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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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Thank you ChatGPT for exposing the banality of undergraduate essays

Eerie ai simulations of academic writing show why student essays must return to their more imaginative and freewheeling roots, says colm o’shea.

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the college essay is dead analysis

While the learned texts of ancient Greek and Roman writers or epistles from the early Christian church fathers are sometimes regarded as essays, the modern form originated with Michel de Montaigne.

Wealthy and erudite, at some point the 16th-century French philosopher regarded his substantial library sceptically and asked: “What if everything I  think I know is bullshit?” He developed the essai, a profoundly personal and idiosyncratic project with one overarching goal: to see the world anew. Titles such as “Of Thumbs”, “Of a Monstrous Child” and “Of Cannibals” convey his broad and bizarre mental terrain. Each essay rotated an idea, scrutinising it from all sides and seeking fresh insight as surprising as if authored by another consciousness.

Compare Montaigne’s disciplined playfulness with the industrialisation of the academic essay. A cottage industry of advisers shepherd high-schoolers through their college application essays. Once matriculated, a disheartening proportion of students plead with professors to provide a correct template to emulate – or resort to plagiarism or essay mills to leap this arbitrary hurdle on their way to an imagined future where they’ll never have to use writing as an aid to learning or reflection ever again.

This was before ChatGPT rendered plagiarism and essay mills as redundant as blacksmithing. The crisis that the college essay faces, then – the crisis facing all those who teach it, or teach through it – is not rooted in AI, but the advent of ChatGPT may clarify it better than anything else.

The crisis stems from a larger, older problem in formal education. For too long, there has been an undue focus on convergent thinking – in other words, testing students on getting “correct” answers to problems with a set solution. College applications are generally evaluated in two broad categories: knowledge base and cognitive aptitude. Standardised testing reveals a student’s basic grasp of their discipline – which is important – but it ignores another relevant domain: divergent (or lateral) thinking. ( Attempts to measure divergent thinking are nascent but promising.)

Although not identical to creativity per se, divergent thinking is an important precursor to creative work. It is also, by definition, antithetical to standardisation. It proceeds via mechanisms such as deep pattern recognition and analogy (verbal, visual, mathematical) that software such as ChatGPT, which gleans a “gist” from dizzyingly large datasets, is not good at. An old word for this species of thinking was “wit” (a surprising fusion or inspired connection between two unlike things), and while it may seem quirky or whimsical, it’s anything but trifling. Dedre Gentner, a cognitive scientist and authority on analogical thinking , explains that vividly explaining something to yourself or others cultivates the capacity for abstraction and uncovers novel connections between different fields. For Gentner, the ability to generate accurate metaphors or analogies may be a superior proxy for creative intelligence than IQ. Scientific breakthroughs often rely on glimpsing an imaginative analogy between two unlike things.

Along similar lines, K. H Kim, professor of creativity and innovation at William & Mary, argues that the obsessive focus of both Asian and Western educational systems on convergent thinking is slowing innovation across the arts and sciences. (This focus on intellectual conformity may have a spillover effect on political thought, but that’s an article for another time.)

The college essay ideally involves the writer establishing an intellectual game, complete with obstacles to trip them up and shake off their complacency about the subject at hand. What we call “voice” is a recognition of a mind brightening in response to the challenge it has set itself, and being aware that it could be wrong. By contrast, ChatGPT demonstrates the worst version: an echo chamber, a neat summation of critical consensus. Consider Harry Frankfurt’s philosophical essay “ On Bullshit ”, in which he distinguishes between lying (falsity) and the spouting of convincing-sounding claims to which no careful thought has been given (phoniness). Whereas the liar needs an accurate model of the truth to actively hide it from others, the bullshitter needs no such awareness. In fact, a bullshitter can spew true statements all day long; what makes them bullshit, in Frankfurt’s view, is not their truth or falsity, but the heedless manner in which they’ve been arrived at. “By virtue of this,” he writes, “bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.” 

ChatGPT is the apogee of Frankfurt’s bullshit artist. Using a large language model to cobble together things humans are likely to say about a subject, an eerie simulation of comprehension emerges, but one utterly divorced from insight about the real world.

One of ChatGPT’s most striking aspects is how well it mimics the glib, bloodless prose that characterises so much academic writing. Stephen Marche’s Atlantic essay, “ The College Essay is Dead ”, generated much discussion in my writing department and surely others. One throwaway line worried me deeply. Explaining why he would give the AI-generated sample text he’s shown us a B+, he writes: “The passage reads like filler, but so do most student essays.”

Bullshit has plagued us since long before ChatGPT, but need we greet it with such jaded resignation?

At the risk of sounding hopelessly idealistic, let me say no. An engaged academic  could return the essay to its proper Montaignian heritage: a divergent and creative exploration of possibilities. This requires some overhauls, such as movement away from huge lecture halls where the only contact point between students and professors is a hastily written (and hastily graded) essay. Smaller student-to-teacher ratios restore the viva voce of dialectic, between student and teacher and between students themselves.

AI will keep evolving. Machine learning will yield millions of “novel solutions” in a variety of fields. Currently there are two AI extremes: convergence with no novelty, and extreme divergence with no sense of “appropriateness”, to borrow Dean Keith Simonton’s definition of creativity as originality x appropriateness . “Appropriateness” is domain-specific, but it implies a vast set of Wittgensteinian “language games”, the depth and breadth of which can only increase as our culture becomes more complex. This deep set of “games” is too subtle, sub-rational and rapidly shifting for AI to grasp through mining our text alone.

In an ideal future, education may prioritise cultivating curiosity, creativity and sensitivity across all learning domains, in students of all ages. It’s an exciting and overdue project. This doesn’t mean turning our backs on acquiring knowledge, but it does entail a renewed focus on “playing” with our ideas, and metacognitive practices around how and why we learn what we do.

The ultimate game for sentient beings is to surprise themselves by how inspired their answers can be when they’re invited to ask questions on their terms, and pursue what strange answers emerge. It’s infinitely preferable to an imitation of comprehension, whether that be from an artificial bullshitter or an organic one.

Colm O’Shea is clinical associate professor with the expository writing programme at New York University .

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the college essay is dead analysis

The Supreme Court Killed the College-Admissions Essay

The end of affirmative action will pressure high schoolers to write about their race through formulaic and belittling narrative tropes.

A hand grasps a writing implement.

Nestled within yesterday’s Supreme Court decision declaring that race-conscious admissions programs, like those at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, are unconstitutional is a crucial carveout: Colleges are free to consider “an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life.” In other words, they can weigh a candidate’s race when it is mentioned in an admissions essay. Observers had already speculated about personal essays becoming invaluable tools for candidates who want to express their racial background without checking a box—now it is clear that the end of affirmative action will transform not only how colleges select students, but also how teenagers advertise themselves to colleges.

For essays and statements to provide a workaround for pursuing diversity, applicants must first cast themselves as diverse. The American Council on Education, a nonprofit focused on the impacts of public policy on higher education, recently convened a panel dedicated to planning for the demise of affirmative action; admissions directors and consultants emphasized the need “to educate students about how to write about who they are in a very different way,” expressing their “full authentic story” and “trials and tribulations.” In other words, if colleges can’t use race as a criterion in its own right, because the Court has ruled doing so violates the Fourteenth Amendment, then high schoolers trying to navigate the nebulous admissions process may feel pressure to write as plainly as possible about how their race and experiences of racism make them better applicants.

Turning personal writing into a way to market one’s race means folding oneself into nonspecific formulas, reducing a lifetime to easily understood types. This flattening of the college essay in response to the long hospice of race-based affirmative action comes alongside another reductive phenomenon upending student writing: the ascendance of generative AI. High schoolers , undergraduates , and professional authors are enlisting ChatGPT or similar programs to write for them; educators fear that admissions essays will prove no exception . The pitfalls of using AI to write a college application, however, are already upon us, as the pressure to sell one’s race and race-based adversity to colleges will compel students to write like chatbots. Tired platitudes about race angled to persuade admissions officers will crowd out more individual, creative approaches, the result no better than a machine’s banal aggregation of the web. Writing about one’s race can be clarifying, even revelatory; de facto requiring someone write about their racial identity, in a form that can veer toward framing race as a negative attribute in need of overcoming, is stifling and demeaning. Or, as the attorney and author Elie Mystal tweeted more bluntly yesterday, “Why should a Black student have to WASTE SPACE explaining ‘how racism works’”?

Read: Elite multiculturalism is over

Such essays can feel prewritten. Many Black and minority applicants “believe that a story of struggle is necessary to show that they are ‘diverse,’” the sociologist and former college-admissions officer Aya M. Waller-Bey wrote in this magazine earlier this month; admissions officers and college-prep programs can valorize such trauma narratives, too. Indeed, research analyzing tens of thousands of college applications shows that essay content and style predict income better than SAT scores do: Lower-income students were much more likely to write about topics including abuse, economic insecurity, and immigration. Similarly, another study found that girls applying to engineering programs were more likely to foreground their gender as “women in science,” perhaps to distinguish themselves from their male counterparts. These predictable scripts, which many students believe to be most palatable, are the kind of stale , straightforward narratives—about race, identity, and otherwise—that AI programs excel at writing. Language models work by analyzing massive amounts of text for patterns and then spitting out statistically probable outputs, which means they are adept at churning out clichéd language and narrative tropes but quite terrible at writing anything original, poetic , or inspiring .

To explore and narrativize one’s identity is of course important, even essential; I wrote about my mixed heritage for my own college essay. Race acts as what the cultural theorist Stuart Hall called a “ floating signifier ,” a label that refers to constantly shifting relationships, interactions, and material conditions. “Race works like a language,” Hall said, meaning that race provides a way to ground discussions of varying experiences, support networks, histories of discrimination, and more. To discuss and write about one’s race or heritage, then, is a way of finding and making meaning.

But molding race into what an admissions officer might want is the opposite of discovery; it means one is writing toward somebody else’s perceived desires. It’s not too dissimilar from writing an admissions essay with a language model that has imbibed and reproduced tropes that already exist, blighting meaningful self-discovery on the part of impressionable young people and instead trapping them in unoriginal, barren, and even debasing scripts that humans and machines alike have prewritten about their identities. Chatbots’ statistical regurgitations cannot reinvent language, only cannibalize it; the programs do not reflect so much as repeat. When I asked ChatGPT to write me a college essay, it gave me boilerplate filler: My journey as a half-Chinese, half-Italian individual has been one of self-discovery, resilience, and growth . That sentence is broadly true, perhaps a plus for an admissions officer, but vapid and nonspecific—useless to me, personally. It doesn’t push toward anything meaningful, or really anything at all.

Read: The college essay is dead

A future of college essays that package race in canned archetypes reeking of a chatbot’s metallic touch could read alarmingly similar to the very Supreme Court opinions that ended race-conscious admissions yesterday: a framing of race “unmoored from critical real-life circumstances,” as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her dissent; a pathetic understanding of various Asian diasporic groups from Justice Clarence Thomas; a twisting of landmark civil-rights legislation, constitutional amendments, and court cases into a predetermined and weaponized crusade against any attempt to promote diversity or ameliorate historical discrimination. Chatbots, too, make things up , advance porous arguments, and gaslight their users. If race works like a language, then colleges, teachers, parents, and high-school students alike must make sure that that language remains a human one.

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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.

the college essay is dead analysis

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:

the college essay is dead analysis

(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:

the college essay is dead analysis

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”

the college essay is dead analysis

(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:

the college essay is dead analysis

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:

the college essay is dead analysis

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.

the college essay is dead analysis

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the college essay is dead analysis

Opinion | Jon Stewart rips Trump’s so-called ‘patriots’ in spot-on commentary

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the college essay is dead analysis

Opinion | As AI use grows, we must articulate ‘the enduring principles that define journalism’

As a global society, we have not updated these principles for the digital era. Here's our opportunity.

the college essay is dead analysis

No, Mel Gibson didn’t release a video of satanic rituals on Jeffrey Epstein’s island

We found no evidence to support the claim, including credible news reports or statements from Gibson.

the college essay is dead analysis

IFCN has announced its largest grants of 2023: Meet the winners

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Opinion: The college essay is not dead

Georgia Gwinnett College associate professor Amanda Sepulveda teaches students in her English class.  PHOTO CREDIT: GEORGIA GWINNETT COLLEGE.

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.

Mathew Boedy

Credit: Peggy Cozart

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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

ajc.com

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

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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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'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 

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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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Does AI mean the death of the college essay?

Unlike other forms of plagiarism, ai is much more difficult to detect— what does this mean for college essays.

Artificial intelligence concept with a wire mesh grid.

By Hanna Seariac

Will artificial intelligence spell the end of the college essay?

Unlike other forms of plagiarism, AI is much more difficult to detect. According to The Atlantic , ChatGPT launched in 2020, but an updated version of it has become popular this week — with a user count of over one million.

The mechanism of the bot is simple. Type in a prompt about what you want the bot to say and then text will be typed on your screen by the bot. This can range from the humorous to the serious.

The bot is the latest in AI that has taken hold of the general public. While image AI has become popular (think DALL-E , Midjourney and the recently popular Lensa), writing AI has mostly flown under the radar. Now the ChatGPT bot is being used for memes and jokes. I asked the bot to “make jokes about hallmark movies” and it told me “Why do Hallmark movies always take place during the holidays? Because they’re too corny to be shown any other time of year.”

As fun as it is to prompt the bot to give text like this, some like Stephen Marche believe that it could mean the death of the college essay.

Writing for The Atlantic , Marche described students who have used AI to write essays. “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.”

ChatGPT can produce whole essays on command.

For example, I put in the prompt “advanced essay on the history of The Great Gatsby” and within a short period of time, an entire essay surfaced on my screen.

The writing itself isn’t half-bad.

The bot began, “The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a novel that explores the decade and excess of the Roaring Twenties. ... The novel was published in 1925, a time when the United States was experiencing significant economic growth and cultural change. The country was in the midst of the “Jazz Age,” and the traditional values of the past were being challenged by the hedonism and materialism of the present.”

I tried again to see if quality writing as a feature, not just a bug. I prompted the AI bot to write a “college essay about whether or not God exists.”

The bot wrote, “Those who argue for the existence of God often point to the complexity and beauty of the natural world as evidence of a higher power. ... On the other hand, those who argue agains the existence of God may point to the lack of empirical evidence for a higher power.”

I wanted to see if the bot could handle more specific requests so I typed in “literary analysis about the color blue in the great gatsby.”

The bot wrote about how the color blue is associated with both Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan. The bot added, “The blue of the East and West Eggs, the two sides of Long Island where the main characters live, represents the social and emotional divide between the characters. The blue of the water that separates the mainland from the island also serves as a barrier between the characters and their desires.”

On command, the bot will even provide citations.

Advances in AI might dramatically impact college. After all, if a bot can produce an essay that gets a student a passing grade and the essay is practically untraceable, then how will a professor detect plagiarism?

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AI and the Death of the College Essay

Robot arm writing with pen.

by Mirko Tobias Schaefer, CC BY 2.0

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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the college essay is dead analysis

PrepScholar

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 177 college essay examples for 11 schools + expert analysis.

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College Admissions , College Essays

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The personal statement might just be the hardest part of your college application. Mostly this is because it has the least guidance and is the most open-ended. One way to understand what colleges are looking for when they ask you to write an essay is to check out the essays of students who already got in—college essays that actually worked. After all, they must be among the most successful of this weird literary genre.

In this article, I'll go through general guidelines for what makes great college essays great. I've also compiled an enormous list of 100+ actual sample college essays from 11 different schools. Finally, I'll break down two of these published college essay examples and explain why and how they work. With links to 177 full essays and essay excerpts , this article is a great resource for learning how to craft your own personal college admissions essay!

What Excellent College Essays Have in Common

Even though in many ways these sample college essays are very different from one other, they do share some traits you should try to emulate as you write your own essay.

Visible Signs of Planning

Building out from a narrow, concrete focus. You'll see a similar structure in many of the essays. The author starts with a very detailed story of an event or description of a person or place. After this sense-heavy imagery, the essay expands out to make a broader point about the author, and connects this very memorable experience to the author's present situation, state of mind, newfound understanding, or maturity level.

Knowing how to tell a story. Some of the experiences in these essays are one-of-a-kind. But most deal with the stuff of everyday life. What sets them apart is the way the author approaches the topic: analyzing it for drama and humor, for its moving qualities, for what it says about the author's world, and for how it connects to the author's emotional life.

Stellar Execution

A killer first sentence. You've heard it before, and you'll hear it again: you have to suck the reader in, and the best place to do that is the first sentence. Great first sentences are punchy. They are like cliffhangers, setting up an exciting scene or an unusual situation with an unclear conclusion, in order to make the reader want to know more. Don't take my word for it—check out these 22 first sentences from Stanford applicants and tell me you don't want to read the rest of those essays to find out what happens!

A lively, individual voice. Writing is for readers. In this case, your reader is an admissions officer who has read thousands of essays before yours and will read thousands after. Your goal? Don't bore your reader. Use interesting descriptions, stay away from clichés, include your own offbeat observations—anything that makes this essay sounds like you and not like anyone else.

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Technical correctness. No spelling mistakes, no grammar weirdness, no syntax issues, no punctuation snafus—each of these sample college essays has been formatted and proofread perfectly. If this kind of exactness is not your strong suit, you're in luck! All colleges advise applicants to have their essays looked over several times by parents, teachers, mentors, and anyone else who can spot a comma splice. Your essay must be your own work, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with getting help polishing it.

And if you need more guidance, connect with PrepScholar's expert admissions consultants . These expert writers know exactly what college admissions committees look for in an admissions essay and chan help you craft an essay that boosts your chances of getting into your dream school.

Check out PrepScholar's Essay Editing and Coaching progra m for more details!

the college essay is dead analysis

Want to write the perfect college application essay? Get professional help from PrepScholar.

Your dedicated PrepScholar Admissions counselor will craft your perfect college essay, from the ground up. We'll learn your background and interests, brainstorm essay topics, and walk you through the essay drafting process, step-by-step. At the end, you'll have a unique essay that you'll proudly submit to your top choice colleges.

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Links to Full College Essay Examples

Some colleges publish a selection of their favorite accepted college essays that worked, and I've put together a selection of over 100 of these.

Common App Essay Samples

Please note that some of these college essay examples may be responding to prompts that are no longer in use. The current Common App prompts are as follows:

1. 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. 2. 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? 3. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome? 4. 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? 5. Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. 6. 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?

7. 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.

Now, let's get to the good stuff: the list of 177 college essay examples responding to current and past Common App essay prompts. 

Connecticut college.

  • 12 Common Application essays from the classes of 2022-2025

Hamilton College

  • 7 Common Application essays from the class of 2026
  • 7 Common Application essays from the class of 2022
  • 7 Common Application essays from the class of 2018
  • 8 Common Application essays from the class of 2012
  • 8 Common Application essays from the class of 2007

Johns Hopkins

These essays are answers to past prompts from either the Common Application or the Coalition Application (which Johns Hopkins used to accept).

  • 1 Common Application or Coalition Application essay from the class of 2026
  • 6 Common Application or Coalition Application essays from the class of 2025
  • 6 Common Application or Universal Application essays from the class of 2024
  • 6 Common Application or Universal Application essays from the class of 2023
  • 7 Common Application of Universal Application essays from the class of 2022
  • 5 Common Application or Universal Application essays from the class of 2021
  • 7 Common Application or Universal Application essays from the class of 2020

Essay Examples Published by Other Websites

  • 2 Common Application essays ( 1st essay , 2nd essay ) from applicants admitted to Columbia

Other Sample College Essays

Here is a collection of essays that are college-specific.

Babson College

  • 4 essays (and 1 video response) on "Why Babson" from the class of 2020

Emory University

  • 5 essay examples ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ) from the class of 2020 along with analysis from Emory admissions staff on why the essays were exceptional
  • 5 more recent essay examples ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ) along with analysis from Emory admissions staff on what made these essays stand out

University of Georgia

  • 1 “strong essay” sample from 2019
  • 1 “strong essay” sample from 2018
  • 10 Harvard essays from 2023
  • 10 Harvard essays from 2022
  • 10 Harvard essays from 2021
  • 10 Harvard essays from 2020
  • 10 Harvard essays from 2019
  • 10 Harvard essays from 2018
  • 6 essays from admitted MIT students

Smith College

  • 6 "best gift" essays from the class of 2018

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Books of College Essays

If you're looking for even more sample college essays, consider purchasing a college essay book. The best of these include dozens of essays that worked and feedback from real admissions officers.

College Essays That Made a Difference —This detailed guide from Princeton Review includes not only successful essays, but also interviews with admissions officers and full student profiles.

50 Successful Harvard Application Essays by the Staff of the Harvard Crimson—A must for anyone aspiring to Harvard .

50 Successful Ivy League Application Essays and 50 Successful Stanford Application Essays by Gen and Kelly Tanabe—For essays from other top schools, check out this venerated series, which is regularly updated with new essays.

Heavenly Essays by Janine W. Robinson—This collection from the popular blogger behind Essay Hell includes a wider range of schools, as well as helpful tips on honing your own essay.

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Analyzing Great Common App Essays That Worked

I've picked two essays from the examples collected above to examine in more depth so that you can see exactly what makes a successful college essay work. Full credit for these essays goes to the original authors and the schools that published them.

Example 1: "Breaking Into Cars," by Stephen, Johns Hopkins Class of '19 (Common App Essay, 636 words long)

I had never broken into a car before.

We were in Laredo, having just finished our first day at a Habitat for Humanity work site. The Hotchkiss volunteers had already left, off to enjoy some Texas BBQ, leaving me behind with the college kids to clean up. Not until we were stranded did we realize we were locked out of the van.

Someone picked a coat hanger out of the dumpster, handed it to me, and took a few steps back.

"Can you do that thing with a coat hanger to unlock it?"

"Why me?" I thought.

More out of amusement than optimism, I gave it a try. I slid the hanger into the window's seal like I'd seen on crime shows, and spent a few minutes jiggling the apparatus around the inside of the frame. Suddenly, two things simultaneously clicked. One was the lock on the door. (I actually succeeded in springing it.) The other was the realization that I'd been in this type of situation before. In fact, I'd been born into this type of situation.

My upbringing has numbed me to unpredictability and chaos. With a family of seven, my home was loud, messy, and spottily supervised. My siblings arguing, the dog barking, the phone ringing—all meant my house was functioning normally. My Dad, a retired Navy pilot, was away half the time. When he was home, he had a parenting style something like a drill sergeant. At the age of nine, I learned how to clear burning oil from the surface of water. My Dad considered this a critical life skill—you know, in case my aircraft carrier should ever get torpedoed. "The water's on fire! Clear a hole!" he shouted, tossing me in the lake without warning. While I'm still unconvinced about that particular lesson's practicality, my Dad's overarching message is unequivocally true: much of life is unexpected, and you have to deal with the twists and turns.

Living in my family, days rarely unfolded as planned. A bit overlooked, a little pushed around, I learned to roll with reality, negotiate a quick deal, and give the improbable a try. I don't sweat the small stuff, and I definitely don't expect perfect fairness. So what if our dining room table only has six chairs for seven people? Someone learns the importance of punctuality every night.

But more than punctuality and a special affinity for musical chairs, my family life has taught me to thrive in situations over which I have no power. Growing up, I never controlled my older siblings, but I learned how to thwart their attempts to control me. I forged alliances, and realigned them as necessary. Sometimes, I was the poor, defenseless little brother; sometimes I was the omniscient elder. Different things to different people, as the situation demanded. I learned to adapt.

Back then, these techniques were merely reactions undertaken to ensure my survival. But one day this fall, Dr. Hicks, our Head of School, asked me a question that he hoped all seniors would reflect on throughout the year: "How can I participate in a thing I do not govern, in the company of people I did not choose?"

The question caught me off guard, much like the question posed to me in Laredo. Then, I realized I knew the answer. I knew why the coat hanger had been handed to me.

Growing up as the middle child in my family, I was a vital participant in a thing I did not govern, in the company of people I did not choose. It's family. It's society. And often, it's chaos. You participate by letting go of the small stuff, not expecting order and perfection, and facing the unexpected with confidence, optimism, and preparedness. My family experience taught me to face a serendipitous world with confidence.

What Makes This Essay Tick?

It's very helpful to take writing apart in order to see just how it accomplishes its objectives. Stephen's essay is very effective. Let's find out why!

An Opening Line That Draws You In

In just eight words, we get: scene-setting (he is standing next to a car about to break in), the idea of crossing a boundary (he is maybe about to do an illegal thing for the first time), and a cliffhanger (we are thinking: is he going to get caught? Is he headed for a life of crime? Is he about to be scared straight?).

Great, Detailed Opening Story

More out of amusement than optimism, I gave it a try. I slid the hanger into the window's seal like I'd seen on crime shows, and spent a few minutes jiggling the apparatus around the inside of the frame.

It's the details that really make this small experience come alive. Notice how whenever he can, Stephen uses a more specific, descriptive word in place of a more generic one. The volunteers aren't going to get food or dinner; they're going for "Texas BBQ." The coat hanger comes from "a dumpster." Stephen doesn't just move the coat hanger—he "jiggles" it.

Details also help us visualize the emotions of the people in the scene. The person who hands Stephen the coat hanger isn't just uncomfortable or nervous; he "takes a few steps back"—a description of movement that conveys feelings. Finally, the detail of actual speech makes the scene pop. Instead of writing that the other guy asked him to unlock the van, Stephen has the guy actually say his own words in a way that sounds like a teenager talking.

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Turning a Specific Incident Into a Deeper Insight

Suddenly, two things simultaneously clicked. One was the lock on the door. (I actually succeeded in springing it.) The other was the realization that I'd been in this type of situation before. In fact, I'd been born into this type of situation.

Stephen makes the locked car experience a meaningful illustration of how he has learned to be resourceful and ready for anything, and he also makes this turn from the specific to the broad through an elegant play on the two meanings of the word "click."

Using Concrete Examples When Making Abstract Claims

My upbringing has numbed me to unpredictability and chaos. With a family of seven, my home was loud, messy, and spottily supervised. My siblings arguing, the dog barking, the phone ringing—all meant my house was functioning normally.

"Unpredictability and chaos" are very abstract, not easily visualized concepts. They could also mean any number of things—violence, abandonment, poverty, mental instability. By instantly following up with highly finite and unambiguous illustrations like "family of seven" and "siblings arguing, the dog barking, the phone ringing," Stephen grounds the abstraction in something that is easy to picture: a large, noisy family.

Using Small Bits of Humor and Casual Word Choice

My Dad, a retired Navy pilot, was away half the time. When he was home, he had a parenting style something like a drill sergeant. At the age of nine, I learned how to clear burning oil from the surface of water. My Dad considered this a critical life skill—you know, in case my aircraft carrier should ever get torpedoed.

Obviously, knowing how to clean burning oil is not high on the list of things every 9-year-old needs to know. To emphasize this, Stephen uses sarcasm by bringing up a situation that is clearly over-the-top: "in case my aircraft carrier should ever get torpedoed."

The humor also feels relaxed. Part of this is because he introduces it with the colloquial phrase "you know," so it sounds like he is talking to us in person. This approach also diffuses the potential discomfort of the reader with his father's strictness—since he is making jokes about it, clearly he is OK. Notice, though, that this doesn't occur very much in the essay. This helps keep the tone meaningful and serious rather than flippant.

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An Ending That Stretches the Insight Into the Future

But one day this fall, Dr. Hicks, our Head of School, asked me a question that he hoped all seniors would reflect on throughout the year: "How can I participate in a thing I do not govern, in the company of people I did not choose?"

The ending of the essay reveals that Stephen's life has been one long preparation for the future. He has emerged from chaos and his dad's approach to parenting as a person who can thrive in a world that he can't control.

This connection of past experience to current maturity and self-knowledge is a key element in all successful personal essays. Colleges are very much looking for mature, self-aware applicants. These are the qualities of successful college students, who will be able to navigate the independence college classes require and the responsibility and quasi-adulthood of college life.

What Could This Essay Do Even Better?

Even the best essays aren't perfect, and even the world's greatest writers will tell you that writing is never "finished"—just "due." So what would we tweak in this essay if we could?

Replace some of the clichéd language. Stephen uses handy phrases like "twists and turns" and "don't sweat the small stuff" as a kind of shorthand for explaining his relationship to chaos and unpredictability. But using too many of these ready-made expressions runs the risk of clouding out your own voice and replacing it with something expected and boring.

Use another example from recent life. Stephen's first example (breaking into the van in Laredo) is a great illustration of being resourceful in an unexpected situation. But his essay also emphasizes that he "learned to adapt" by being "different things to different people." It would be great to see how this plays out outside his family, either in the situation in Laredo or another context.

the college essay is dead analysis

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Example 2: By Renner Kwittken, Tufts Class of '23 (Common App Essay, 645 words long)

My first dream job was to be a pickle truck driver. I saw it in my favorite book, Richard Scarry's "Cars and Trucks and Things That Go," and for some reason, I was absolutely obsessed with the idea of driving a giant pickle. Much to the discontent of my younger sister, I insisted that my parents read us that book as many nights as possible so we could find goldbug, a small little golden bug, on every page. I would imagine the wonderful life I would have: being a pig driving a giant pickle truck across the country, chasing and finding goldbug. I then moved on to wanting to be a Lego Master. Then an architect. Then a surgeon.

Then I discovered a real goldbug: gold nanoparticles that can reprogram macrophages to assist in killing tumors, produce clear images of them without sacrificing the subject, and heat them to obliteration.

Suddenly the destination of my pickle was clear.

I quickly became enveloped by the world of nanomedicine; I scoured articles about liposomes, polymeric micelles, dendrimers, targeting ligands, and self-assembling nanoparticles, all conquering cancer in some exotic way. Completely absorbed, I set out to find a mentor to dive even deeper into these topics. After several rejections, I was immensely grateful to receive an invitation to work alongside Dr. Sangeeta Ray at Johns Hopkins.

In the lab, Dr. Ray encouraged a great amount of autonomy to design and implement my own procedures. I chose to attack a problem that affects the entire field of nanomedicine: nanoparticles consistently fail to translate from animal studies into clinical trials. Jumping off recent literature, I set out to see if a pre-dose of a common chemotherapeutic could enhance nanoparticle delivery in aggressive prostate cancer, creating three novel constructs based on three different linear polymers, each using fluorescent dye (although no gold, sorry goldbug!). Though using radioactive isotopes like Gallium and Yttrium would have been incredible, as a 17-year-old, I unfortunately wasn't allowed in the same room as these radioactive materials (even though I took a Geiger counter to a pair of shoes and found them to be slightly dangerous).

I hadn't expected my hypothesis to work, as the research project would have ideally been led across two full years. Yet while there are still many optimizations and revisions to be done, I was thrilled to find -- with completely new nanoparticles that may one day mean future trials will use particles with the initials "RK-1" -- thatcyclophosphamide did indeed increase nanoparticle delivery to the tumor in a statistically significant way.

A secondary, unexpected research project was living alone in Baltimore, a new city to me, surrounded by people much older than I. Even with moving frequently between hotels, AirBnB's, and students' apartments, I strangely reveled in the freedom I had to enjoy my surroundings and form new friendships with graduate school students from the lab. We explored The Inner Harbor at night, attended a concert together one weekend, and even got to watch the Orioles lose (to nobody's surprise). Ironically, it's through these new friendships I discovered something unexpected: what I truly love is sharing research. Whether in a presentation or in a casual conversation, making others interested in science is perhaps more exciting to me than the research itself. This solidified a new pursuit to angle my love for writing towards illuminating science in ways people can understand, adding value to a society that can certainly benefit from more scientific literacy.

It seems fitting that my goals are still transforming: in Scarry's book, there is not just one goldbug, there is one on every page. With each new experience, I'm learning that it isn't the goldbug itself, but rather the act of searching for the goldbugs that will encourage, shape, and refine my ever-evolving passions. Regardless of the goldbug I seek -- I know my pickle truck has just begun its journey.

Renner takes a somewhat different approach than Stephen, but their essay is just as detailed and engaging. Let's go through some of the strengths of this essay.

One Clear Governing Metaphor

This essay is ultimately about two things: Renner’s dreams and future career goals, and Renner’s philosophy on goal-setting and achieving one’s dreams.

But instead of listing off all the amazing things they’ve done to pursue their dream of working in nanomedicine, Renner tells a powerful, unique story instead. To set up the narrative, Renner opens the essay by connecting their experiences with goal-setting and dream-chasing all the way back to a memorable childhood experience:

This lighthearted–but relevant!--story about the moment when Renner first developed a passion for a specific career (“finding the goldbug”) provides an anchor point for the rest of the essay. As Renner pivots to describing their current dreams and goals–working in nanomedicine–the metaphor of “finding the goldbug” is reflected in Renner’s experiments, rejections, and new discoveries.

Though Renner tells multiple stories about their quest to “find the goldbug,” or, in other words, pursue their passion, each story is connected by a unifying theme; namely, that as we search and grow over time, our goals will transform…and that’s okay! By the end of the essay, Renner uses the metaphor of “finding the goldbug” to reiterate the relevance of the opening story:

While the earlier parts of the essay convey Renner’s core message by showing, the final, concluding paragraph sums up Renner’s insights by telling. By briefly and clearly stating the relevance of the goldbug metaphor to their own philosophy on goals and dreams, Renner demonstrates their creativity, insight, and eagerness to grow and evolve as the journey continues into college.

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An Engaging, Individual Voice

This essay uses many techniques that make Renner sound genuine and make the reader feel like we already know them.

Technique #1: humor. Notice Renner's gentle and relaxed humor that lightly mocks their younger self's grand ambitions (this is different from the more sarcastic kind of humor used by Stephen in the first essay—you could never mistake one writer for the other).

My first dream job was to be a pickle truck driver.

I would imagine the wonderful life I would have: being a pig driving a giant pickle truck across the country, chasing and finding goldbug. I then moved on to wanting to be a Lego Master. Then an architect. Then a surgeon.

Renner gives a great example of how to use humor to your advantage in college essays. You don’t want to come off as too self-deprecating or sarcastic, but telling a lightheartedly humorous story about your younger self that also showcases how you’ve grown and changed over time can set the right tone for your entire essay.

Technique #2: intentional, eye-catching structure. The second technique is the way Renner uses a unique structure to bolster the tone and themes of their essay . The structure of your essay can have a major impact on how your ideas come across…so it’s important to give it just as much thought as the content of your essay!

For instance, Renner does a great job of using one-line paragraphs to create dramatic emphasis and to make clear transitions from one phase of the story to the next:

Suddenly the destination of my pickle car was clear.

Not only does the one-liner above signal that Renner is moving into a new phase of the narrative (their nanoparticle research experiences), it also tells the reader that this is a big moment in Renner’s story. It’s clear that Renner made a major discovery that changed the course of their goal pursuit and dream-chasing. Through structure, Renner conveys excitement and entices the reader to keep pushing forward to the next part of the story.

Technique #3: playing with syntax. The third technique is to use sentences of varying length, syntax, and structure. Most of the essay's written in standard English and uses grammatically correct sentences. However, at key moments, Renner emphasizes that the reader needs to sit up and pay attention by switching to short, colloquial, differently punctuated, and sometimes fragmented sentences.

Even with moving frequently between hotels, AirBnB's, and students' apartments, I strangely reveled in the freedom I had to enjoy my surroundings and form new friendships with graduate school students from the lab. We explored The Inner Harbor at night, attended a concert together one weekend, and even got to watch the Orioles lose (to nobody's surprise). Ironically, it's through these new friendships I discovered something unexpected: what I truly love is sharing research.

In the examples above, Renner switches adeptly between long, flowing sentences and quippy, telegraphic ones. At the same time, Renner uses these different sentence lengths intentionally. As they describe their experiences in new places, they use longer sentences to immerse the reader in the sights, smells, and sounds of those experiences. And when it’s time to get a big, key idea across, Renner switches to a short, punchy sentence to stop the reader in their tracks.

The varying syntax and sentence lengths pull the reader into the narrative and set up crucial “aha” moments when it’s most important…which is a surefire way to make any college essay stand out.

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Renner's essay is very strong, but there are still a few little things that could be improved.

Connecting the research experiences to the theme of “finding the goldbug.”  The essay begins and ends with Renner’s connection to the idea of “finding the goldbug.” And while this metaphor is deftly tied into the essay’s intro and conclusion, it isn’t entirely clear what Renner’s big findings were during the research experiences that are described in the middle of the essay. It would be great to add a sentence or two stating what Renner’s big takeaways (or “goldbugs”) were from these experiences, which add more cohesion to the essay as a whole.

Give more details about discovering the world of nanomedicine. It makes sense that Renner wants to get into the details of their big research experiences as quickly as possible. After all, these are the details that show Renner’s dedication to nanomedicine! But a smoother transition from the opening pickle car/goldbug story to Renner’s “real goldbug” of nanoparticles would help the reader understand why nanoparticles became Renner’s goldbug. Finding out why Renner is so motivated to study nanomedicine–and perhaps what put them on to this field of study–would help readers fully understand why Renner chose this path in the first place.

4 Essential Tips for Writing Your Own Essay

How can you use this discussion to better your own college essay? Here are some suggestions for ways to use this resource effectively.

#1: Get Help From the Experts

Getting your college applications together takes a lot of work and can be pretty intimidatin g. Essays are even more important than ever now that admissions processes are changing and schools are going test-optional and removing diversity standards thanks to new Supreme Court rulings .  If you want certified expert help that really makes a difference, get started with  PrepScholar’s Essay Editing and Coaching program. Our program can help you put together an incredible essay from idea to completion so that your application stands out from the crowd. We've helped students get into the best colleges in the United States, including Harvard, Stanford, and Yale.  If you're ready to take the next step and boost your odds of getting into your dream school, connect with our experts today .

#2: Read Other Essays to Get Ideas for Your Own

As you go through the essays we've compiled for you above, ask yourself the following questions:

  • Can you explain to yourself (or someone else!) why the opening sentence works well?
  • Look for the essay's detailed personal anecdote. What senses is the author describing? Can you easily picture the scene in your mind's eye?
  • Find the place where this anecdote bridges into a larger insight about the author. How does the essay connect the two? How does the anecdote work as an example of the author's characteristic, trait, or skill?
  • Check out the essay's tone. If it's funny, can you find the places where the humor comes from? If it's sad and moving, can you find the imagery and description of feelings that make you moved? If it's serious, can you see how word choice adds to this tone?

Make a note whenever you find an essay or part of an essay that you think was particularly well-written, and think about what you like about it . Is it funny? Does it help you really get to know the writer? Does it show what makes the writer unique? Once you have your list, keep it next to you while writing your essay to remind yourself to try and use those same techniques in your own essay.

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#3: Find Your "A-Ha!" Moment

All of these essays rely on connecting with the reader through a heartfelt, highly descriptive scene from the author's life. It can either be very dramatic (did you survive a plane crash?) or it can be completely mundane (did you finally beat your dad at Scrabble?). Either way, it should be personal and revealing about you, your personality, and the way you are now that you are entering the adult world.

Check out essays by authors like John Jeremiah Sullivan , Leslie Jamison , Hanif Abdurraqib , and Esmé Weijun Wang to get more examples of how to craft a compelling personal narrative.

#4: Start Early, Revise Often

Let me level with you: the best writing isn't writing at all. It's rewriting. And in order to have time to rewrite, you have to start way before the application deadline. My advice is to write your first draft at least two months before your applications are due.

Let it sit for a few days untouched. Then come back to it with fresh eyes and think critically about what you've written. What's extra? What's missing? What is in the wrong place? What doesn't make sense? Don't be afraid to take it apart and rearrange sections. Do this several times over, and your essay will be much better for it!

For more editing tips, check out a style guide like Dreyer's English or Eats, Shoots & Leaves .

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What's Next?

Still not sure which colleges you want to apply to? Our experts will show you how to make a college list that will help you choose a college that's right for you.

Interested in learning more about college essays? Check out our detailed breakdown of exactly how personal statements work in an application , some suggestions on what to avoid when writing your essay , and our guide to writing about your extracurricular activities .

Working on the rest of your application? Read what admissions officers wish applicants knew before applying .

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points? We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:

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The recommendations in this post are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links PrepScholar may receive a commission.

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Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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the college essay is dead analysis

Alcohol Exclusion Laws and Its Drawbacks

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the college essay is dead analysis

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INTRODUCTION

Since the repeal of the 18 th Amendment in 1933, alcohol consumption has become prevalent among many Americans. Alcohol intoxication is an increasing contributor to emergency room visits wherein individuals present to the emergency department (ED) in an inebriated state,  often with secondary injuries or severe medical co-morbidities related to alcohol poisoning. The ED is a stressful environment with providers working under taxing conditions while triaging difficult cases. Alcohol related visits contribute to this added stress for staff given that intoxicated individuals increase wait times for the ED, use up valuable resources, and have the capacity to act violently towards providers. As one nurse puts it, some intoxicated individuals  present with “an aggressive state, perhaps have been in a fight, blood everywhere, careening  around the place – it can make things very difficult.” [1] To combat these circumstances, thirty-four States including the District of Columbia have implemented a countermeasure recognized as Alcohol Exclusion Laws (AELs). 

AELs reduce or cut insurance coverage of certain visits to the ED if the cause of the visit is due to alcohol intoxication. [2] The vast implementation of this law is derived from the idea of individual decision making, that it is an individual’s choice to consume alcohol, and therefore they hold a personal responsibility for their intoxication. By using insurance coverage as a leverage, the law aims at reducing the number of ED visits relating to alcohol intoxication, saving resources, and deterring irresponsible drinking. While the intention behind AELs aims for positive change, it is unethical to use AELs, a form of financial leverage, to address certain problems within emergency medicine. 

Stigma is prominent in almost all substance abuse cases including those seen with alcohol intoxication. Many patients feel embarrassment or shame when seeking medical attention for a condition that was brought on by alcohol misuse. A personal account by Jonathan Hunt Glassman, a former alcoholic and NBC contributor, emphasizes on this negative bias. He knows firsthand how unsettling an ED visit can be. He felt demoralized from a superficial prognosis  made by a nurse on his complex alcohol abuse condition, in which the nurse said, “You need to  stop drinking.” [3]

Whether it be from shame or insecurities about an individual’s condition, the stigma behind substance abuse cases in the emergency department and the daunting task of asking for help can turn a lot of patients away from seeking and receiving medical treatment. The implementation of Alcohol Exclusion Laws can amplify this already present stigma. A study conducted by the National Institute of Health (NIH) analyzed States that implemented and continued to enforce Alcohol Exclusion Laws and the stigma in those states surrounding alcohol-related ED visits. The result from the study showed that AELs correlated with an increase in stigmatization regarding medical attention for alcohol-related incidents, and that AELs “negatively impact people’s willingness to seek medical care after alcohol-related injuries or  illnesses.” [4] Both the NIH study and the personal account by Hunt-Glassman go on to show that  AELs have the adverse effect of reinforcing the stigma surrounding alcohol cases in the ED.  While the idea behind AELs is in good faith, it contributes to the stigma. This contribution ethically challenges the idea that the emergency room is a space where the treatment of injuries is carried out without biases infringing on such medical care. The mission of EDs is to provide medical care to anyone in need. AELs have the effect of discouraging these patients from seeking help with the unintended consequence of doing them harm. 

A point of argument for the implementation of AELs is that it is the individual’s choice to be intoxicated and therefore justifiable that an individual receives less insurance coverage for medical expenses from a preventable intoxication. The idea of it being an individual choice to become intoxicated is one of the strongest supports for these exclusion laws. However, it is unjust to assume that all alcohol intoxications come by choice. Instances that disprove this assumption include both the college party scene and bar scene. Spiked drinks significantly increase alcohol concentration and can cause any responsible drinker to become intoxicated without intention or against their will. Additionally, alcoholic beverages served in various social gatherings like those in or around college campuses may not have a clear percentage of alcohol determination. Liquor containing high percentages of alcohol, such as Everclear which contains up to 190 proofs, are often masked by sweeteners and flavorings. Cocktails like these can cause a person to become dangerously intoxicated without their realization or intention. Some may argue that consuming an alcoholic beverage still holds accountability, that the person should be aware of the potential for a tampered drink, and therefore AELs should remain in use to deter this. However, like any law, AELs needs to have defined restrictions and/or exemptions. If the individual choice argument is used in favor for AELs, then how far reaching can the laws be applied? An attorney who specializes in these exclusion laws believes that AELs often offer more ambiguity than clarification when it comes to insurance policy, which leads to further ways insurance claims can be denied. [5]

In summary, the idea behind the use of Alcohol Exclusion Laws aims to reduce intoxication cases in the ED, however, there are drawbacks and aspects of this law that challenge the ethics of seeking medical care from the emergency department. The present stigma surrounding going to the ED for alcohol-related emergencies is already prevalent in hospitals across the country. When applying AELs, the present stigma may be magnified and further push the idea that seeking help for alcohol-related emergencies is shameful and embarrassing for patients, and therefore should be punished via financial means. Secondly, one of the main justifications for AELs is the idea that it is a deliberate intention to become intoxicated. It isn’t always the intention of individuals to get drunk when they choose to consume alcohol. There are additional factors that may play a part to exonerate a person’s accountability. It is difficult for people to recall the specifics of a situation when they become intoxicated; in some cases, accountability cannot be determined and the used of AELs can become unjustified. Overall, Alcohol Exclusion  Laws try to solve the issue of alcohol incidents in a way that produces more detriment than progress. A method to combat the issue of irresponsible drinking and intoxication in the emergency room within the US should not use AELs and financial leverage as one of its forefronts. In fact, a study that based its findings obtained from the Behavioral Risk Factor  Surveillance System nationwide survey that spanned twenty-four years from 1993-2017,  showed no real impact on binge drinking or increased alcohol consumption. [6] Given the downsides to AELs and its proven non-significant effects, several States have already repealed their AELs. For all these reasons, it would be beneficial to find an alternate method to address alcohol related issues within healthcare.

[1] Gregory, A. (16 Jun 2014). Nurses say drunk patients should be banned from A&E as ‘waste of resources’ UK:  Mirror. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nurses-say-drunk-patients-should-3706280 2 (Jan 2008).

[2] Alcohol Exclusion Laws. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/810885.pdf.

[3] Glassman, J.H. (28 Apr 2022). Why don’t alcoholics get prescribed the medication they need?. NBC.  https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/alcohol-related-deaths-er-visits-rose-covid-solution-use- rcna26425.

[4] Azagba, S., Ebling, T., Hall, M., (2023). Health claims denial for alcohol intoxication: State laws and structural stigma. Wiley Online Library . https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acer.15153. 

[5] (7 Sep 2021). The Alcohol Exclusion Chart Denied Life Insurance Claim. https://www.lifeinsuranceattorney.com/blog/2021/september/the-alcohol-exclusion-state-chart-denied-life-in/.

[6] Azagba, S., Shan, L., Ebling, T., Wolfson, M., Hall, M., Chaloupka, F., (26 Nov 2022). Does state repeal of alcohol  exclusion laws increase problem drinking? National Institutes of Health . https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10099925/.

William Ngo

Second place winner of Voices in Bioethics' 2023 persuasive essay contest. 

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Report Helps Answer the Question: Is a College Degree Worth the Cost?

The analysis found that former students at most colleges had an annual income higher than high school graduates a decade after enrollment.

A diploma being swiped through a green device with a clock on it.

By Ann Carrns

Most people go to college to improve their financial prospects, though there are other benefits to attending a postsecondary institution. But as the average cost of a four-year degree has risen to six figures, even at public universities, it can be hard to know if the money is well spent .

A new analysis by HEA Group, a research and consulting firm focused on college access and success, may help answer the question for students and their families. The study compares the median earnings of former college students, 10 years after they enrolled, with basic income benchmarks.

The analysis found that a majority of colleges exceed minimum economic measures for their graduates, like having a typical annual income that is more than that of a high school graduate with no higher education ($32,000, per federal Scorecard data ).

Still, more than 1,000 schools fell short of that threshold, though many of them were for-profit colleges concentrating in short-term credentials rather than traditional four-year degrees.

Seeing whether a college’s former students are earning “reasonable” incomes, said Michael Itzkowitz, HEA Group’s founder and president, can help people weigh whether they want to cross some institutions off their list. Someone deciding between similar colleges, for example, can see the institution that has produced students with significantly higher incomes.

While income isn’t necessarily the only criterion to consider when comparing schools, Mr. Itzkowitz said, “it’s a very good starting point.”

The report used data from the Education Department’s College Scorecard to assess the earnings of about five million former students who had attended about 3,900 institutions of higher education, 10 years after they first enrolled. (The analysis includes data for people who didn’t complete their degree.) The report includes public colleges as well as private nonprofit and for-profit schools; the schools may offer nondegree certificates, associate degrees and bachelor’s degrees.

The analysis found that schools where students earned less than their peers who never attended college were generally those offering nondegree certificates, which can often be completed in 18 months or less, as well as for-profit institutions, although the list also includes some public and private nonprofit schools. At 71 percent of for-profit schools, a majority of students were earning less than high school graduates 10 years after enrolling, compared with 14 percent of public institutions and 9 percent of private nonprofit schools, Mr. Itzkowitz said.

“College is, indeed, worth it,” Mr. Itzkowitz said, but paying for it can be “substantially riskier” depending on the type of school you attend or the credential you seek.

(Another report found that former students of for-profit colleges tend to experience more financial risk than those who attended similarly selective public colleges. Those risks include having to take on more debt for higher education, a greater likelihood of defaulting on student loans and a lower likelihood of finding a job.)

Jason Altmire, president and chief executive of Career Education Colleges and Universities, a trade group representing for-profit career colleges, said lumping together schools offering mainly short-term certificate programs with colleges offering four-year degrees didn’t make sense. People who want to work in certain careers — hairdressing, for instance — generally can’t work in the field unless they earn a certificate, he said.

Mr. Altmire also said that income data from for-profit certificate schools might be skewed by “gender bias” because the programs had a higher proportion of women, who were more likely than men to work part time while raising families, lowering a school’s reported median income.

The HEA report also compared colleges’ performance with other benchmarks, like the federal poverty line ($15,000 annual income for an individual), which is used to determine eligibility for benefits for government programs like subsidized health insurance and Medicaid. Incomes at the “vast majority” of colleges exceeded this cutoff, the report found, although 18 — nearly all of them for-profit schools offering nondegree certificate programs in beauty or hairstyling — had students with median incomes below that threshold.

Majors also matter, since those in science, technology, engineering and nursing typically lead to significantly higher salaries than majors in the arts or humanities. (Last year, HEA published a separate analysis of the college majors that pay the most.)

When comparing the earnings after college, students and families shouldn’t look at the data in a vacuum, said Kristina Dooley, a certified educational planner in Hudson, Ohio. Many schools where former students go on to be top earners have programs focusing on health sciences, technology or business, but that may not be what you want to study.

“Use it as one piece of information,” Ms. Dooley said.

She said that students shouldn’t rule out a college just because it wasn’t at the pinnacle of the income list. Do ask questions, though — like whether its career services office helps with setting up internships and making alumni connections to assist you in finding a good-paying job.

Amy S. Jasper, an independent educational consultant in Richmond, Va., said postgraduate income might matter more to students and families who had to get a loan for college. “How much debt do they want to incur?” she said. “That is something that needs to be taken into consideration.”

But, she said, the benefits of college are not just financial. “I’d like to think that picking the right school is also about becoming a better person and contributing to the world.”

Here are some questions and answers about college costs:

What colleges had the highest median incomes?

Marquee names, like most Ivy League schools, Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are heavily represented at the top of HEA’s analysis. Their students had median incomes of at least $90,000 a decade after enrollment. (A handful of for-profit schools, focused on careers like nursing and digital production, can be found there as well.) But the highest-earning colleges on the list? Samuel Merritt University, a nursing and health sciences school in Oakland, Calif., and the University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy in St. Louis, each with incomes above $129,000. You can see the data on the HEA website .

How much does college cost?

The average estimated “sticker” price for college — the published cost for tuition, fees, housing, meals, books and supplies, transportation and personal items — ranges from about $19,000 a year at a two-year community college to about $28,000 for in-state students at a public four-year university to almost $58,000 at a four-year private college, according to 2022-23 data from the College Board . Some students, however, may pay much less because of financial aid.

Are some college programs required to meet income benchmarks?

A federal “gainful employment” rule , which aims to make career programs more accountable, is scheduled to take effect in July. The new rule, which mostly affects for-profit schools but also applies to certificate programs at all types of colleges, requires schools to show that at least half of their graduates earn more than a typical high school graduate in their state and that their graduates have affordable student loan payments. Colleges that miss either benchmark must alert students that the school could lose access to federal financial aid. Schools that fail the same standard twice in three years will become ineligible for federal aid programs.

A Guide to Making Better Financial Moves

Making sense of your finances can be complicated. the tips below can help..

Credit card debt is rising, and shopping for a card with a lower interest rate can help you save money. Here are some things to know .

Whether you’re looking to make your home more energy-efficient, install solar panels or buy an electric car, this guide can help you save money and fight climate change .

Starting this year, some of the money in 529 college savings accounts can be used for retirement if it’s not needed for education. Here is how it works .

Are you trying to improve your credit profile? You can now choose to have your on-time rent payments reported to the credit bureaus  to enhance your score.

Americans’ credit card debt and late payments are rising, and card interest rates remain high, but many people lack a plan to pay down their debt. Here’s what you can do .

There are few challenges facing students more daunting than paying for college. This guide can help you make sense of it all .

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