The Question Can Be a Revelation

So you made the mistake of finishing junior year, and now you have to apply to college. We don't know how you're choosing where you want to go, but maybe you should factor in essay questions, surely a tip-off to a school's personality.

Let's take a quiz. Which of these questions is a real college essay question?

A) "Discuss the impact of the iPod on American culture, from music to commercial flight, and imagine where that will lead and the technology that will ensue from it."

B) "Why is it acceptable to kill hogs for food, unlike dogs, when hogs are considered intelligent, too?"

C) "Have you ever walked through the aisles of a warehouse store like Costco or Sam's Club and wondered who would buy a jar of mustard a foot and a half tall?"

Time's up. The answer is C. The question, posed by the University of Chicago, continues: "We've bought it, but it didn't stop us from wondering about other things, like absurd eating contests, impulse buys, excess, unimagined uses for mustard, storage, preservatives, notions of bigness . . . and dozens of other ideas both silly and serious. Write an essay somehow inspired by super-huge mustard."

Essay questions peer into the workings of a high school senior's mind, eliciting nuances that test scores miss. They range from the standard ("How have your life experiences and background shaped you into an individual who will enrich the University of Maryland community?") to the strictly academic (St. John's College in Annapolis asks applicants to discuss an aspect of a book that has shaped the way they think) to the offbeat, wacky and surreal.

Some offer creativity as an option. U-Md., for instance, allows applicants to ask their own question.

Others demand it.

"What is your favorite word and why?" asks the University of Virginia.

Don't have a particular favorite? Then take a stab at relating this gem of a quote from Franz Kafka to your own convictions: "A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light."

U-Va. scrapped a question about switching bodies -- roughly whose would you choose and why -- because the responses got a little too weird. Plus, there were a few too many literalists, who wrote about hot people. (A tip: College admissions staffs generally aren't looking for students whose intellectual pinnacle is their appreciation of great abs.)

We'd like to share one Zen-inspired Chicago essay exercise, but we can't type the Japanese calligraphy. It translates simply as, "Mind that does not stick."

No question. Just vibe on that.

Some of Chicago's questions offer poetical prompts. "If you could balance on a tightrope, over what landscape would you walk?" Some are blank canvases. "How do you feel about Wednesday?"

Then the University of Pennsylvania offers this classic in the admissions biz: "You have just completed your 300-page autobiography. Please submit page 217."

With any luck, it includes big mustard, guillotines, and a little Zen, all before senior year.

-- Susan Kinzie