Blog posts on college admissions by Arjun Seth
Looking at small liberal arts and science schools
While doing research for my first article in HT Horizon (see below) I reached out a few students I had worked with in the past. Amar Sarkar (Grinnell '12), Anshu Singh (Clark U '13), Madhavika Bajoria (Bryn Mawr '13) and Tanay Warerkar (Sarah Lawrence College '12) responded to my queries. Thank you, this wouldn't have been possible with you!
While doing research for my first article in HT Horizon (see below) I reached out to a few students I had worked with in the past. Amar Sarkar (Grinnell '12), Anshu Singh (Clark U '13), Madhavika Bajoria (Bryn Mawr '13) and Tanay Warerkar (Sarah Lawrence College '12) responded to my queries. Thank you, this wouldn't have been possible with you!
To read the full article go to
Choosing the right-fit schools
Arjun Seth, Hindustan Times
Selective colleges in the US can broadly be categorised into three types — the large public universities, mid-sized private universities and the small liberal arts and science colleges.
Families in India are usually aware of the first two types but aren’t well informed about the last category. Liberal arts colleges can, however, be perfect for students who want to be in a small, undergraduate institution, looking for a small, intimate campus and tiny class sizes. If you like being part of a close-knit campus community and want more people to be personally invested in your learning goals then these colleges can provide the perfect environment for your higher education and for realising your career goals.
Alas, these colleges don’t show up on popular ranking websites. So if you are ready to go beyond the typical ‘Top-ranked national universities,’ you’ll soon discover why so many students swear by their experience at these undergraduate focused liberal arts colleges, where they’ve found the right kind of intellectual stimulation, care and personal attention.
Go ahead and use tabulated rankings as a starting point for your college search but don’t end it there, for soon you’ll find that rankings are irrelevant and not at all an indication of what kind of college experience is right for you.
Says Tanay Warerkar, a sophomore at Sarah Lawrence College, NY (www.slc.edu), “Having interacted with students from different universities one comes to realise that while rankings are important they certainly aren’t a topic broached on a conversational basis. Each school is identified by the calibre of the students it produces and that might not necessarily be reflective of the ranking of that institution, so I think it has more to do with whether the school has produced students that are now on the public radar.”
Madhavika Bajoria, a student I’ve worked with, wrote to me about her college search when she was in high school and then shared her experiences at Bryn Mawr (www.brynmawr.edu), an all-women’s liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. Bajoria is currently considering a double major in economics and international studies and a minor in Spanish. “Geographic location played a very important part in my selection process. I wanted to be near a city on the coasts. This turned out to be the right decision for me. I always knew I’d major in economics but Spanish became a serious academic interest only after I took a language class for fun and ended up wanting to do it for the remaining undergrad years. Similarly, international studies is a unique programme, which draws from aspects of economics, political science, philosophy and language and culture studies. This was a perfect programme for me since it ties in all my interests and allows me to explore all of them. The general education requirements have been a little bit of an annoyance. I wish there were fewer but at the same time I wouldn’t change any of the classes I chose to take.”
Compact sizes too matter. Says Anshu Singh from Clark University, “the average class size of my intro classes was close to 22. That worked perfectly for me as I had a personal rapport with all my professors, and even my Korean economics professor knew me by my very Indian name.
Currently I am pursuing a double major in economics and environmental science and policy. I had gone undecided, but my faculty advisor and the liberal arts system of education helped me immensely in making the right decision.”
When asked about lack of diversity in some of the liberal arts schools, Warerkar explains, “I was keen on going to a school that did not have a large international student population, and I’m glad I made the decision of choosing Sarah Lawrence. I often find that Indian students tend to stick together and get trapped in a bubble that limits their interaction to the people from their country. I believe this greatly detracts from the overall college experience. I didn’t want to travel all the way to America to solely interact with students from my country. Interacting with American students and others from different countries has been an enriching educational experience, and I would go to the extent of saying that it has changed the way I perceive life. However, having a small international population or for that matter having a largely white student body does have its drawbacks. While I have personally never faced any problems, people from smaller ethnic groups seem to feel threatened at times, and this has resulted in tensions on a few occasions. Such issues often have a magnified impact at a smaller school.”
These colleges also give you the liberty to change courses. Amar Sarkar, currently a mathematics major at Grinnell college (www.grinnell.edu), began as a psychology and economics double major. “These interests change with time and that’s no surprise. One of the main advantages of the liberal arts system is the ability to choose your major field and change your choice while you’re there. As far a general education is concerned, a variety of courses in different disciplines helps cultivate the skills (critical reading and thinking, analytical skills, research skills and most importantly, writing skills) that the college is trying to teach you,” says Sarkar. Rather than looking at the size of the student body as a whole, you should look at student to faculty ratio. “At Grinnell, it is 7:1, which is quite impressive. For undergraduate education, aim for a smaller class size so that you can learn the skills (note, I’m saying skills, not content) to the best of your ability,” advises Sarkar.
Another important criteria while searching for colleges is to assess the personality of the student body each represents, a point often overlooked by students and parents in India. Says Bajoria, “Coming from an all-girls high school in Kolkata with little diversity, my perception of diversity has undergone a complete change, but for the better. The student body at Bryn Mawr is very liberal, outspoken and opinionated. They are also extremely accepting. I really like the intellectual drive and curiosity that I see in most students. However, being an all-women’s institution, there is also a tendency towards non-conformity for the sake of non-conformity, which I don’t really like because it’s insincere. A lot of gender stereotypes are played up in order to allow male-bashing and militant feminism, which can also get very annoying. But besides that, I generally admire a lot of students I go to school with!”
Working with several students for almost a decade, I’ve seen how quickly their perspective on liberal arts colleges has changed from the time of the application to when they come to college. Many are not even sure they would apply to some of the highly-ranked national universities they would have died to get into initially.
Interview with Karan Nagpal, Oxford University
I went to a high school that had a large number of students. Therefore, being around thousands of people was a way of life. This is what lead me to apply to big universities in the US. However, after studying at St. Stephens in India where the community was rather close-knit, I feel that a smaller college works better. There’s always the trade-off between the prestige of a larger university and the close-knit community of a smaller college (luckily, St Stephen’s ticked both the boxes).
Talking about core curriculums. In Stephens we didn’t have an array of diverse subjects that we were required to study. We had our basic economics requirements and requirement for subjects, which were in some way related to what we were studying. However, I feel that the ‘liberal arts’ system and the strict core curriculum that follows it leads to a holistic development and I see no reason as to why it should be an annoyance.
1. What according to you works better at an undergraduate level, a small liberal arts school or a larger university? Does having to meet a core curriculum turn out to be an annoyance in any way?
I went to a high school that had a large number of students. Therefore, being around thousands of people was a way of life. This is what lead me to apply to big universities in the US. However, after studying at St. Stephens in India where the community was rather close-knit, I feel that a smaller college works better. There’s always the trade-off between the prestige of a larger university and the close-knit community of a smaller college (luckily, St Stephen’s ticked both the boxes).
Talking about core curriculums. In Stephens we didn’t have an array of diverse subjects that we were required to study. We had our basic economics requirements and requirement for subjects, which were in some way related to what we were studying. However, I feel that the ‘liberal arts’ system and the strict core curriculum that follows it leads to a holistic development and I see no reason as to why it should be an annoyance.
2. All the students know that rankings ARE important. But, how important are they in your opinion?
I feel that rankings don’t provide a basis for deciding on one’s colleges but yes they do provide one with some amount of consolation. I did not pay too much heed to rankings while drawing up my college list, rather, I focused on other factors such as the quality of education provided at the undergrad level. Reading up on the websites, talking to college counselors, alumni and students is what helped me judge and choose my schools.
Even though I stayed back in India at Stephens I would like the prospective students to know that rankings should not be made the sole basis of one’s decisions, mainly because they are a function of the particular weighting scheme employed, so you must be aware of how the rankings are generated. Besides, consider how volatile they have been, what is in the top 5 now may not be there 4 years later. Of course, the consolation and ego boost they give can’t be underplayed.
3. While deciding on colleges what part did the geographical location (NE, Mid West, West, South) and setting (urban, rural, suburban, college town) play in your decision? Did your opinions regarding this fact change when you joined college?
When I was in high school, the location of the undergrad college didn’t seem to matter and one felt that one could deal with whatever weather came our way. But, after coming to Oxford for my grad school, I’ve realized that getting acclimatized to a town or city, which is distinctive from the place you have always lived in, can be hard. For eg: Oxford is a small city, which is quite rural as compared to, say, London. For someone who grew up in Delhi, which was always bustling and alive, this transition was a little difficult.
4. A beauty of the American education system is that you’re not required to commit to any subject the minute you join. Did this flexibility help you in anyway when you joined college?
I was pretty sure that I wanted to study Economics after high school and thankfully that interest still remains. I also felt that having the opportunity to make a ‘decision’ in college and having to make a choice came as a burden with the flexibility. I had a fair idea of what I wanted to do and didn’t want to confuse or put myself through the job of deciding a major. Therefor, focusing only on economics while at Stephens didn’t feel as much of a constraint, and whatever little interest I had in other fields I made sure I read up enough to satisfy my intellectual curiosity.
5. How important was diversity to you when you started evaluating the US as an option? Have your notions regarding this factor changed over a period of time? What part does the ‘diversity’ angle play in the college lives of international students?
For me diversity was a very important aspect at the undergrad as well as the grad level. Having a diverse, or more international, set of people around helps you get an insight into various cultures and also makes transition into the college easier.
In Oxford, even though all students and faculty work within the department, we are all affiliated to one of the 38 colleges. The college is important for one’s social life and life outside of academics. I was fortunate to become member of a college with a large international student population. Therefore, it helped make my transition easier, there were no set groups or cliques that had to be broken into.
6. If there was one aspect of the Indian and UK education that you don’t appreciate and would want other students to look out for then what would that be?
Since the India system has, to a large extent, been based on the British system, one can criticise aspects common to both. One is the idea of a single set of exams at the end of the year, and not much emphasis on continuous testing.
Also, the Indian pedagogy is not critical enough, so the education system doesn’t focus as much on developing the student’s ability to argue or form a structured opinion.However, in the American and the British systems, such abilities are valued and nurtured.
7. Describe the personality of the student body at your college! Did the personality of the students and the environment of the college come as a shock to you? Do you feel that you have fit into the college community?
St. Stephen’s was a rather intimate and close-knit community that tended to draw you in. In Oxford, I was struck by my classmates’ strong work ethics, discipline and their ability to work very hard. Also, as I said, they have come from systems where their ability to critique and articulate opinions in a structured way has been developed to a larger extent. No, these things weren’t really “shocks,” they were learning experiences, and yes, I suppose I managed to fit into the communities.
The "Why This College" Essay
While the architecture of the college or the city it is located in should not figure as prime factors of your choices, your appreciation of them should represent how you see yourself fitting into the daily routine.
While wading through all the essay questions - talking about your life, motivations and interests, nothing can be more confounding than writing about why you would be interested in a particular college. Although so far you may have been attempting to ‘market’ yourself, here is a question that’s clearly probing how genuine your intentions and choices are. Consequently, most student essays have great difficulty in representing their motivations accurately and not seeming quite vague.
Before you begin writing, you should think about how to narrate the story of making your choice. Your essay should be a brief walkthrough for admissions officer, of the experiences and ideas that have led you to the point of applying to that particular college.
Reading the prompt carefully should keep you focussed on what points you have to cover. You must make sure your essay is concise and is not diverging to unrelated points.
The first step then should involve keeping yourself informed regarding every aspect of that college. The college website should be read thoroughly and you should be aware of every part of the college life – academics, co-curricular activities and clubs and so on. With regards to the programme you’re applying for, try and keep yourself briefed about the faculty members, ongoing research work and the programme itself.
Differentiating yourself from countless other applicants becomes easy once you’re sufficiently aware to be specific about your interests. As they say, “The devil is in the details” and admissions officers are known to favourably remark upon a good eye for the minutest of details.
Write about how the current research work or the academic accomplishments of particular faculty members, align with your motivations in that particular field. If you have already worked out what you want to pursue later in that field, write about that as well in tandem.
Demonstrating a seamless connectivity between how you engaged with your interests in school and how you would engage with them in college is an important part of identifying yourself with a particular college. Relate your past experiences in extra-curricular activities in school – perhaps as a founding member of a club or as a creator of successful initiatives, and try to connect them with similar clubs’ activities in college.
While the architecture of the college or the city it is located in should not figure as prime factors of your choices, your appreciation of them should represent how you see yourself fitting into the daily routine.
Your excitement about being added to that college’s culture and history, should be sustained by your efforts to find points of interest in its various aspects.
Once that is clear, you can easily inset yourself within that life. Admissions officers’ are very appreciative of a personal vision being apparent.
Of course, one of the common errors one makes while writing such a descriptive essay is rambling on. You have to keep in mind that the gentleman or lady reading the essay has countless others to read and will only be irked by incoherent passages. Once you’re done with your first draft, trim it down to the briefest possible version.
Lastly, as you look over your final essay, it would be a good idea to observe how personalised it is to that particular college. If your essay seems to be suitably describe other colleges as well, then it’s obvious you have written a generic one.
Keep in mind that the college you’re applying to is already aware of all the conventional reasons for choosing it. The key to standing out then is to show them how your choice is largely independent of these conventional reasons.
To avoid being vague, be personal. Good luck!
Follow your passions
College admissions officers read your resume, recommendations and essays to form an opinion on how you will contribute to the academic and residential life on campus. Be passionate and express yourself. Remember, deeper your interest in activities, the more impressive your profile will be.
Describing the monotony of his weekly schedule, says Karmanaya Agarwal (First year student at University of Illinois www.uiuc.edu), “Once my family decided that the US will be our preferred destination, I quit IIT Entrance preparatory classes and started focusing on working for the school’s computer science club and participating in regional and national quiz competitions. However I am grateful that the high level of science and math preparation in those classes helped me improve my grades in school.”
Community service and volunteering are common activities that most high school students participate in. However, Arjun Chhabra (freshmen in Cornell University www.cornell.edu) took his interest to another level. He moved to Washington D.C in grade 10 when his father joined the diplomatic mission. He continued working with Chintan when he came back to India for the summer. Chintan is a non-profit organization that empowers the marginalized community of rag pickers who live in despicable conditions in and around the various landfills in Delhi. On his return to America he helped raise funds for Chintan by organizing samosa drives in his high school.
Internship and volunteering activities often help students identify their strengths and interests. Divya Balaji (first year student at Yale University www.yale.edu) worked with the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust over summer. Says Balaji “Assisting a team of herpetologist, observing behavior of Siamese crocodile families, cleaning tortoise pens and assisting in the day to day running of the organization, I discovered my passion for environmental science. My common application essay captured this and I think was instrumental in my admissions.”
Sometimes life-changing experiences can urge you to follow a new path, says Rhea Kohli (a student of Sarah Lawrence College www.slc.edu) “A dear friend lost his life in a car accident. He was a victim of rash driving of another student who was driving under the influence of alcohol. I knew I couldn't get my friend back but by setting up Student Against Drunken Driving I have dedicated the majority of my free time to raise awareness about this issue.”
If you are talented in a Performance or Visual Arts, go ahead and send your art supplement along with your college application. Yashaswini Singh a sophomore at Bryn Mawr College listed her piano grades and showcased her participation at the Grade 8 Toppers concert held at India Habitat Center that was attended by the Chief Minister of Delhi.
Likewise athletes like Shantanu Garg from Doon school sent his athletic supplement along with his tennis coach’s evaluation. Winning prestigious national tournaments and being involved in leadership, distinguished him from others. He was admitted to Claremont McKenna College, Carleton College and Vassar College. Says Garg, “I was the PT instructor for Jaipur House and this additional leadership role at Doon School defined my personal brand. Our efforts were rewarded when Jaipur House won awards for all drills during our Annual Sports Day after a gap of fifteen years.”
College admissions officers read your resume, recommendations and essays to form an opinion on how you will contribute to the academic and residential life on campus. Be passionate and express yourself. Remember, deeper your interest in activities, the more impressive your profile will be.
To read the full article in HT go to the epaper http://bit.ly/cXR9W2