The Common App Fallacy Critiqu... free essay sample

The Common App Fallacy Critique In the essay Common App Fallacy by Damon Beres, the author states that getting into college by using Common Application will not help fulfill students individuals qualifications and searches. He argues that it only exists as a cheap system to create money and it saturates the applicant pool. Beres makes a lot of interesting arguments against Common Applications, although he does not provide credible proof rather just persuading the reader to agree. Beres opens this essay with data stating New York University only accepted 11,000 students out of 34,000 applicants. To further build his argument he informed the reader that his friends with a GPA that resembles the population of China and extracurriculars that make Jimmy Carter look like a lazy old coot (Beres, 79) werent able to access their desired schools. Beres explains that striving for higher education is a common and competitive goal. The creators of the Common App tried to solve this by allowing students to photocopy their applications and send it to as many colleges as they can and hopefully get accepted into any one of them. We will write a custom essay sample on The Common App Fallacy Critiqu or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Fundamentally, Beres argues that students apply to whatever school with higher education without worrying about being interested in the subjects. He continues arguing against the Common App saying that it diminishes students individuality and special characteristics that would shine in a letter of recommendation. Beres adds that the students are not at fault for the college board and several universities advocate the use of the Common Application. He backs it up by informing us that the College Board allows students to project their SAT scores to numerous colleges and how the Common App is able to transfer a multitude of applications with the click of a mouse. Throughout the essay Beres brings up accurate and credible statistics and then he also adds some questionable data. When arguing about students not being able to get into the schools they deserved, he added that he asked people the average amount of schools they applied to seems to be around 10, though many that I know have applied upward of 16 (Beres, 79). He does not include how many people he asked. It may have been three people he interviewed. He did not even bother to add on who these people were and their background, therefore not credible information to use in a argument. He also failed to include those of which that did not even apply to Universities and took the community college route or not even going to college route. Although some information that he provided wasnt reliable, he did bring up a few dependable statistics. He states that colleges have disclosed that applications have grown over the years. He adds that it is a good and bad occurrence because it would mean students are intrigued with higher education or it could mean that some students are settling for a college because they arent getting into their dream school. This information makes sense, because it couldve only gone one of those two ways. It was an educated assumption and I enjoyed that he shared it with the reader. Fast forwarding to the end of the essay, Beres dabbles in using emotions and evoking sympathy from the audience. He says maybe the College Board and the Common Application should go all out..and charge more to send out scores and applications to discourage students to sending them out with reckless abandon (Beres, 80). This statements digs a hole into chest. It makes me feel like after his whole argument he is just going to give up. He just presented us with all this information and if he feels too defeated to do something about it then the audience should take the situation into their hands and try to demolish the use of Common App. His argument in this portion fluctuates between being good and bad. This statement was powerful and it made me feel something, but its going to much into my emotion he forgets to implement a logical explanation. To finish off his emotional rouse, he ends his essay with an analogy about winning the lottery and getting accepted to a college. He states that Princeton University accepted 1,838 out of 18,942. I have about a one-in-five chance of winning on a Crazy Cash scratch-off ticket. (Beres, 80) Arguing that students should have a better chance of getting into college than winning a lottery. The essay The Common App Fallacy by Damon Beres brings up several interesting points that I agree with. The Common App should no longer be an option for applying to colleges because it only saturates the application pool and lets students become lazy. It overshines students uniqueness. Beres is very good at trying to persuading the reader, but only that. He fails to bring up a good amount of correct and credible sources to support him.