I’m taking a class this fall.  It isn’t a regular offering, but it’s taught by a professor at a nearby university, and I’d describe it as similar in workload to the classes I took in college back in the day.  Why I didn’t think about homework before signing up is a little bit of a mystery.  By the time the class met in September, I was already behind in the reading.  I tried to catch up from the first week and didn’t do any of the reading for the second week.  Then there were two weeks when we didn’t meet.  Good opportunity to catch up, right?  No.  I was utterly undisciplined and was lucky to have finished the reading for the third class, having abandoned the idea of finishing the work for weeks one and two.  I’m prepared for tonight, but I wouldn’t describe my preparation as thorough.  Sigh.  At least this experience allows me to connect with our sometimes-overwhelmed students.

Whenever I manage to do the reading, there’s another way in which the class connects to my work.  As I’ve read, I’ve been contemplating the nature of academic writing.  Must it have big multisyllabic words?  Or can complex thoughts be expressed in clear language?

Regardless of my ability to achieve my own ideal when I write, I adhere to the concept that clear language is something to which we should aspire, and that use of big words should not be our goal.  Why, then, do so many applicants seem to write a draft of their application essays and then randomly select words to which they’ll give the thesaurus treatment?  It’s as if they ask, “Why use an ordinary word like ‘ordinary’ when we can substitute ‘quotidian’”?

Dear blog readers, I implore you to consider the readers of your application.  We’re all educated people, and we won’t be won over by a thesaurusized essay.  Instead, make your essays clear and straightforward.  Use a ten-dollar word if it’s natural for you and suits your sentence, but don’t strive to do so because you think the Admissions Committee expects it.  Your aim should be to make your experience and objectives clear to the Committee.  As you put the finishing touches on your essays for an Early Notification application, or start the process of writing essays for a January application, keep this in mind:  plain language can go a long way toward winning over your readers.

Continuing to explore the commonalities between undergraduate and grad school admissions processes, I’ll point you toward a New York Times education blog post on cutting an application essay down in length.  Though Fletcher doesn’t limit you to 500 words in the first essay, you’d be surprised how many people find it challenging to state their purpose in even 800 words.

In case you’re curious, we do not count the words in each essay.  But read enough writing on the same theme and you, too, would quickly develop a sense of what’s too short and what’s too long.  My recommendation:  Practice pith!  Our tired eyes will appreciate it.  Word count: 107.

I had a great high school physics and chemistry teacher, Mr. Burdman, and he had a standard line of advice.  When seeking the solution to a problem, Mr. Burdman would tell us to “Draw a picture” to reflect the facts we know.  Using the Mr. Burdman method, I’m going to provide an answer to a question we commonly hear, “What type of work should I do/should I have done to be a competitive applicant to Fletcher?”

So we can start to answer this question by saying that the questioner wants to go from A to B, where A represents the start of her career:

The applicant thinks that B represents admission to Fletcher.  But, dear blog readers, the applicant has it wrong.  The picture, correctly drawn is:

Point A still represents the start of the applicant’s career, but B is the applicant’s career following graduate school.  So what is the arrow?  That’s Fletcher.  In other words, studying at Fletcher is an opportunity to develop knowledge and skills that will take the applicant from one point to another, but admission to Fletcher shouldn’t be seen as an endpoint.

How is this relevant for blog readers who are planning to apply to Fletcher this year?  Well, it should help you to frame your personal statement and second essay.  The best experience leading up to the arrow (admission to Fletcher) will support you when you’re at B (your post-Fletcher career).  Given the incredible array of post-Fletcher work our graduates pursue, is it any wonder that the experience that best supports an application would also be varied?

As an example, let’s consider two applicants, Tim and Jim.  Tim wants a career in international energy consulting, while Jim is interested in international education. Generally speaking, Tim’s best pre-Fletcher experience would involve either the energy field or consulting.  Jim’s would involve education, whether it’s within or outside his home country.

But what if Tim’s and Jim’s career goals were reversed?  Would Jim’s teaching experience be equally relevant to a post-Fletcher career in international energy consulting?  Well, it’s hard for me to say, but I’d advise Jim to use his essays to explain how his experience to date is relevant to his future work as a consultant.  In other words, there’s no single Point B, so there’s also no path to Point B that works equally well for everyone.

When I talk to recent graduates, I advise them to find work that pushes them along the A-B continuum.  For those who will apply this year, regardless of your Point B, be sure the Admissions Committee will understand how your experience, augmented by a Fletcher degree, will get you there.

I don’t work at Fletcher on Wednesdays, and this fall I’ve been spending part of my day off at our local high school, offering college essay tutoring to frantic seniors.  As challenging as grad school essays are, you have to sympathize with these kids who are instructed to “be unique” in 500 words.  Telling a 17-year-old to write something no other 17-year-old will write — that’s a recipe for stress.

The high school is very diverse with a large population of immigrants and first-generation Americans, and they have trouble seeing themselves as special, though they certainly are in general applicant pools.  (My favorite story was of the girl living with a pack of siblings and cousins from Mexico — they had been born in the U.S., and their parents sent them back for high school or college.  Somehow, her unusual living situation — ten kids in a house where the oldest was a 25-year-old — didn’t strike her as essay-worthy.)

My approach is to try to lower the pressure on the high schoolers by telling them that, though there are zillions of high school seniors applying for admission, “There’s only one you,” and that the key is to write something true to themselves.  This week, I had a follow-up session with a kid who answered the “who’s your role model” question by writing about his mother.  Of course, the mother in me can’t help but be touched.  The admissions person in me suspects there will be a lot of applicants writing about parents.  So we tied the content to his aspirations for college, and I think it worked pretty well.  Also important:  his mom liked the essay.  That was satisfying.

Applicants for undergraduate admission are essentially answering the question, “who are you?” At 17, many of them don’t really know the answer.

Applicants for Fletcher, at least in the personal statement, are telling us what they want to accomplish at Fletcher and beyond.  As you prepare for graduate school, it’s important that you know the answer.

There’s a big difference between undergraduate and professional school essays, but applicants of both types share the challenge of facing a blank computer screen and trying to lay it all out.  We know it’s difficult!  But without the essays, we would be making decisions only on the basis of dry facts, with no opportunity to shape a class of interesting people.  So, as you pour your goals and souls onto the page, I want to make sure you know how much we value the personal statements, the supplemental essays, and all we learn from them.  They’re the key to evaluating the match between you and Fletcher, and they’re the most interesting part of each application file.