“What are the unique qualities of Northwestern — and of the specific undergraduate school to which you are applying — that make you want to attend the University? In what ways do you hope to take advantage of the qualities you have identified?”
More than 2,000 Early Decision applicants responded to that essay question by Halloween this year. Apparently, there seems to be a modest demand for higher learning among rising high school seniors. Also, it appears that quite a few intellectual youths claim to know what’s unique about Northwestern. They’re probably wrong.
To be quite frank, I’m feeling generally bittersweet. It’s difficult to imagine I was a bright-eyed participant in the grueling admissions cycle a year ago, scrutinizing my ACT composite score and obsessively reviewing every minor detail of the Common Application before clicking Submit. Naturally, I ponder what firsthand advice I could offer prospective students. A few tidbits of conventional wisdom come to mind, but I’d rather share a sentiment that most clueless guidance counselors (“Oh, you have a B-plus average? You’re a shoo-in at Yale!”) won’t reveal: You can’t fully comprehend a unique quality of Northwestern until you’ve traversed Evanston’s main artery.
Successfully crossing Sheridan Road is a tortuous art form, a meticulous science, an endless torment. Awash in understandable naivete, most students do not fully comprehend the street-side stakes. This is not the human reincarnation of Frogger. Those pixelated minivans are not equivalent to the manic rush of a mid-life-crisising Latin professor fixated on catching the first eight minutes of “Modern Marvels.” A Sheridan commuter is savage but occasionally courteous; he’ll shatter your coccyx, Twitpic the crime scene from behind an immaculate Lexus windshield, and then somehow inform your discussion leader that you’ll need a wheelchair today. Now that’s genuine town-gown relations in a post-blow-job-holla society.
But we, as traffic savvy-challenged freshmen, cope accordingly. Why should we wait for the foolish approval of that silver, gender-ambiguous icon? I’ve endured many a failed jaywalk endeavor, dejectedly returning to my curb of origin, only to have to shamefully face the wiser civilians. Their passive glares penetrate the sensitive depths of my soul and resound with unspoken condemnation. Why you’d have to bail, bro? Clearly you did not see the solid orange hand, telling you to take a deep breath and just stand here awkwardly with the rest of us. Wait, are you hyperventilating?
No, you’re not. That surging wave of public humiliation will eventually calm, and you’ll triumphantly ford the Goddamn Snake River (Admit it: You were feverishly anticipating a Oregon Trail reference after that Frogger ditty). And as for that claque that assumed an integral role in your life for all of 40 seconds while the civil-engineering buffs? They will scatter, and I — yes, the first-person narrative has been restored ahead of the upcoming profundity — may never grace their presence ever again, sans an inadvertent elbow bump while grasping for Sugar in the Raw packets at Norbucks.
I can only deduce that they once had to answer that contrived, uninspired admissions essay prompt. Maybe they discussed a particular academic program. Or Northwestern’s convenient proximity to that one metropolitan center. All I know is every university campus nationwide boasts vexing crosswalks. I suppose — wait for it, just wait — it’s who you brave the vehicular peril with that defines the inherent uniqueness of any college experience. Christopher Watson, dean of undergraduate admissions: Hire me.