The College FixHarvard University’s new application essay requirements, including a 200-word limit, put racial minorities at a disadvantage, the editors of its student newspaper wrote this week.student editorial board said the new short-essay questions “seemingly cater to those from highly privileged backgrounds.”
“Our foremost concern: How can students reasonably condense discussions about formative life experiences and their identities into 200 words or less?” the student editors wrote.in June that its race-based admission practices were unconstitutional. Among the changes were its essay requirements. The Ivy League school used to allow student applicants to choose from a series of questions and write one long, open-ended essay and two shorter optional essays, according toNow, the application requires students to write five short essays within a 200-word limit in response to “new mandatory prompts,” the student editors wrote.
These requirements hurt “marginalized” students, forcing them to answer questions that may “not be relevant to their background,” they continued. “Learning to package yourself within a shorter amount of space is a product of advanced education; longer essays more equitably allow applicants to discuss their experiences in full, particularly if they are from non-traditional backgrounds and require more space to elaborate on nuanced qualifications,” the editorial board wrote.