“What the hell is water?” by David duKor-Jackson

In his 2005 commencement address to the graduates and assembled guests at Kenyon College, noted author David Foster Wallace began… “There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘What the hell is water?’”

(DFW went on to deliver a timeless and celebrated address that is well worth checking out when you have the chance. )

I find that I am frequently referencing that story as I think about the challenges we have getting applicants to share information and insights about their lives in ways that help us to contextualize their achievements.  We have struggled in the admissions office to craft questions and prompts that elicit substantive and meaningful responses. While I accept the possibility that we just haven’t gotten the prompts quite right, I think it is more likely that a) applicants simply don’t understand what information we are looking for, and b) even if they understand what we are looking for, most people, including those who apply to MIT, have a difficult time thinking about and articulating what is most meaningful about their own lived experiences. 

Within our large and exceptionally talented pool of applicants, students routinely produce impressive academic portfolios of achievement and distinction.  There are, however, important qualitative considerations in how we assess and evaluate what we determine to be exceptional,  and it is partially up to applicants to help us to identify the true trail blazers. As I have said repeatedly over the years, “the factor that is both most salient, and most likely to swing an admission decision in a highly selective process, is what an applicant makes of the opportunities that are available to them.”  A corollary is that “…we may look just as favorably on the trajectory and distance traveled as we do on the heights achieved.”

This is all to say that in order to best evaluate applicants it is helpful to have an understanding of the “water” in which they are swimming, or context as it is more commonly referred to.  DFW explains “The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”

Ultimately though, we are dependent upon what applicants choose to tell us, and if they choose not to share anything of substance, we have a lot less to base our decisions on.  So while I wish that I could leave you with something more concrete along the lines of “do this” or “don’t do that.”  Instead, I have to hope that making you aware of our interest in the water in which you are swimming gives you sufficient inspiration to think more deeply and share more readily, the contextual insights that help us to better understand you and your achievements.