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In This Issue

• Get Your Freak On, Dorks
• (Almost) Rejected by Israeli Security
• Beaten by the Retard: Adventures in Drama
• Letters to and from the Fed's Maxima and Co.
• Columbia Hipsters Are So Shallow You Think You’re in High School
• Are You a Terrorist? The Government's Shocking Answer
• Failed Terrorist Herbie Bin Laden Marries Jewish Wife, Dabbles in Scientology
• Poetry.com: Your High School Poems are Waiting for You…
• Bottled Water: Bigger than Jesus, and now Semen Free
• Revolve magazine: The Seventeenth Seal
• I Passed the Oral but Failed the Urine
• Horribly Hassled Hermaphrodites Harangue Humanity
• Trial and Error Your Way to Perfect Genital Design
• Shot Down! : Rejections Made Simple
• Your College Essay, but with less Suck
• New Twenties Bring Back Tired Old Monopoly Money Jokes

Although I'm an arrogant, white, Ivy League jackass, I'm far from wealthy.  In fact, I'll do just about anything to pay for college.  Unfortunately, the current job market reeks worse than a pickup truck carburator full of Japanese squirrel intestines.  Even my summertime gig as the bathroom attendant at Spicy Pete's Rib-Shack of Ribs might be gone, and then what the hell will I do with my life?  But after the 250th, I know Columbia has undergraduates in mind, so I’m willing to bet I can at least get a job with the university.  That’s why I’m training myself to become an admissions officer after graduation.

It’s easy to practice, what with all the online application sites like essayedge.com, not to mention the kids from my high school sending me their applications for proofreading: "Addison, you once mocked my disability/ethnicity/religion/wearing of a trucker hat, and I think you owe it to me to check my application to Wherever-the-Crap State..."

Thus, I critique applications from people trying to get into the nation's finest  academic institutions. So while I don't have much in common with most of the fast-track, pre-law, pre-med, pre-rich bastards I run into every day, I do have some advice for all you ambitious types, in the form of tips I've accumulated through reading countless applications. This advice applies to grad school, med school, and whichever college, prep academy, or nursery school you'll eventually push your over-achieving, neurotic little offspring toward.

Tip Number 1: Cancer research and treatment have advanced by leaps and bounds.  Ergo, No One Cares About Your Cancer Story Anymore.  Everyone gets cancer nowadays, and lots of people survive it.  Those who don't gain a beautiful perspective on life's true value before passing away, such as the value of not annoying me with a thousand words about Daddy's chemo. Hell, while my dad was in the process of pimp-slapping cancers in his kidney, prostate, and skin, I dealt with his sickness with healthy, prolonged silence and staring downward, not through sappy writing and "emotions." In your personal statement, I want to know about your personality, not your inherited genetic predisposition for some ailment which might make you a burden on Health Services. Write about your own problems, not about how some alcoholic relative's liver made you "feel." Stop taking credit for other people's pain, you selfish prick. Next.

I also immediately rip any essay about working at a soup kitchen into fourths. Why?  Well, Unless You Want a Job in the Cafeteria, I Don't Give a Shit if You Spooned out Free Chili for Hobos.  Your so-called charity adventure boils down to this: You stroked your own ego while doing next to nothing to actually alleviate homelessness. What's worse, you probably slowed down the whole buffet operation with your amateur food service skills. So you actually made homeless people stand in line longer for a hot meal. They had to wait for Sloppy Joes while you smugly patted yourself on the back. I oust you from the pool, you cruel, insensitive twit.

By the way, don't copy the sample essays on essayedge.com. First, it's illegal and morally wrong. Second, they suck. For instance, check out this excerpt: "Music is my work. And music is my life. . . . When I beat-match a series of visuals to a thick hip-hop rhythm, the elements on screen appear to dance." The "elements" only "dance" because you're high. Tip the Third: Musical Talent is Worthless.  Send me your application when you have a real hobby, you hippie virus.

Another no-no: Don't EVER Start ANYTHING with a Famous Quote. I've been seeing this in lots of writing here at Columbia, and I feel compelled to tell anyone who believes in doing this: You are Lame. Starting your personal statement with someone else's idea signifies that you have about as interesting a personality as Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.  Maybe you think your own worthless garbage can slip in the back door while the reader admires the wisdom of Bishop Don Magic Juan. Sorry, no such luck. Your drivel will just look worse by comparison.  Subconsciously, you are admitting that your life is worthless. As your admissions officer, I would choose to de-college-ify you. Go home and burn your book of famous quotes. Then burn yourself.

I also see that a lot of applicants focus on being biracial or inhabiting two separate cultures.  Tip Number Five: Don't Try to Make the Random Effects of Genetics and Upbringing Into Some Personal Virtue, You Unoriginal Goon. Honestly, shut the hell up about how hard your cross-cultural, inter-whatever experience has been.  Everyone does that; Get over it, and write about something cool.  For example, just because I'm more awesome than everyone else in the world combined doesn't mean I write essays about how hard it is adapting to a culture of baboons. I may be a demigod, but my personal statement was about riding the bus.  Write about something like that.  In fact, just insert the sentence "Addison Anderson is a man-child in the Promised Land" anywhere in your essay, and I will let you in to SEAS. Then, burn yourself.