All Souls, a graduate-only college at the University of Oxford, is doing away with a tradition that has existed for nearly a century: the single-word essay question.
According to the Guardian newspaper, “The task has defeated even the most brilliant of minds in requiring them to open an envelope, inside which is a card with a single word — for instance, innocence or morality — and to write coherently about the subject for three hours.”
Applicants for All Souls’ prestigious graduate fellowships must also perform well on four other, more typical exams, but it is the one-word question that has long intrigued people. Crowds are said to gather outside the exam hall to learn which word has been chosen. Past questions have included “novelty,” “water,” “miracles,” and “bias.”
“We have dropped it with some regret,” says Sir John Vickers, head of All Souls. “It was the part of the exam where everyone did the same thing, but experience shows that we get more insight into candidates’ abilities when they are free to choose from question papers.”
In face-to-face interviews with undergraduate applicants, Oxford’s tutors continue to pose odd questions: “How many aeroplanes are flying above Oxford at this moment?” and “What does it mean for someone to take another’s car?”
A BBC News article once described how an interviewer, who avoided eye contact and expected a female applicant, had startled a male applicant by addressing him as “Jane.”
In the United States, any discussion of provocative essay questions leads to the University of Chicago. At the top of the list of this year’s entrance-essay questions: “How did you get caught? (Or not caught, as the case may be.)”
Another asks applicants to describe something they’ve outgrown and tell what has taken its place, and still another calls on them to pose a question of their own. “If your prompt is original and thoughtful then you should have little trouble writing a great essay,” the guidelines state. “Draw on your best qualities as a writer, thinker, visionary, social critic, sage, citizen of the world, or future citizen of the University of Chicago; take a little risk and have fun.”
What odd or provocative questions does your college ask applicants? What questions have you been asked? Tell us in the comments below. —Don Troop
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10 Responses to Bizarre College-Entrance Questions: Discuss
11336803 - May 18, 2010 at 4:15 pm
This practice (especially at the undergraduate level) strikes me as a way to pass along privilege under the guise of being thought provoking or interesting; cluck, cluck, chortle, chortle. The fact is that most undergraduates don’t get asked questions at all and this exemplifies the narrow view of higher education that persists nationally.
isambard - May 18, 2010 at 4:19 pm
All Souls is not the only ‘graduate only’ college in Oxford. There are five such colleges; its claim to fame is that it has no students, only fellows. It’s a pity to drop the essay question, if only because it was a real test of candidates’ imaginative powers. Many very clever young people fell at that hurdle. Fifty years ago, it was a common feature of entrance examinations for eighteen year olds as well. The interview question that I always liked was a colleague’s polite inquiry: ‘could you have been a saucer?’
princeton67 - May 18, 2010 at 8:17 pm
Q: “How many aeroplanes are flying above Oxford at this moment?” A: ” all of them. There is no airplane flying below Oxford at this moment.
kurtosis - May 19, 2010 at 10:51 am
@princeton67: How do you define below? Are we dividing space into halves and defining ‘below’ as everything on the Earth side of a plane tangent to the Earth at Oxford?I think a better solution would be to recognize that Oxford is not far from Heathrow; that this proximity would affect flight patterns; and, that some fraction of planes use a runway that would put them roughly over Oxford. The guess is then that fraction multiplied by the number of airplanes in, say, the current ten- or fifteen-minute window. Rough, but doable.
skocpol - May 19, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Volcanic dust permitting.
42zing - May 19, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Decades ago, a creative writing professor asked students seeking entry into his ‘by permission only’ course: what’s inside of a ping pong ball?
22079340 - May 19, 2010 at 2:49 pm
I recall a college classmate’s reporting that he had just completed an exam with the single word, Why.
tridaddy - May 20, 2010 at 9:17 am
To which the response would be “why not”.
riheaa1 - May 21, 2010 at 10:32 am
Or the time tested parental response “because I said so”.
nrsantilli - May 21, 2010 at 5:13 pm
“Novelty,” “water,” “miracles,” and “bias.” Hmm, how’s this: Novelty, Ohio; water-logged; Smokey Robinson and the Miracles; and Tobias. Would I get in?