Is this really fair? Certainly some students will succeed in writing wonderful essays. But mostly this will be because of natural talent or dubious outside help. First-person writing is rarely taught in high school English. This is even truer for the brightest students, those who take A.P. English courses, which stress, in the words of the College Board that guides their curriculum, “expository, analytical and argumentative essays.”

But rather than ask applicants to send the most muscular, impressive example of the writing they have spent four years honing — a class assignment on “Romeo and Juliet” or the origins of the Civil War — colleges ask for a genre of prose they have almost no experience with.

From The Almighty Essay