About this time of year, some of my clients are pulling their hair out because they have to answer crazy questions on their college applications.  Some colleges even ask kids to make up their own question and answer it.

One, possibly apocyrphal, story has it that an applicant to Harvard or Princeton dealt with this open-ended question this way:

Question:  “Do you play the tuba?”

Answer:  “No.”

Apparently Oxbridge applicants are asked even crazier questions:

What would you do if you were a magpie?

Why don’t we fire all the politicians and let the managers of IKEA run the country?

How would you poison someone without the police finding out about it?

Thankfully none of my clients is applying to Oxford or Cambridge.  This year, anyway.

Check out the CNN story here: Admission questions to Oxford, Cambridge called ‘out there’ – CNN.com

Mark Montgomery
College Counselor