Harvard University was once synonymous with the most prestigious of U.S. institutions of higher learning, but that day is swiftly passing. Now yet another controversy exposed its far-left direction, this time from the school newspaper, the Harvard Crimson.
The editorial board of the nation’s oldest collegiate newspaper saw fit to editorialize about word counts in application essays. Students declared that these limits are “discriminatory toward marginalized people.”
Their concern for the hordes of marginalized Americans applying to Harvard is touching.
Harvard Students: Required Word Counts in Application Essays Are… Discriminatoryhttps://t.co/SpMLfRroXu
— RedState (@RedState) September 17, 2023
The issue expressed by the student editors is not that the mandated word count is too long, but rather that it is too short. Their reasoning became clearer when they referenced the Supreme Court’s disallowing of affirmative action in college admissions.
Apparently, the Harvard administration is limiting how much a prospective student may write about their “diverse” background. This, they claim, adds to the uncertainty of applicants looking to cash in on their race or ethnicity to gain admission to the Ivy League school.
The editors noted that Harvard instituted a change in its supplemental essay questions.
Instead of having an optional open-ended essay and two optional short essays, there is now a series of five required short essays. Each has a 200-word limit.
The changes were made to benefit “marginalized” communities, but the Crimson editors perceived them as harmful instead.
The students wrote that they harbor “misgivings” over the applicants’ ability to “capture the diverse array of student experiences” in only 200 words. For the editors of a newspaper, this shows a remarkable lack of understanding of the writing experience.
As any writer knows, the challenge isn’t reaching a high word count with quality content. True skill is being able to condense the subject matter into a brief piece that captures both the facts and the broader picture without going on for lengthy pages on end.
The editors acknowledge this to an extent, claiming that “learning to package yourself within a shorter amount of space is the product of an advanced education.”
However, isn’t this the type of student such a prestigious school is looking to attract? Perhaps not, if diversity is both the means and the end. If that is the case, Harvard has already left the ranks of elite institutions.
