Some schools want applicants to show they can tolerate different viewpoints
For years, high-schoolers have boasted in college applications about learning Latin, leading the chess club or acing Advanced Placement Physics.
Now there is a new way to get a leg up: Show how well you can disagree with people.
Elite schools like Harvard, Columbia, Emory and Wellesley have added essay questions in the past couple of years asking applicants to recount a dispute with someone whose beliefs differ from their own. It is known as the “disagreement essay.”
Admissions advisers and influencers are flooding the internet with advice on how to answer the question. Some tips: Don’t write about arguing with parents (shows immaturity), don’t push political opinions (too controversial) and pick unexpected topics (try humor that slides into deeper meaning).
“We call it the hot, new ‘It Girl’ of college admissions questions,” said Caroline Koppelman, a college-admissions consultant.
The aim, colleges and advisers explain, is to probe how well students can countenance other viewpoints. “We are looking for students who want to be bridge builders,” New York University tells applicants on its website.
Duke this year asks applicants to describe a time when they had a difference of opinion with someone they care about, and what they learned. That is a shift from last year, when the prompt asked students to recount either an agreement or a disagreement.
Duke’s interim dean of admissions, Kathy Phillips, said the revision aligns with a school initiative to “build skills to engage with complex topics with an open mind and humility.”
Essay prompts often reflect the political moment, college consultants and former admissions officers say. Questions about social justice and diversity became popular after the Black Lives Matter movement grew a few years ago. Prompts about feminism and gender equity ascended during the#MeToo era, and questions about community arose after Covid isolation.
Since President Trump took office, he has pushed colleges to show they can welcome conservative views.
“The essay questions follow the times,” said Tara Dowling, an independent educational consultant.
Koppelman, who founded the college-admissions consulting company the Koppelman Group, recommends students avoid gravitating to extremes when answering the question. One essay she read about a disagreement over popcorn flavors was too smallstakes, she says, while anotherabout conflict in the Middle East was “too much.”
Showing growth is important, she says. “We don’t want to end our essay on a huge bummer,” she noted in a blog post. “They do not want to hear that this disagreement ruined a relationship—they want to see how you moved forward with this person.”
Dowling read one strong essay about a student who got stuck at a table at a family wedding with a r a cist uncle who had been banned from previous events for expressing ugly opinions. The two found common ground over baseball, and the uncle opened up about how crucial he thought the integration of the N e g r o Leagues was to the sport.
In the essays, and overall, colleges are looking for applicants who were willing to be changed by another perspective, said Ethan Sawyer, a consultant who founded College Essay Guy. Examples of mutual learning are stronger than ones where students convinced others they were right, he said. The purpose isn’t necessarily to “win.”
“These qualities of interdependence and willingness to be changed are like the medicine that campuses need,” Sawyer said. “Who are going to be those students who can bring the temperature down?”
Not everybody is a fan of the disagreement prompt.
Christopher Schorr, director of the higher-education reform initiative at America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank, called this prompt a “hollow gesture” at civility and viewpoint diversity on college campuses.
“It smells like corporate box-checking,” he said.
Alisha Hussain, a highschool senior in California, is currently pondering how best to answer the disagreement question for Columbia and NYU. She may write about how she aspires to be a leader in fields where women are underrepresented, which clashes with her grandparents’ more protective and traditional view of what a woman’s career should look like. Hussain had to balance her goals with what she was taught about respecting older family members and their opinions.
She wants to convey a resolution that doesn’t seem too extreme but also feels significant, she says.
“The rest of them are just: talk about your personality, how you overcame obstacles,” Hussain said. “This one is like other people, other opinions.”
