THE BRIDGE TO COLLEGE
COLLEGE ESSAYS … FROM THE READER’S PERSPECTIVE
Once again, I’d like to present the thoughts of Siva Annamalai, who has begun to understand communication from an entirely different angle. At UCA, we like to hire our former students as editors because the editing experience is invariably eye-opening, teaching fine young people how to write effectively.
“From detailed lab reports to simple text messages, I use writing every day. Yet, it took me years to realize how little effort I’d dedicated to honing my writing skills.
“In high school, I was rarely – if ever – exposed to writing for readability. In fact, I only began to appreciate its importance while serving as an Outline Editor for University Consultants of America. In this role, I review the beginning stages of student admissions essays and prompt them for specific details that are lacking. Although I didn’t grasp this before, sometimes one line warrants 10 questions so that readers can fully understand what is trying to be conveyed. From the author’s perspective, I’d never noticed these insufficiencies. From the reader’s perspective, the difference is astounding. As Bob says, too often we write for ourselves, not for our readers.
“Seeing writing from the perspective of an editor has been eye-opening, teaching me which details are essential and which should be left unwritten. To be fair, editing is often frustrating, not because of the work I do, but because so many students try to tell great stories which I’m unable to understand because of those missing details. Even worse are the essays that are diminished by over-embellishment. Sometimes it’s complex writing with flowery language about things that are unimportant to the student’s message, while other times the student’s commentary is too remote to be relevant or even credible. I cannot help but doubt the accuracy and the value of sentences like, ‘At age 5, this experience changed my entire perspective on life.’
“Last summer, I had the opportunity to expand my experience by also editing student Speed Drafts as a Content Editor. From this, I’ve learned that people often produce the best writing when their work is completely unadulterated. When they try to write perfectly, their voices are lost and their essays fail to charm. Whether it be by telling their story through a voice recording or just typing as fast as they can, we need their small quirks and phrases to come into the spotlight. Writing genuinely without worrying about technical accuracy is incredibly effective in conveying not only a story, but also a personality. In fact, we purposely avoid focusing on grammar; we focus on communicating effectively, which begins with authentic voice and tone.
“While the four elements of great writing are critical – message, structure, detail and voice – my most important takeaway is that writing should be tailored towards the intended audience. If the audience is a 9th grade Language Arts teacher who is actively looking for a topic sentence, then you should write topic sentences to fulfill their expectations. If the audience is an admissions reader who is quickly skimming thousands of essays to get a feel for the applicants, then you should use language that flows well and charms them … effectively. As Bob says, applications are digital conduits for connection, so essays should be designed for the purpose of connecting, not to win a Pulitzer Prize in poetry.
“I’ve been able to apply this skill in many settings, even in writing that is supposed to be more technical in nature. For example, it’s been helpful as I prepare the research proposal for my honors thesis. While that project will be heavily focused on immunology, the professors on my committee – who are in charge of reviewing my proposal – lead efforts in other areas, including population health and neurobiology. Although there is some overlap between what I will be studying and the subjects they study, I’ve realized that many niche terms must be explained thoroughly because my audience is unlikely to know or understand these topics.
“It may seem trivial to focus on improving writing skills when we already write so much in our daily lives. However, there is a big difference between writing and writing with intent. As I continue through my education, I aim to actively tailor my writing to my audience. After all, sales – and admissions – is always about the buyer.”Robert LeVine is the founder and CEO of University Consultants of America, an independent educational consultancy assisting students around the world with applications to colleges, universities and graduate schools. For more information, call University Consultants of America, Inc. at 1-800-465-5890 or visit www.universitycoa.com
FAMILY MATTERS
Communities and Milestones
By Anu Verma Panchal
A few months ago, I had the good fortune to stand by my parents’ side as they celebrated a significant milestone, their golden anniversary. One of my favorite parts of the event was that in addition to uncles, aunts and cousins, we had with us their closest friends, the extended “framily” that had helped my parents recreate a sense of home and family when they were thousands of miles away from the place of their birth.
Circa 1980, with a toddler and 6-year-old in tow, my parents moved to a little town in Zambia called Kabwe. They knew no one and nothing about this new country beyond my dad’s offer letter and one phone call with a relative who had once lived in Africa.
But on their very first evening, there was a knock at the door. It was a young Malayalee couple with two little boys our age. Hearing that a new family from Kerala had arrived, they had stopped by to welcome us. From that one introduction, my parents were immediately absorbed into a group of friends.
The same thing happened every time we moved towns. The news of our impending arrival reached before we did, and we were pulled into existing Malayalee social circles. Our weekends were spent at each other’s houses, uncles in safari suits swilling whiskey, aunties in sarees holding deafening conversations while we ran around and played. As the years passed, my parents grew into the veterans who welcomed new families and organized the elaborate cultural events that gave the community a sense of home away from home.
And all around town – and across the South Asian diaspora – others were doing the same thing. In Tamil, in Bangla, in Hindi, they created communities that served a familial function for each other. Community building seems to be in our genes. Or, as a friend once told me, “We’re like goats ... we can only travel in packs.”
During the college years and in my early 20s, plugging into the local desi community was nowhere close to being a priority; in fact, I reveled in the freedom from it. It was irritating, even, to see the insularity that I imagined permeated those associations. Why move to another country and only hang out with the same people? Why not at least try to assimilate?
It was only when I became a parent that I found myself searching, maybe even yearning, for some small level of connection. I wanted my daughters to learn Bharatanatyam like I had, wanted them to celebrate Hindu holidays and go to the temple occasionally. Does that mean that I want my communities to be restricted by ethnicity, language or religion? Certainly not. I am blessed with close “framily” from many backgrounds, and I enjoy Gasparilla as much as I do Onam and Navaratri.
Yet I am grateful for the generations who came before we did and established everything from the Tampa India Festival to the India Cultural Center so that we now have the option to dip a toe, an ankle or our whole selves in cultural life if we so desired.
A week before my older daughter was due to leave for college, I took her on one of our habitual visits to the Hindu temple here in Tampa. By a happy coincidence, the pujari on duty that day was the same one who had presided on the day that we had taken her on her first temple visit when she was a 6-month-old baby. “You’re the one who carried her to the front of the room when she was born, and now she’s starting college,” I told him. He beamed. “Look at that!” he marveled.
Look at that indeed. That kind of continuity doesn’t just happen. It’s the result of hard work from a lot of people who came before us, many of whom we’ll never even know. The roots they put down gave us the luxury to pick and choose how much we want to hold on to, because some variation of it has been preserved here for us.