Writing to Get Into University

I am working at the moment with students from an international school in Amsterdam who are in their last year of high school and are preparing to go to university. My role as a writing consultant is to help them with the written part of their college applications - college essays in the US, personal statements in the UK.

The transition between school and university is a huge challenge as many posts on the excellent Student Room discussion forum confirm.

Students have to focus on their exam subjects in the school context and, at the same time, project themselves ahead into a largely unknown and rather daunting new context, that of the university. And in that precarious state of being between-contexts they have to be confident and competitive.

It's a tall order. It involves constant shifts between academic work in the present, which largely follows the school timetable, and questions about aptitudes, preferences, personality and self-presentation which point towards the future. These questions often fall through the cracks in the school curriculum. They are about identity as much as knowledge - 'who are you?' and 'what do you want to do?' as much as 'what do you know?'

I am interested in how this period of 'transition' makes students rethink constantly and develop new understandings about themselves, about what it means to study, about what it means to be 'academic', and about writing.

Transition from school to college involves a whole range of activities - researching online, networking, bulletin boards and chat, interviews, visits - which project students out of the school environment, even though the school might host them.

Writing is one of these practices. Success in getting into university is not just about writing in exams; it is also about strategically managing a lot of extra writing. Writing traces the transition from one identity to another; but, as far as college essays and personal statements are concerned, it is also transformed by universities into a device for the selection of students.

Listening to the students I am currently working with, transition writing is not just about essays and statements. There's a lot more going on: application forms, portfolios, letters, emails. Getting into university - managing the school-to-college transition - is a major literacy life-event aside from the writing that is formally assessed.

And of course a lot more than writing is involved, as millions of parents know. I was struck by this photograph from China which appeared last year on the BBC News website. It shows parents and students sleeping over in a large sports centre. They are waiting to register for one of Beijing's top universities: