US colleges and universities are defined by their exclusivity, and the most prestigious schools reject most of those who apply. Yet these same schools also widely advertise their inclusiveness, encouraging students from all backgrounds to submit applications and highlighting evaluation protocols that identify many characteristics worthy of consideration for admission. We surface this paradox and use it as motivation to theorize a little studied component of college applications: personal essays. Drawing from cultural sociology, we posit that the commission and production of essays extolling applicant worth and worthiness is a ritual practice that instantiates an idea of merit that is broadly shared among those who submit applications to admissions-selective schools. We pursue this work empirically by observing essay prompt selections of 55,016 applicants to the University of California in 2016 and conducting human readings and statistical analyses of 3,519 unique essays. Results indicate that prompts and essays encompass a broad but bounded range of life challenges that selective schools and applicants consider meritorious. The entire process of application to selective US schools helps to reify a national faith in a broad and inclusive conception of merit.

美国的学院和大学以其排他性而著称，最负盛名的学校拒绝大多数申请者。然而，这些学校也广泛宣传他们的包容性，鼓励来自不同背景的学生提交申请，并强调评估协议，确定许多值得考虑入学的特征。我们将这个悖论浮出水面，并将其作为理论化大学申请的一个小部分研究的动机：个人论文。借鉴文化社会学，我们假设委托和撰写颂扬申请人价值和价值的论文是一种仪式实践，它体现了一种在向招生选拔学校提交申请的人中广泛分享的优点观念。我们通过观察 55 篇文章的提示选择来凭经验进行这项工作，2016 年加州大学的 016 名申请人，对 3,519 篇独特的论文进行人工阅读和统计分析。结果表明，提示和论文包含范围广泛但有限的生活挑战，精英学校和申请者认为这些挑战是值得的。申请美国名校的整个过程有助于具体化国家对广泛而包容的优点概念的信仰。