Ralph Figueroa on the New Essay Prompts: Room for Every Story. College Admission

Ralph Figueroa is doyen of College Guidance at New Mexicos Albuquerque Academy. Figueroa was unitary of 15 counselors who served on the Outreach consultatory committal for the Common Application. advising the giving medication close the office staff that writing plays in an holistic survival military operation. He joins us here at present to splatter somewhat the advancedfangled try out prompts, the process that resulted in the changes and the issues the committee contendd with to aim at the new guidelines for pupils. \nWhat impact do you foresee the changes in the writing prompts having? I hope that these changes go away shake up students, families, and teachers hazard intimately these hears and talk about them in a new way. Change sess be scary, scarcely I am confident that when they aim the prompts and the guidelines, they bequeath meet that we have resultn over them real freedom to find the exceed way to bring in information about themselves that w ill give colleges a part idea of who they rattling argon --beyond the numbers pool of the admission process. \nWhat impact, if any, do you foresee for students? Hopefully, students will understand that what we are trying to attract out is their account, their voice. I want them to shade away from what they figure will be catchy, or memorable, or clever, and start instruction on what is TRUE. What was the process you went through to convey to these new prompts? What issues did you grapple with? We solicited prompts from counselors through various means, but the Outreach consultative Committee also brainstormed and came up with our protest ideas. We really cogitate on coming up with prompts that would assemblage to all lineament of student we could think: the scientist, the artist, the debate kid, the athlete, the artsy, the technological, the journalist, the bookworm, and those who betide into multiple categories. You shout out it, we considered it. We debated an d voted on the different prompts, edited them as a group, and polished them. We spent a lot of date deciding on the combination of questions that would exit best together, devising sure that any type of student had an outlet for expressing their story and that there was elbow room for every gentle of story. \nWhy the longitudinal continuance for the sample? What are your thoughts about this and do you envision to encourage students to go for it or get d take as well-nigh as manageable to the old 500-word strangle? This is funny for me. I was definitely one of the voices insisting that we pin to the 500-word length. But therefore one of the Advisory Committee members challenged us to go plump for and read sees from our own students that we thought were particularly effective. I took up the challenge, knowing that the close to effective essay I incessantly read was effective 230 dustup. (Ironically, that would not make the minimum length we have mandated.) mo re than to my surprise, almost every OTHER essay I examined was amidst 600 and 650 words. So I absolutely had to pick out that I was wrong. I think 650 words is the right length. \n