For young high school students seeking opportunities for higher education, the process of entering college can be a daunting task. One of the tasks in this process is the required college admission essay.
Oftentimes, it is the profound challenges of a young Black person’s lived experiences that portray their lives as a series of hurdles and obstacles and insurmountable trials. This is a story they are sometimes advised to write, hoping that college admissions officers will find their life personally compelling enough to be admitted into whatever institute of higher learning they oversee.
Many colleges and universities strive to be progressive and intentional about fostering an environment that is academically competitive and racially diverse.
Aya Waller-Bey, a Detroit native, knows this all too well, as she became an admissions officer soon after graduating from college. She recently penned an Op-ed about the issue in The Atlantic titled “A Big Problem with College Admissions Could Be About to Get Worse.”
In an interview with the Michigan Chronicle, Waller-Bey, a Doctoral Candidate in Sociology at the University of Michigan, said she eventually decided to study the college admissions process and found that stories of trauma in essays from student applicants were widespread.
“I received a clear message that I should reward high-achieving students from historically marginalized backgrounds who also described struggle and adversity in their admissions essays. The idea that these students should have to prove their worthiness by putting their trauma on display seemed patently unfair,” she said.
“In my research, …Black people, in particular, feel that the only narrative they should share about their identities and backgrounds is a story about trauma. I find that harmful because it diminishes the positive experiences of our young people.”
Waller-Bey believes that anyone can encounter hardship but also holds the belief that there’s a difference between telling youth that the only story they can share and the only story that’s important about their lives and experiences are the most painful ones.
“I find it incredibly harmful to say, ‘Hey… write this story about this very traumatic moment when you were 15 or 16,’ while you’re still processing and making sense of it. You don’t even know who is going to read it once you submit that application.”
Waller-Bey suggests that there needs to be more education about what happens when a student applies and the opportunity to find other ways to convey one’s story to college decision-makers.
“We need more education about the other types of stories we can tell that also respond to our authentic lived experiences and highlight the joyful or positive aspects of our identity,” she said.
So, why do Black applicants feel compelled to write about their traumatic experiences in their college essays? According to Waller-Bey’s research, Black students have been convinced that trauma sells, and admissions officers have been trained the same way.
“It’s because of the expectation that being Black, from Detroit, or a first-generation student entails having this particular narrative, and that colleges and universities will readily accept it.”
It’s been a strategy that has worked for years—adversity stories become paramount to the identity of a perspective collegian applying to get into a school.
Admission officers won’t dictate what students should write, but Waller-Bey finds that while higher education institutions won’t advocate for the content of students’ essays, colleges highlight students in newsletters and online who come from adverse situations. That tends to create a sociological perception among applicants about what colleges find acceptable.
“When students apply to and are accepted by universities, they don’t consider how what they discuss in their stories becomes attached to them. People simply assume that’s the entirety of who they are,” she said. “They’re perceived as just poor kids from the hood, even though they possess numerous talents and gifts that they should have the opportunity to explore without solely being labeled or defined by their trauma or struggles.”
However, the problem could worsen following Supreme Court decisions in the cases of SFFA vs. Harvard and SFFA vs. UNC, which ban affirmative action practices in college admissions. This might lead some students to emphasize their adverse situations even more, even if colleges cannot use race as a deciding factor in admissions practices.
Race is a crucial component in student essays and for the admission officers who review them.
According to Waller-Bey’s research, “college-admission officers, 65 percent of whom are white, express deep ambivalence about trauma-focused essays. They do not encourage applicants to write about trauma, but they admit that these narratives provide helpful context when so many students are applying with few opportunities to distinguish themselves, and when schools want to ensure racial diversity in their classes.”
Waller-Bey clarifies that she isn’t urging student applicants to avoid discussing trauma in their college essays. More importantly, she advocates for students to share stories that are meaningful to them and to do so on their own terms.
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