What Do Essays Convey?
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments last month for two cases that could end race-conscious college admissions.
During the arguments, the justices asked what would happen if an applicant wrote about their race in their application essay. If the court’s ruling (which is expected next summer) forbids consideration of an applicant’s race, what would that mean in the context of an essay that deals with the author’s race?
A lawyer representing Students for Fair Admissions, the group suing Harvard College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for their respective race-conscious admissions policies, said that “culture, tradition, and heritage are all not off limits for students to talk about and for universities to consider.”
While plenty of college-application essays center on topics completely unrelated to race, they’re often intertwined with a student’s sense of identity — which can be heavily influenced by their race.
Tim Whitaker is executive director of Mighty Writers, a nonprofit that helps students in low-income communities become better writers. He tells them that college-application essays should represent who a student is, how that person feels, and what’s important or meaningful to them. Students don’t usually come up with racial topics, he said, but sometimes race will emerge as an element in the essay. For example, a student might write about how being on the basketball team changed who they are, and within that essay is a detail about how they heard racial insults while playing a neighboring team.
Caitlin Sullivan, a freshman at the University of Virginia studying biology and neurology, said that in her application for the college of arts and sciences, she wrote an essay about the movie Crazy Rich Asians. In high school, Sullivan, who is biracial (Asian American and white), was active in theater and choir. She said the film, which featured Asian actors in all of the leading roles, helped her realize that her theater roles didn’t have to be limited to side characters.
Sullivan said her race affects how she sees the world, and it’s valuable to talk about that part of her life and identity. She doesn’t envision a scenario where she can easily separate race from other meaningful parts of her life.
Similarly, Maryah Burney, a senior at Pennsylvania State University at University Park studying journalism, said she wrote her Common Application essay about seeing herself represented onscreen in the Disney film The Princess and the Frog. Burney is now applying to graduate programs in journalism and public policy, and in her applications, she said, she’s written about how being a Black student leader has shaped her interests and perspective. Sometimes it’s difficult to be a person of color on campus, she said. She’s had some uncomfortable interactions, like an incident during her first year when a student assumed that she was a campus staffer taking out the trash. If others are so focused on her race, Burney said, she wants to home in on that topic in her essay.
For Burney, not being able to write about race is out of the question. She said it is like asking an athlete to write about their passion, but telling them that their specific sport is off limits.
She wanted to study journalism, in part, because she saw some distrust of traditional media among the Black community, and she saw a lack of Black representation among working journalists. Her race is a big part of her career pursuit, she said.
Waiting on the Court
As more colleges move to test-optional admissions, application essays could become increasingly important. Vern Granger, director of undergraduate admissions at the University of Connecticut and chair elect of the board of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, said that when he’s hosted workshops on college essays, he advised students to write about something that has defined them or that showed how they would be a good fit in the campus community.
Students will often bring up race as it relates to their background and experiences in their essays, Granger said. Some students will write about discrimination, while others will write about the exploration of their race, he said.
If the U.S. Supreme Court finds race-conscious admissions unconstitutional and forces institutions to use a race-blind approach, Granger said UConn would adhere to necessary changes. College admissions officers everywhere don’t yet know what form that will take; many are waiting on guidance from the court.
But Granger said he and his colleagues would never advise students to hide important parts of their identities. It’s the opposite. He wants applicants to write about their lives.
