(I don't think this belongs in any other circle, so I am posting it here)

If any of you have applied for college in the last 10-30 years, you've probably gotten familiar with the Trauma Essay, even if you didn't give it a name. Almost all college essays have you write at least one essay where you write about a challenge you faced or something of the sort. If you're not familiar, you can look up various essay examples and guides online. The general idea for having essays like this is that children with less opportunities will score lower on exams, so the essay is a leg up in admissions (and then they can succeed in college and have more opportunities). Whether or not it is a good idea, or is even effective, is still a point of controversy. To nobody's surprise (if you read the title), I am going to criticize these sorts of essays.

Looking at examples, you'll see a lot of essays from "exotic" backgrounds (e.g. not white), war related, activism, allyship, broken family, mom had cancer, men bad, minority good: whatever colleges will lap up. You'll see some that are like "I made a business when I was 13" or are actually creative writing, but for some odd reason those are a lot rarer. You're told almost explicitly by advisors (and the colleges themselves) that if you don't play this game, you won't get in.

To a student, the point of the Trauma Essay is to make yourself as glamorous to college admissions as possible. And because a student is only in it for themselves, students will end up writing whatever they think will maximize their chance of success. Nobody will hold back out of consideration for the less fortunate.

Students very quickly realize that nobody wants to hear about how you are dedicated to learning and want to succeed to secure a good job... unless that comes with a backstory of poverty, or being a minority, or whatever would excuse away the shame of wanting the same thing but experiencing no serious challenges in your life.

Have a disability, but you just kind of live with it? Be black, but your family is well off and you're living in a good environment? Be a girl, but everyone around you has actually treated you with respect? Be gay, but everyone has been accepting? You're probably sitting there and staring at your computer screen like, "well, fuck." You had a good life, and you are now paying the price. A good grade isn't enough- you must also be good ideologically as well. So what do you do? You milk it as hard as you can regardless. Even lie a little. Or maybe a lot. If you can't claim any of the common oppression points personally, you can even go the ally route and do an activism spiel. How would they fact check most of this, anyway, aside from if you claim to be black and have your pasty white face plastered all over Instagram?

On the other hand, if you have gone through the acceptable amounts of struggle in all the right ways, you're either psyched to partake in victimhood, or annoyed you have to use very personal life moments if you want a chance at success. Nothing says fun and enjoyable like turning your abusive childhood into a writing exercise.

In summary, the Trauma Essay is like dragging your naked body over a bed of used needles. It will probably hurt you, both in the short term, and the long term. The short term damage is degrading yourself. The long term damage being if it works, you are then immersed for several years in an environment which created the Trauma Essay.

I mean, just look at the results of this one survey (https://www.intelligent.com/6-in-10-college-students-lied-on-their-applications/). 61% of students lied about something. Of those who did, 39% lied about their race, 32% lied about religious preference, 19% lied about veteran status, 21% lied about disability status, and 34% wrote untrue stories. Of those who did lie, 31% strongly believed, and 30% somewhat believed, that lying helped them get accepted.

So, when anyone asks "why would anyone lie about being <thing that is seen as a disadvantage>," point them to the Trauma Essay and the college admissions process.