15 crazy college application questions

TheDustyZebra

TheDustyZebra

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The 15 Most Ridiculous College Application Questions - Yahoo! Finance

Many of these questions make me wish I were applying to college. I could easily see myself writing an essay explaining jumbo containers of mustard, or theorizing on where Waldo really is.

Ever since I read it, I've been thinking of possibilities for writing page 217 of my 300-page autobiography. If only I could work a raven into it, I might have something! :D

And of course, many of us here would be thrilled to see the prompt, "You have 150 words. Take a risk." Ok, the theme is "take a risk", open genre, and we have ...150 words? Wow, that's twice as many as usual! Do we get three votes? :D

I think my favorite, though, is this one:

"Modern improvisational comedy had its start with the Compass Players, a group of University of Chicago students who later formed the Second City comedy troupe. Here is a chance to play along. Improvise a story, essay, or script that meets all of the following requirements:

- It must include the line “And yes I said yes I will Yes” (Ulysses, by James Joyce).
- Its characters may not have superpowers.
- Your work has to mention the University of Chicago, but please, no accounts of a high school student applying to the University—this is fiction, not autobiography.
- Your work must include at least four of the following elements: a paper airplane, a transformation, a shoe, the invisible hand, two doors, pointillism, a fanciful explanation of the Pythagorean Theorem, a ventriloquist or ventriloquism, the periodic table of the elements, the concept of jeong, number two pencils."
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I uhhhh and I have to pay them if they think its funny enough to get accepted at U of YukYuks?
 
I guess I wouldn't pass this one -
"If you were reduced to living on a flat plane, what would be your greatest problems? Opportunities?"
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- because I'd be unable to resist saying:
Pardon my plain speaking, but I really can't get over how foolish this question is. Thank you for the opportunity to tell you this, albeit at the risk that you're going to turn me down flat.
​
 
Well, of course they have silly and absurd writing prompts for college entrance. They need to make sure their graduates have a sense of humor so they're more likely to laugh about their years of unemployment and crushing student loan debt rather than coming back to shoot up the campus.
 
Well, yes, they do this so that they can brag about what a great place they are for thinking outside the box and all that, while they really toss these essays in the round file and base their admissions on how many (really expensive) extra-curricular activities you racked up in high school (= how many buildings your family can afford to endow).

As a high school student, I would undoubtedly have given them Ursa's answer, spread out floridly over six pages. These days, I would view it more as an amusing exercise.
 
There is a story about Niels Bohr: At last, the field of physics has its own version of the urban legend

An instructor administering an exam to his students asks them to measure the height of a building using a barometer. A students turns in a paper which says, "Tie a string to the barometer, lower it down the side of the building, and measure the string." The instructor is furious and fails the student. The student appeals the decision, stating that he gave a correct answer. The committee decides that, yes, the answer was correct, but the student did not show any understanding of physics so it is inadmissible. They will give the student one more chance to answer, but he will have to demonstrate a knowledge of physics to pass. The student sits there thinking. When the examiners ask him if he gives up, he says that there are so many answers that, by golly, he just can't pick one. They tell him that they'll fail him unless he says something. He says this:
You can measure the shadow and the length of the barometer, and then measure the shadow of the building, and use the ratio of shadow-to-length to figure out the height of the building.
You can just drop the barometer over the side of the building and figure out the height by the time it takes to hit the ground.
You can make a pendulum from the barometer and measure the gravitational force exerted by measuring the swing, calculate the force of Earth's gravity, which lessens as you get away from the Earth, thus determining the height of the building.
You can climb down the fire escape, using the barometer as a ruler, and mark off the building's height in barometer lengths.
If you're very dull, you can use the barometer to calculate the air pressure on the ground and at the top of the building and use the difference to work out the height of the building.
Or if you're smart, you can go to the janitor and tell him that you'll give him this beautiful new barometer if he tells you the height of the building.
​
This old chestnut has been chalked up to every clever student ever to study physics. The most popular incarnation of the legend attributes it to Niels Bohr, brilliant physicist and Nobel Laureate. Still, the first written version of the story only goes back to 1958 - considerably after Bohr's student years - and was written by Alexander Clanadra, in a textbook about encouraging students to think of all the ways to solve a problem. He does say it was a true account of a real student, but that student - with nerves of steel - has not been identified.
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I like the Oxbridge one, again possibly apocryphal, where the interviewee walks into a Don's rooms for his interview.
The Don is in an armchair with his feet up reading one of the broadsheet newspapers. He looks round the side of it briefly and says "Entertain me," then is hidden by the newspaper again.
The student gets out a cigarette lighter and sets the paper on fire.

The story doesn't say whether the student was accepted......
 
I'm only guessing, but I suspect that (possibly apocryphal) Don may have said, "Enlighten me."
 
"If you were reduced to living on a flat plane, what would be your greatest problems? Opportunities?"

Non-retractable undercarriage, I'd have thought.
 
Isn't a flat plane a flying carpet?








I believe the flying carpet is source of the idea that women prefer rugged men. (The alternative, that women prefer men who wear wigs, is simply too fantastical.)
 
"Create a short story using one of these topics: 'The End of MTV,' 'Confessions of a Middle School Bully,' 'The Professor Disappeared' or 'The Mysterious Lab.'"
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What a Tangled Web...

When the Professor disappeared from The Mysterious Lab, it prompted a rather disturbing confession from his son, a student at Whodunit Middle School. The popular network MTV bought the rights to the confession for what was only described as “a ten figure contract”, and produced an exclusive program called "Confessions of a Middle School Bully", which was seen by a record 917,987,003 people last Monday night.

Early Tuesday morning, it was announced that the financial consequences of the contract, coupled with the boycott of the network by over a billion people, had officially ended the run of Music Television.

The End.


I wish I was applying to college. I totally nailed that one!
 
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