Distinctive

By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D.

To say that a lot has changed since March 2020 would be an understatement. I’m sitting here typing away on a flight between San Diego and Washington, DC, wearing an N-95 mask, and holding a portable air purifier on my lap. I got to the airport in an Uber that had all of its windows down and ate a snack in the airport sitting at least 100 feet away from any strangers. Let’s just say that we’ve all had to make adjustments, whether it was to our behavior, our movements, or the items we carry. 

College applications have made changes, too, the most notable one being the COVID-19 Statement. While this was an obvious addition to these online forms, the way to use it isn’t always quite as clear. While some schools, like MIT, that use their own applications have very precise instructions on how to use this space, the Common App’s prompt, which everyone encounters, is less straightforward and thus open to interpretation.

Community disruptions such as COVID-19 and natural disasters can have deep and long-lasting impacts. If you need it, this space is yours to describe those impacts. Colleges care about the effects on your health and well-being, safety, family circumstances, future plans, and education, including access to reliable technology and quiet study spaces. Please use this space to describe how these events have impacted you.

Since 2020, college applicants, their parents, and even college consultants like me have sought guidance on how to use the 250 words given to answer this prompt. In some instances, students have insisted that they didn’t have anything extraordinary happen to them, so they felt no need to use the space. Others experienced truly terrible consequences that impacted a parent’s employment or health, their own mental or physical wellbeing, or their access to education, and they wanted to address these issues. Others still found their life improved (yes, you heard me right), from having a serious wake-up call regarding their previously unhealthy or unproductive choices, to finding opportunities to make meaningful contributions to their communities.

I want to reassure you that, no matter what your experience has been – unremarkable, negative, or positive – all are valid approaches to the COVID-19 Statement. Let’s address each view separately.

The Unremarkable – Generally speaking, in college admissions, anything “optional” is not really optional unless you physically or financially cannot do it. The COVID-19 Statement is one of those very rare cases when that rule does not apply. You definitely do not need to use the COVID-19 Statement if you have not experienced any meaningful or unique changes. It’s much better to stay quiet than say, “My team sports were canceled for a year, just like everyone else’s,” or, “I got to hang out with my friends and family more.” This type of information won’t help you, so feel free to leave it out.

The Negative – For most people, this is the most obvious way to answer the COVID-19 Statement. At some schools, teachers fell ill and students were left without anyone to educate them in several classes. The majority of my students have caught the coronavirus and missed a couple of weeks of school as a result. One has even suffered from long COVID, which has impacted his ability to attend school in-person, prepare for his SAT, and participate in his activities. A few parents have lost their jobs. All of this is definitely worth mentioning in applications, and I would encourage students who experienced negative consequences as a result of COVID-19 to not only mention them, but also describe the steps they took to get back on track.

The Positive – What has surprised me most about the COVID-19 Statement was the slew of interpretations emphasizing the negative approach that came out within the first month or two of the prompt’s appearance. These were released after the Common App itself encouraged students to also consider positive outcomes: “The inclusion of the COVID-19 question will give our students an opportunity to name and describe the challenges and triumphs they have endured due to this pandemic.” Unfortunately, too many people either skipped the accompanying blog post or paid no attention to the prompt’s intentionally neutral tone. For this reason, I want to reassure all of those students who took this crisis as an opportunity to make their own or others’ lives better to use this space to tell college admissions officers all about it. For example, one student of mine organized a 200-kilometer charity bike around his country to raise money for hospitals in India. Another student witnessed his grandmother struggling to connect with her doctor through a rapidly adopted telehealth system, and he conducted and published research on this issue. Many others realized how needlessly they previously procrastinated as intense boredom kicked in, and suddenly they became go-getters. If you have something positive to say about how you’ve responded to the pandemic, then use the 250 words given to you to explain how. As the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously once said while helping to form the UN, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”

Adding your story or leaving it out will create its own impression that college admissions officers will see (sometimes silence also speaks volumes). Just remember that, however you choose to use the COVID-19 Statement, make sure that it reflects your truth about these unusual years.