomore Lydia Jin, said he "was the kindest person that I knew." They met at badminton tryouts through a mutual friend and started a band together.

Jang was from and grew up in South Korea and moved to Delaware in middle school, she said.

"He wanted to be the first Korean to win a Nobel Prize, especially in science, and he wanted to cure Alzheimer's," Jin said. "There’s a lot about him that I can’t really put into so many words. But he cared really deeply for his friends and for his family. And everyone is really, really grieving his loss right now."

Jin declined to comment on the police investigation. She said that she was not with Jang on Saturday night but that she saw him earlier in the day and that he dropped her off on campus and said he loved her.

Jang did not know how to swim, she said.

"The real story is that a tragedy happened," she said. "A life was lost. People are grieving. People are suffering. And there is nothing that can change what happened."

Minyvonne Burke is a senior breaking news reporter for NBC News.

News Associate 

Emilie Ikeda is an NBC News correspondent.

Dartmouth student found dead in river leads police to open hazing investigation

Correction: An earlier version included incorrect information about Won Jang's extracurricular activities.

Police are investigating whether hazing may have played a role in the death of a Dartmouth student who was found dead in the Connecticut River Sunday night, according to local reports.

The body of Won Jang, a 20-year-old at the Ivy League university, was recovered 65 feet offshore Sunday at about 7:30 p.m. local time, the Hanover Police Department said in a news release. He was reported missing after last being seen alive around the docks Saturday night.

The search for Jang included a several divers and a sonar team using an underwater camera that eventually located the body, according the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department. Items found near the dock indicated Jang did not leave the river area.

The cause of death is undetermined and police said foul play is not suspected, Hanover Police said.

"The investigation into this untimely death is on-going and anyone with information is encouraged to call the Hanover Police Department," the police news release stated.

Police received anonymous report of hazing

Hanover Police Chief Charles Dennis said there was evidence that some alcohol and possible college hazing was involved in the incident, stations WMUR-TV and WPTZ reported.

"We did receive an anonymous email this morning through the college that there may be some hazing involved, so certainly, we will look into that aspect, too," Dennis told WMUR-TV.

Jang attended a social gathering at the river area and was reported Sunday after failing to appear at an appointment, WMUR-TV and WPTZ reported

USA TODAY has reached out to Dennis for comment and did not immediately receive a response.

Dartmouth dean offers condolences to community

In a statement to students, Dartmouth College dean Scott Brown offered condolences for those who knew Jang.

"We understand that this is very difficult news for our community and encourage you to seek support, whether you need a listening ear or guidance in navigating this challenging time," Brown said in a statement. "We have been in touch with Won's fraternity brothers and other friends."

The school said Jang "enthusiastically took part in the Dartmouth community" as a fraternity member who started his own band. Jang majored in biomedical engineering and was part of the class of 2026 , the student newspaper The Dartmouth reported.

"Won wholeheartedly embraced opportunities at Dartmouth to pursue his academic and personal passions," Brown said.

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Columbia Removes Three Deans, Saying Texts Touched on ‘Antisemitic Tropes’

Nemat Shafik, the university president, called the sentiments in the text messages “unacceptable and deeply upsetting.”

By Katherine Rosman

Three Columbia University administrators have been removed from their posts after sending text messages that “disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes” during a forum about Jewish issues in May, according to a letter sent by Columbia officials to the university community on Monday.

The administrators are still employed by the university but have been placed on indefinite leave and will not return to their previous jobs.

Nemat Shafik, the Columbia president, described the sentiments in the text messages as “unacceptable and deeply upsetting, conveying a lack of seriousness about the concerns and the experiences of members of our Jewish community.” She said the messages were “antithetical to our university’s values and the standards.”

The announcement came about a month after a conservative website published photos that showed some of the text messages sent by the administrators.

And it followed weeks of unrest at Columbia over the war in Gaza as the university emerged as the center of a nationwide protest movement. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations led Dr. Shafik to order the arrest of students on trespassing charges this spring. In late April, protesters occupied a campus building, leading to more arrests. In May, citing security concerns, the university canceled its main commencement ceremony.

The three Columbia administrators involved in the text message exchanges are Cristen Kromm, formerly the dean of undergraduate student life; Matthew Patashnick, formerly the associate dean for student and family support; and Susan Chang-Kim, formerly the vice dean and chief administrative officer. They did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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Beryl power outage updates: More than 250,000 Texas electricity customers remain without power a week after Beryl

Tens of thousands of households and businesses aren’t expected to have electricity for most of this week.

More than 250,000 CenterPoint customers have no power one week after hurricane

Thousands of CenterPoint Energy customers are starting a second week without power. Monday morning — one week after Beryl ripped through southeastern Texas — 253,180 CenterPoint customers lacked electricity.

Another 27,558 customers who receive power through other utilities also lacked electricity Monday morning.

CenterPoint said they expect 98% of their customers to have electricity back Wednesday night. It is not clear exactly when the remaining 2% of their affected customers — about 45,000 households and businesses — will get power back. The company's outage tracker shows that some households in Harris County won't have electricity back until Friday. The company's goal is to restore power to all households and businesses that can receive it by Friday, according to Thomas Gleeson, chair of the Public Utilities Commission, which regulates electricity.

Gleeson indicated during a Monday press conference that some homes and businesses are so badly damaged that they will not be able to receive power by Friday.

The longer-lasting outages were expected to be in the hard-hit areas of Matagorda County, Brazoria County and parts of Galveston County, along with some pockets elsewhere, said Jason Ryan, executive vice president of regulatory services and government affairs for CenterPoint, at a PUC meeting on Thursday.

The slower work will involve rebuilding large spans of infrastructure, Ryan told the commissioners, such as poles broken and toppled onto the ground.

“We know that we still have a lot of work to do and we will not stop the work until it is done,” Ryan said.

Nearly 3 million electricity customers lost power in Texas after Hurricane Beryl swept across the southeastern portion of the state Monday.

Related Story

“they need to fix something quick”: texans without power for days are getting angry.

Updated: July 13, 2024

Frustrations at CenterPoint, the Houston-area electric utility, have boiled over after it bungled its communications to the public amid yet another massive Texas power outage. The company appeared in chaos as it worked to turn on power for angry people who faced days in dangerous heat without air conditioning, including stressed customers struggling to manage health issues without electricity. More than 48 hours after the storm left the region, the company still had no clear timeline for when people could expect their electricity to be restored.

Yet even as elected officials piled onto everyday Texans’ scathing criticisms of how long the outages are lasting, CenterPoint appears to be restoring power to people faster than it has after recent storms.

“We have never restored more than a million customers a little over two days after a hurricane before and you can only do that with significant readiness,” Ryan said at the PUC meeting Thursday.

According to PowerOutage.us, Entergy Texas, which serves College Station and Beaumont, still had close to 18,000 customers without power Monday morning; Texas-New Mexico Power, serving some areas of Houston and around Brazoria on the Gulf Coast, had over 7,000 customers lacking power; and AEP Texas, which stretches from Brownsville to Bay City, had about 330 customers without power.

Utility representatives made the case to state regulators on Thursday that they were prepared for the storm. PUC Chairman Thomas Gleeson told Ryan that the utility needed to get out in the community to listen to feedback when the repairs were done.

“The public expects more communication, more frequent communication, different modes of communication,” Gleeson said. “And so I think it’s definitely incumbent on all of us to look at the way we communicate going forward.”

— Emily Foxhall, Alejandra Martinez, Dante Motley and Pooja Salhotra

Heat remains a danger this weekend as hundreds of thousands go without power

Temperatures in the Houston area are expected to hit the high 80s Saturday and low 90s Sunday, as hundreds of thousands of Texas households and businesses are still without power following Hurricane Beryl.

As of Saturday morning, the National Weather Service has much of the Houston area under a moderate heat risk , which “affects most individuals sensitive to heat, especially those without effective cooling and/or adequate hydration.”

Humidity is also a factor — topping out at 77%. Scattered thunderstorms are also expected throughout the day.

Extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related fatalities each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency . On Tuesday, a 60-year-old disabled man died from a heat stroke following the storm, according to Matagorda County Justice of the Peace Jason Sanders. His death brought the hurricane’s death total to 10.

CenterPoint Energy projects that by the end of the weekend, they will have restored power to 85% of the original 2.26 million outages they faced, leaving approximately 390,000 still without electricity on Monday. As of Saturday morning, 689,000 of its customers were still without power.

Entergy Texas, which serves College Station and Beaumont, still has 50,000 customers without power. Texas-New Mexico Power, serving some areas of Houston and around Brazoria on the Gulf Coast, has over 29,000 customers lacking power. AEP Texas, which stretches from Brownsville to Bay City, has 1,100 customers without power.

— Dante Motley

Texans affected by Beryl can start applying for federal aid this weekend

Residents and business owners in 17 Texas counties that were hard hit by Hurricane Beryl will soon be able to apply for federal dollars to help them cover the costs to repair or replace their homes.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency funding will be available to uninsured and underinsured people who live in Brazoria, Chambers, Galveston, Harris, Jackson, Jasper, Jefferson, Liberty, Matagorda, Montgomery, Orange, Polk, San Jacinto, Walker, and Wharton counties, said FEMA spokesperson Jaclyn Rothenberg.

On Saturday, two other counties were added including Fort Bend and Nacogdoches.

Individuals will be able to apply for funding by registering online at www.DisasterAssistance.gov or by calling 1-800-621-3362 or by using the FEMA App . The quickest way to receive the dollars is often by applying online because of high call volume, Rothenberg said. Registration is expected to open by Saturday morning.

Affected individuals can also visit a FEMA disaster recovery center to get direct help from a FEMA staff member. Some recovery centers were opened in the Houston region after a May derecho storm slammed into the region in May.

The amount of federal funding individuals can receive through FEMA’s program varies. Qualifying individuals can receive “serious needs assistance,” which is a $750 payment for emergency supplies such as food, medicine and baby formula. Separate claims can be submitted to receive support to repair homes.

“There’s a whole series of questions we ask people to get them the maximum amount of support,” Rothenberg said.

The maximum amount FEMA can provide to an individual for repairs is $42,500, according to statutory guidelines passed by Congress. People cannot receive disaster and insurance assistance for the same damages. Insured Texans should first file claims through their existing policies before applying for FEMA assistance.

FEMA reformed its federal assistance policies this year, allowing people who are underinsured to receive federal assistance if their insurance policy does not cover the full extent of their damages.

The state could request funding for additional counties affected by Beryl, which hit Texas early Monday morning as a Category 1 hurricane and knocked out power for more than 2.5 million people. Gov. Greg Abbott said in a Thursday press release that additional counties may be requested once damage assessments are complete.

The announcement comes after President Joe Biden approved a major disaster declaration on Tuesday for damage sustained from Beryl in 67 counties. That declaration was the first step in unlocking federal dollars and resources to support storm recovery efforts.

FEMA offers two main types of assistance: public assistance and individual assistance. Public assistance supports local governments in rebuilding or repairing infrastructure, such as roads, bridges or schools while individual assistance helps affected people jumpstart their own recovery.

— Pooja Salhotra

Matagorda County was "hardest hit" by Beryl, Patrick says

Some 2,500 households in the unincorporated coastal community of Sargent may not have power for another two weeks, Matagorda County Judge Bobby Seiferman said Wednesday during a press briefing about Hurricane Beryl's aftermath.

The hurricane struck the Texas coast early Monday and knocked out power for millions of Texans along the Gulf Coast, greater Houston and in Deep East Texas. Matagorda County was the “hardest hit” of all 121 counties included in the state’s disaster declaration, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said at the briefing.

Days after Beryl, Texans toil to cope with debris, heat, rain and no power

July 11, 2024

“And Sargent was the hardest hit of that part, of that county,” he said.

Patrick is serving as acting governor while Gov. Greg Abbott is on an economic development trip in Asia. Since Monday, Patrick has traveled to Houston, Galveston and now Bay City to provide updates on storm recovery. He couldn’t visit Sargent because of the bad weather and there wasn’t a suitable place for his helicopter to land, he said.

Sen. Joan Huffman , a Republican who represents Matagorda County, also attended the briefing and promised to work with local and federal officials to help the county deal with the storm’s aftermath, including restoring power and cleaning up debris.

Matagorda County officials have asked the state to help set up cooling stations, remove debris and get food to residents beyond “ready-to-eat” meals, Patrick said.

“They’ve asked for a lot because there are a lot of issues,” he said. “We are going to do everything we can to check every box that they asked us to check.”

He added that the state will provide additional security personnel to Sargent as well as food, water and ice.

Outages make it hard to discharge hospital patients, leading to backups

Several Houston-area hospitals are having trouble making room for new patients because they can’t discharge patients to homes without power, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Tuesday.

“In fact, we had a police officer who was shot in the leg, and when the mayor went down to see him the next day, he still didn’t have a room,” he said.

Beryl power outages crowd hospitals, delay new admissions

July 10, 2024

Patrick, who has served as acting governor amid the storm, said NRG Arena will be converted into a temporary medical step-down facility to free up space in local hospitals. It will have 250 beds available.

Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd said hospitals, physicians and patients will decide who goes to NRG Arena. Any of the regional hospitals can send a patient to the arena, as most of them are in a crisis, he said.

Millions of Texans are still without power after Hurricane Beryl caused regionwide power outages. Kidd said it was in patients’ best interest not to go back to their homes if they don’t have power and they can’t keep their medications refrigerated.

Kidd has also ordered 25 additional ambulances to come to Houston and assist this week.

“The City of Houston told us they had an ambulance shortage because all of their ambulances were in the emergency department waiting to offload patients,” he said. “Some had been sitting there for three-plus hours.”

This isn’t the first time the arena in Houston has been used during a crisis. In 2005, a medical facility was established in what was then known as the Astrodome to treat and shelter Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

— Stephen Simpson

Hurricane Beryl death toll rises to 10

Hurricane Beryl, which brought fierce winds and heavy rains to a large portion of southeastern Texas, killed at least 10 people, according to state and local authorities.

In Harris County, two people waiting out the storm in their homes were killed in separate instances when trees fell on their residences. An Atascocita Fire Department spokesperson said that in the first instance, two people were in a residence when a tree fell, killing one and injuring the other. The second instance saw a 74-year-old grandmother die after a tree fell on her bedroom, according to Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced another person, a city of Houston employee, died from drowning in a flooded underpass on July 8. Acting Houston Police Department Chief Larry Satterwhite identified the man in a social media post as 54-year-old HPD information security officer Russell Richardson.

Tropical Storm Beryl: How to get help and help Texans

Updated: July 9, 2024

Harris County also reported two deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning during Beryl, Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd said in a July 9 news conference. Kidd said that during the power outages, people run generators in unsafe places — like in a garage or near windows — allowing carbon monoxide to pool indoors. This can lead to asphyxiation.

In Montgomery County, two died inside a tent in a wooded area, according to a news release from the county’s emergency management office. No additional details surrounding their death were available. A third person, a man in his 40s, died in Montgomery County after a tree fell on him while he was on his tractor, the news release said.

In Galveston County, John Florence, an investigator with the county's Medical Examiner confirmed that 71 year-old Judith Greet died at Crystal Beach, a community in the Bolivar Peninsula. Greet was on oxygen for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a lung disease that blocks airflow and makes it difficult to breathe. When the hurricane knocked out power in her RV home, Greet’s oxygen machine ran out of battery and she died.

In Matagorda County, where thousands are still without power , county officials reported that one person died from heat.

The Houston Chronicle reported that a tenth person died in a house fire caused by lightning. Houston fire officials told The Texas Tribune that the cause is under investigation.

— Pooja Salhotra, Stephen Simpson, Dante Motley and Alejandra Martinez

Power restoration could take days and summer temperatures are rising

Millions of Texans are heading into a third summer day without power after Hurricane Beryl wreaked havoc through several counties — including the state’s most populous one — and temperatures rose dangerously into the 90s. The heat index is projected to push past 100 degrees in some areas, compounding the risk for an already battered and worn-out area.

Power companies have deployed thousands of workers to restore power while state and local officials navigate residents’ frustrations at what’s becoming routine in Texas: massive power outages after winter storms, thunderstorms, tornadoes or hurricanes.

Millions of Texans face third day without power in summer heat

Updated: July 10, 2024

As of 6:22 p.m. Tuesday, 1.9 million electricity customers concentrated in the southeastern corner of the state that bore the brunt of Beryl’s fierce winds still didn’t have electricity. Power companies and elected officials said it could be days before everyone has electricity again, meaning people without air conditioning would have to figure out how to cope with the heat.

“The power system is a life saving critical infrastructure — it’s the difference between life and death,” said Costa Samaras, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. “The era of nobody could have foreseen these conditions is over.”

Utility officials and state leaders have said it will likely take days to get everyone’s electricity back on — and temperatures are projected to rise steadily over the next week, National Weather Service Meteorologist Ryan Knapp said.

Temperatures in the 80s and 90s can create unsafe conditions for high-risk individuals, especially in a home with no power, and finding ways to keep cool will be paramount, he said.

“The upper 80s can obviously heat the inside of the home pretty quickly,” Knapp said.

— Pooja Salhotra, Jess Huff, Emily Foxhall and Kayla Gao

Federal disaster declaration approved, Patrick says

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said President Joe Biden approved a Federal Emergency Disaster Declaration to aid Texans in the recovery from Hurricane Beryl. Following a phone call with Biden Tuesday, Patrick stated that he requested FEMA assistance to cover costs for debris removal and emergency protective measures.

“We are appreciative that the federal government will step in and they will pick up most of the cost as we go through recovery of the storm,” Patrick said at a Tuesday press briefing.

Biden says Texas officials delayed request for Beryl federal aid

Once the declaration is finalized and issued, the state’s homeowners and business will be able to access loans and grants to help with Beryl-related recovery costs. FEMA’s public assistance program is divided into categories. Part A covers the costs of debris removal, while part B covers emergency protective measures like medical care, transportation and evacuation. Patrick said the federal government would be covering “most of the cost” associated with storm recovery.

The declaration includes 121 impacted counties, Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd said. Those counties include Brazoria, Galveston and Harris.

Kidd urged residents to adhere to local government regulations if they start doing their own debris cleanup.

Debris will need to be separated into three categories. Vegetative debris includes leaves and plants; construction and demolition debris includes building materials; appliances and white goods are another category.

“Please don’t put it all into one pile,” Kidd said. “It only slows the recovery process.”

On Monday, Biden spoke with Houston Mayor John Whitmire and said his administration is committed to supporting Texas, a White House spokesperson said.

“The U.S. Coast Guard and FEMA are on the ground and stand ready to support local response efforts,” the spokesperson said. “They will remain with the people of Texas every step of the way.”

–Alejandra Martinez and Pooja Salhotra

Texans begin to assess damage and plan clean-up efforts after bruising storm

Hurricane Beryl plowed through the Houston region Monday and, according to local meteorologist Matt Lanza, keeping up hurricane strength until it got halfway across town. Only in the afternoon would the winds die down completely, allowing people to emerge to follow a routine many know well: assess the damage, check on others, clean up and wait for the power to return.

The storm jolted people awake as its winds roared, blowing at 90 miles per hour, pushing tree branches at windows and ripping shingles from rooftops. Ten to 15 inches of rain pounded homes, according to Houston Mayor John Whitmire.

“Just my luck”: Houston begins clean up after Beryl rips through Gulf Coast

July 9, 2024

The wind sounded to 31-year-old Elizabeth Alvarez in Houston like someone screaming. The mother of six woke up at 4 a.m., scared, and didn’t go back to sleep. She thought her window might break. She lost power and — hour by hour — more Houstonians did too, their air conditioning and refrigerated food going along with it.

Later, Alvarez would drag her pet birds in their cages onto her porch to feel the cooler air, while neighbors grilled corn and pork and others kicked a soccer ball. She would clutch a handheld, battery-powered fan, that was turned off to save for when she needed it.

Across the region, fences toppled. Awnings ripped from restaurants. Signs soared away from businesses. Traffic lights twisted askew. A local television station lost power and went off the air. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said on The Weather Channel, “Really, Houston is getting the brunt of the wind and the rain.”

The pops of transformers echoed. Entire trees crashed down.

And the damage pushed on from there, as Beryl uprooted trees and downed power lines into southeast Texas. In Liberty, a beloved pecan tree outside the historic courthouse was uprooted early on Monday, according to Bluebonnet News . The tree served as a meeting place for generations of residents.

“The rebuild is going to be significant. There was real damage. But the good news is for Houston, this ain’t our first rodeo,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz said at a Monday evening press conference.

— Emily Foxhall

How to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning from generators during power outages

When electrical power is knocked out after a hurricane, carbon monoxide poisoning from improperly used gas-powered generators is especially dangerous. The odorless, colorless gas is called an “invisible killer.” Early symptoms can include headache, dizziness, weakness and nausea, similar to the flu. To stay safe, experts recommend never connecting a generator directly to your home’s wiring, ensuring it's properly grounded, and always operate it outdoors away from windows and vents.

— Alejandra Martinez

Beryl makes landfall in Texas as Category 1 hurricane

Hurricane Beryl made landfall near Matagorda around 4 a.m. Monday as a Category 1 Hurricane, according to the National Hurricane Center. The storm strengthened through Sunday evening and had maximum sustained winds of 80 miles per hour when it came ashore. A 5 a.m. advisory from the National Hurricane Center warned about life-threatening storm surge and inland flooding Monday.

Hundreds of thousands of Texans are without power , including many in coastline counties such as Brazoria and Matagorda, according to PowerOutage.us. The full scope of the storm's damage is not yet clear — and it could cause more Monday as it moves northeast through the state.

The hurricane center said the coast was experiencing life-threatening storm surge. It also warned of flash floods throughout the southeastern portion of the state as the storm continues moving inland, bringing five to 10 inches of rain to some areas — or up to 15 inches in some isolated places.

Category 1 storms primarily damage unanchored mobile homes, shrubbery and trees. They can also do extensive damage to electricity lines and cause power outages that last several days.

What should I do after a hurricane hits?

Stay away from flood waters and damaged power lines. Don’t enter damaged buildings. Take photos and document damages to your home or property. Residents are also encouraged to document their storm damages and losses through a state-run online survey to help state officials understand the extent of the damages.

Organizations like the American Red Cross, Salvation Army and local volunteer organizations can help you find food, shelter and supplies, as well as even assist you with clean-up efforts.

How to navigate FEMA during this year’s hurricane season

Government and community resources may be available to help with recovery. Disaster declarations from the governor and president may free up federal funds for recovery assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency . People cannot receive disaster aid and insurance assistance for the same damages, so insured Texans should file claims through their existing policies before applying for FEMA assistance.

— Maria Probert Hermosillo and Pooja Salhotra

Tornadoes pop up in East Texas after Beryl downgraded to a Tropical Storm

After downing trees and power lines across the Greater Houston area, Hurricane Beryl has been downgraded to a Tropical Storm, meaning wind speeds have lowered below 75 miles per hour.

Maximum sustained winds have decreased to about 60 miles per hour, a 1 p.m. advisory from the National Hurricane Center. Beryl is headed northeastward at about 14 miles per hour and is expected to increase in speed as it continues to move through East Texas, where some local officials asked residents to shelter in place.

The National Weather Service out of Shreveport is tracking three confirmed tornadoes on radar, two in Texas and the third in Louisiana. The first is south of Joaquin, which is north of Lufkin and near the Louisiana border, the second is north of Timpson, which is also near the border.

Forecasters urged Texans to use caution amid downed power lines and warned that improper generator use can cause carbon monoxide poisoning.

On the Texas coastline, a storm surge warning is still in effect north of San Luis Pass to Sabine Pass, an area that includes Galveston Bay. The tropical storm warning was discontinued from Port O’Conner to San Luis Pass.

The Coastal Bend, including areas like Corpus Christi, was spared from the brunt of the storm.

— Pooja Salhotra and Jess Huff

High winds persist into East Texas, prompting requests for residents to shelter in place

High winds have made their way north from the Texas coast into East Texas and counties have begun to ask residents to shelter in place as a way to keep emergency vehicles off the roads as well.

The storm kept up its momentum as a Category 1 hurricane all the way to Interstate 10, surprising meteorologist Matt Lanza at Space City Weather.

“The widespread wind gusts of 75 to 85 mph so far inland was really unnerving,” he wrote in an updated blog post.

Residents of San Jacinto, Liberty, Hardin and Tyler counties have been encouraged to shelter in place, especially to stay off the roads in an effort to also keep emergency vehicles off the road.

News outlets and emergency management teams throughout the region have reported downed power lines and trees throughout the region.

The National Weather Service issued a tornado watch until 10 p.m. Monday for counties between Montgomery and Texarkana counties, as well as Northwest and North Central Louisiana and Southern Arkansas. A wind advisory is in effect until Tuesday morning.

— Jess Huff

Storm passes over Lake Livingston Dam, which was inundated with rain in April

In Polk County, which is home to the Lake Livingston Dam, the storm began to peak around 11 a.m. with the worst of it located over the dam, according to Polk County Emergency Management. High winds are still top of mind, even as Beryl has been downgraded to a tropical storm.

The dam, which recently reported potential failures, was releasing 21,175 cubic feet of water per second as of 11 a.m. and the lake level is at 130.93 feet above sea level.

This is significantly less than the several hundred thousand cubic feet of water released in April, when storms required several hundred thousand cubic feet of water per second to be released for multiple days in a row.

The Trinity River Authority, in conjunction with the Federal Aviation Authority, initiated a temporary flight restriction over the dam as the authority also began construction to mitigate potential failures early Monday.

Houston officials ask residents to remain off roads as damage assessment begins

Downed tree limbs and power lines, flooded streets, and power outages have Houston officials pleading with residents to stay home.

Houston mayor John Whitmire held a news conference Monday detailing the dire situation the city finds itself in as it took the brunt of Hurricane Beryl.

“We are dealing with a very serious amount of water. Around 10 inches of rain across the city and 90-mile-per-hour winds and hurricane conditions,” Whitmire said. “Please, Houstonians, shelter in place. We are in emergency and rescue mode.”

Whitmire said over 700,000 Houston electricity customers are currently without power, and the region’s two major airports are not open. However, city officials should better understand the situation now that the storm is moving away.

“We are experiencing the dirty side of a dirty storm,” Whitmire said.

The storm's sustained winds were still at 70 miles per hour as it moved from the Gulf Coast into the Houston area. The National Hurricane Center said that up to 10 inches of rain could fall in some places — and some isolated areas of the state may receive 15 inches. Some areas of Houston have already received nearly 10 inches of rainfall, according to data from the Harris County Flood Control District. On Monday morning, local officials in the Houston area said the storm had downed trees and caused street flooding. At least two people died when trees fell onto their residences.

In Rosenberg, a city 35 miles southwest of Houston, a downed tree hit a high water rescue vehicle returning from a rescue, police said on X . Officials there also urged residents to stay off roadways.

Houston Fire Department Chief Samuel Pena underscored the strain on resources due to the high demand for high-water rescues and live wire calls. These are currently the primary service requests, consuming a significant portion of their resources, and they have already helped eight people in high-water rescues.

“Earlier today, we saw a video of a high-water rescue , and you can see how resource-intensive those call types are. We can’t keep using those resources. Please be cautious and heed the warnings,” Pena said.

— Stephen Simpson, Pooja Salhotra and Emily Foxhall

Refineries begin reporting storm-related air pollution

Some refineries along the Texas coast have shut down due to Hurricane Beryl and are self-reporting instances of “unintentional” emissions.

In one instance, Freeport LNG, a large natural gas terminal on the coast of Brazoria County, reported releases of over 8,000 pounds of unplanned air pollution on Sunday. Pollutants included ethylene , a chemical with a faint sweet and musky odor, that can cause headache, dizziness, fatigue, and lightheadedness if people are exposed to it in large amounts overtime.

In their report to the state, the company wrote the facility was proactively shutting down before the hurricane winds caused power outages.

“[The shutdown] resulted in a subsequent unavoidable venting,” the report said.

Flaring, a process for burning unwanted gas to relieve pressure or clear pipes, usually happens before or during extreme weather events, said Luke Metzger, executive director of the nonprofit Environment Texas.

The Marathon Galveston Bay Refinery in Texas City, along the Houston Ship Channel, tweeted the facility was flaring Monday morning due to a brief power disruption during the storm. No report has been submitted to the state yet.

Metzger said Beryl’s pollution events are low compared to Hurricane Harvey’s 8.3 million pounds of air pollution reported to the state, but suspects more facilities will submit reports after the storm’s passing.

“I was surprised looking at the pollution reports that there has been relatively little pollution reported,” Metzger said. “That’s either good news because the storm had less of an impact [on refineries] or facilities [operators] have learned their lesson.”

Disclosure: CenterPoint Energy has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here .

Stephen Simpson , Maria Probert Hermosillo , Berenice Garcia , Kayla Guo and Dante Motley contributed to this report.

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Information about the authors

Pooja Salhotra

General assignment reporter.

[email protected]

@PoojaSalhotra

Alejandra Martinez

Environmental reporter.

[email protected]

@alereports

Emily Foxhall

Climate reporter.

[email protected]

East Texas Reporter

[email protected]

@JessHuff16

Contributors

Stephen Simpson

Mental health reporter.

[email protected]

@Steve55Simpson

Maria Probert Hermosillo

Berenice Garcia

Rio grande valley reporter.

[email protected]

@berenice__g

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Dante Motley

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• donald trump

Suspect purchased 50 rounds of ammunition on day of shooting | Live

One spectator was killed and two were critically hurt in Saturday's shooting.

Federal authorities are investigating after former President Donald Trump was shot in the ear in an assassination attempt at an election rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.

Blood splattered on Trump's face as Secret Service agents surrounded him and led him off the stage to a waiting vehicle to whisk him away. Trump is "fine," a spokesperson said.

The alleged shooter was killed by snipers. Corey Comperatore , a firefighter and a father of two daughters, died in the shooting Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said. Two other people who attended the rally were also injured.

Key Headlines

• 3 hours and 25 minutes ago Suspected gunman purchased 50 rounds of ammunition day of shooting: Officials
• 1:31 AM GMT Secret Service faces scrutiny over Trump assassination attempt
• Jul 15, 2024, 7:56 PM GMT Secret Service protection increased for Trump, adjusted for Biden
• Jul 15, 2024, 6:15 PM GMT Building where gunman was found was officer staging area
• Jul 15, 2024, 7:47 PM GMT FBI gained access to shooter's phone, finished searching his home and car

Timeline: How the Trump assassination attempt unfolded

Click here for a timeline of events from the harrowing and deadly scene at the campaign rally for Donald Trump.

Shooting suspect planned to attend local 4-year university this fall

Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old suspected gunman, planned to attend Robert Morris University this fall, according to a school spokesperson.

Robert Morris University is a private, four-year university located outside of Pittsburgh.

"We have been in touch with law enforcement and stand ready to assist in their investigation," school spokesperson Brian Edwards said.

Crooks had earned his associate degree in science from a local community college and graduated in May with high honors.

He was accepted into both RMU and the University of Pittsburgh, a public-research university also a close drive from his home in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.

A spokesperson for the University of Pittsburgh said Crooks was told in February that he could attend this fall semester as a transfer student. In March, Crooks informed Pitt that he would not attend.

Visual Timeline: How the assassination attempt unfolded

A minute-by-minute analysis of multiple videos from Trump's rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13.

Suspected gunman purchased 50 rounds of ammunition day of shooting: Officials

The suspected gunman who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump at his campaign rally Saturday purchased 50 rounds of ammunition ahead of the event, according to a bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI Monday.

Thomas Matthew Crooks purchased the rounds from a gun and ammunition shop in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, according to officials.

The bulletin notes that two improvised explosive devices were found in the shooter's car and one at his home.

"Over the last several months, Crooks received several packages, including some marked as possibly containing hazardous material, according to a review of his shipping history," officials wrote.

Officials also warn of future "follow-on or retaliatory acts of violence in response to this assassination attempt."

"We cannot rule out the possibility that some DVEs (Domestic violent extremists) or other actors may attempt follow-on or retaliatory acts of violence in response to this assassination attempt."

Trump family member will attend shooting victim Corey Comperatore's funeral

Eric Trump said there is "no question" that a Trump family member will attend the funeral of Corey Comperatore, who was shot and killed at the campaign rally on Saturday.

During an interview with Fox News on Monday night at the Republican National Convention, Eric called Comperatore's death "unthinkable," adding, "This is a person who loved Donald Trump, his family. He jumped on his children. It's unthinkable what happened there."

Comperatore, 50, was a firefighter and a father of two daughters, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said Sunday. He was from Sarver, Pennsylvania.

Comperatore "died a hero" when he "dove on his family" to protect them from the gunfire during the rally, his wife said, according to Shapiro.

Eric Trump said that the GoFundMe page created for Comperatore's family was close to reaching $5 million.

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