Nothing wrong with being common

Earlier this week, the 'Prince' Editorial Board complained that the University's decision to accept the common application compromises the "essential personality and spirit" of Princeton.

I do not doubt that there are special features of a Princeton education that distinguish us from our peer institutions. The Freshman Seminar, the Junior Paper, the absence of professional schools and the requirement that all professors teach undergrads all contribute to the uniqueness of Old Nassau.

But the fact that we enjoy being distinctive in some respects does not imply that we should strive to be distinctive in all respects. Despite the Editorial Board's fears, abandoning an idiosyncratic admissions form does not threaten to erase all of Princeton's distinguishing marks. There is no reason to suppose that because Princeton now accepts a generic application, it will begin to provide a generic education.

And yet, the Editorial Board is alarmed by the very commonness of the common app. They affirm that the Princeton "application experience" should be "as unique as the education earned by successfully completing it." But why? Surely uniqueness is not intrinsically desirable — we should not aim to be different for the sake of being different. On crucial matters of policy, we differ from other schools not to maintain some vague Princeton "vibe," but because we think we have good reasons for doing things our way. The mere fact that the common app is not unique to Princeton is irrelevant to the question at hand: is the common app an improvement over the old PU application?

We should begin by noting that the common app is generic by design. To criticize it as such is to assume, wrongly, that generic is always bad. Indeed, the Editorial Board gives short shrift to the advantages of a standardized application form. They concede that the common app yields a larger applicant pool, but they undervalue the significance of that result.

They do not acknowledge that, on principle, we should make our admissions procedures as simple and accessible as we can. The whole point of an application is to identify students who will do well at Princeton. I fail to see how that objective is furthered by artificially narrowing the applicant pool to those students who manage to procure and complete a separate PU application. Exceptional high school seniors who may never have been turned on to the idea of coming here may apply just because of the convenience of the common app. Why shouldn't we be eager to consider them? Why not give students every chance to make the case that they belong at Princeton?

I cannot endorse the whimsical notion that our application should be part of the "Princeton experience." The application should be, rather, a simple data-collection instrument to determine whether or not a student meets Princeton standards. The popularity of the common app lies in the recognition that the vast majority of schools use the same data set to make admissions decisions. Consolidating this data onto a single form is good common sense. There is no need to have a unique application process if we are trying to collect precisely the same information sought by the vast majority of universities.

But in concrete terms, how does the common app stack up to Dean Fred's application? The Editorial Board cites only one real deficiency in the common app. They contend that the two open-ended questions posed by the common app are not as "challenging" as the four specific essay questions on the old Princeton form.

I cannot think of any reason to accept this premise. The point of the essay section is to elicit a standardized writing sample. I don't see why an applicant's talents as a writer or thinker would be less evident in an essay on a topic of his or her own choosing than in a response to a more specific prompt. The editorial insists that the common app essays are "absurdly" broad, but is it really so absurd to assess students' potential by asking them to write about something of particular interest to them?

It is tempting to flatter ourselves in the belief that the old Princeton app had an uncanny ability to pick out just the right people (it picked out all of us, didn't it?). But if the Editorial Board cannot be more specific about the concrete advantages of the old application, then I am left to conclude that switching to the common app costs us nothing save our pretensions. Jeremy Golubcow-Teglasi is a religion major from Potomac, Md. He can be reached at golubcow@princeton.edu.