In Frank Bruni’s “How to Survive the College Admissions Madness,” he discusses failures and acceptances for top-ranking students applying for top-tier colleges. He uses short sentences, incisive diction, and sets a hopeful tone to the essay; however, he mainly portrays the successes of top students that do not end up in top colleges through cause-and-effect.
From the beginning of the article, Bruni exemplifies a student named Peter Hart. He had come from a very affluent school in Chicago. However, when applying to his top two choices, University of Michigan and University of Illinois, “both rejected him” (4). He then went on to attend Indiana University instead, where he felt that he “was a competent person” (6), succeeding immensely at that university and ending up attending graduate school at Harvard. By using a specific example to show the cause and effect of an intelligent being rejected and attending a lower-ranking college, Bruni is giving the audience evidence that his points are true. The audience is also able to make a connection between his argument that top-ranking students attending lower-ranking colleges will still be successful because Bruni uses Peter Hart’s example to connect the dots and provide substantial evidence.
Bruni, an American journalist who won and was nominated for many prizes for writing, wrote this text in order to highlight the idea that success can come out of failure. He focuses his audience on students that are in high school and college—especially those in their high school senior year, applying, receiving, and being rejected of their applications. Bruni does this to show those students that just because their top choice of college rejected them does not mean that they will not go on to succeed later on in life. Not only does he make his audience as students, but parents of those students as well. In the last paragraph, Bruni adds a letter sent from parents to a student that was rejected from his top two colleges and instead attended his third choice. The letter shows the love and support his parents give him despite his inability to attend a top college. He utilizes this letter to send the message out to other parents that they should support their child to the end—for their failure not does not mean that they will not be successful later.
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