August 25, 2013.

Writing The Right College-Entrance Essay

Winston had finished his bread and cheese. He turned a little sideways in his chair to drink his mug of coffee. At the table on his left the man with the strident voice was still talking remorselessly away. A young woman who was perhaps his secretary, and who was sitting with her back to Winston, was listening to him and seemed to be eagerly agreeing with everything that he said. From time to time Winston caught some such remark as "I think you're so right, I do so agree with you," uttered in a youthful and rather silly feminine voice. But the other voice never stopped for an instant, even when the girl was speaking. Winston knew the man by sight, though he knew no more about him than that he held some important post in the Fiction Department. He was a man of about thirty, with muscular throat and a large, mobile mouth. His head was thrown back a little and because of the angle at which he was sitting, his spectacles caught the light and presented to Winston two blank discs instead of eyes. What was slightly horrible was that from the stream of sound that poured out of his mouth, it was almost impossible to distinguish a single word. Just once Winston caught a phrase----"complete and final elimination of Goldsteinism"----jerked out very rapidly and, as it seemed, all in one piece, like a line of type cast solid. For the rest it was just a a noise, a quack-quack-quacking. And yet, though you could not actually hear what the man was saying, you could not be in any doubts about its general nature. He might be denouncing Goldstein and demanding sterner measures against thought-criminals and saboteurs, he might be fulminating against the atrocities of the Eurasian army, he might be praising Big Brother or the heroes on the Malabar front----it made no difference. Whatever it was, you could be certain that every word of it was pure orthodoxy, pure Ingsoc. As he watched the eyeless face with the jaw moving rapidly up and down, Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a real human being but some kind of dummy. It was not the man's brain that was speaking; it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.

This spring, with little fanfare, the folks behind the Common Application----the main application form for almost 500 of the nation's top colleges and universities----announced a big change: the personal statement, the form's core essay, has been extended from 500 to 650 words long.

Syme had fallen silent for a moment, and with the handle of his spoon was tracing patterns in the puddle of the stew. The voice from the other table quacked rapidly on, easily audible in spite of the surrounding din.

I thought: that'll be $13,000.

"There is a word in Newspeak," said Syme. "I don't know whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse; applied to someone you agree with, it is praise."

Several years ago, on a high floor in a midtown Manhattan office, a father offered me $10,000 to write his son's personal statement. Apparently he had misunderstood what was meant by "independent college applications adviser." The publishing industry may be in a tailspin, but in some places, writers can still earn $20 a word. Thanks to the Common Application's changes (and not including inflation), that's $13,000 a kid.