college essay on being adopted

College Essay: Sum of All My Parts

Korean adopted.

All powerful words that make me who I am.

People sometimes ask me when I knew I was adopted. My response is always the same: I always knew. There was never an ah-ha moment. My parents, a middle-class couple who met in a college classroom, constantly brought the topic up. They taught me my culture was something to be proud of. Although my parents and I had different experiences of becoming a family, they love me. There is no doubt. My parents could have had kids but chose not to, so my sister and I were never a second option to them. They taught me how to love differences and be inclusive to everyone.

Everyone, no matter their story or the path they take, is equal. I carry that mentality with me every day; it makes me who I am. My values influence me in what I do and how I act. No matter skin, age, identity, religion or gender, nothing should get in the way of someone being treated fairly.

But, regardless of how I’ve gotten here, living in a world with so many people and things working against you is still hard. People judge you for what you wear and what you say. People constantly stare because I have two white parents. I’ve had to learn to become perceptive to the judgment of others.

I’ve been forced to realize my place in society. I’ve had to learn to be understanding and patient and learn how to control my emotions. I stand strong and block out people’s stares and comments toward my family. I ignore their insensitivity, and I am patient with people’s ignorant questions. I am asked, “Are you from North or South Korea?” I want to yell, “If you knew your history, or anything at all, you’d know I’m from South Korea.” Instead, I politely answer the question and accept that they don’t know better, that the person asking the question might not realize its impact. Can you imagine a complete stranger coming up to you and asking you a totally personal question? How would that make you feel?

When people come up to me and ask these questions, I choose to take the high road rather than judge them , because I enjoy helping them understand the impact of their words. I like the feeling of knowing I personally helped someone understand something important to me just a little more, and this feeling drives me to continue advocating not just for myself, but for the other things I care about too: Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ pride, freedom of religion, women’s rights, animal cruelty, anti-Trump activism, access to education, refugees, sexual harassment, child soldiers, child labor, protecting our oceans, police brutality, borders, migrants and countless other social justice issues around the world. Being driven and having goals in my life has only helped me become a more aware leader.

I know I have felt left out in both cultures—American and Korean. That is what made me resilient. I have come to terms with my identity and who I am, and I now know that some voices aren’t heard loudly enough. I advocate for others the way I would advocate for myself. Going to college will allow me to explore my options and the ways I can apply my talents toward amplifying the voices of others.

ThreeSixty Journalism,

a nonprofit program of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas, uses the principles of strong writing and reporting to help diverse Minnesota youth tell the stories of their lives and communities.

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Last updated June 15, 2023

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Blog > Essay Advice , Personal Statement > 3 Ways to Approach College Essays About Adoption

3 Ways to Approach College Essays About Adoption

Admissions officer reviewed by Ben Bousquet, M.Ed Former Vanderbilt University

Written by Ben Bousquet, M.Ed Former Vanderbilt University Admissions

Key Takeaway

If you’re adopted, you might be wondering whether you can write your college essay about your experiences as an adoptee.

The answer is simple: absolutely! College essays about adoption aren’t overly common. And because the topic tends to be such a personal one, you don’t have to worry too much about being cliche or general. Reflecting meaningfully on your own experiences is enough.

In this post, we’ll go over three strategies for writing your college essay about adoption, and we’ll talk about two mistakes to avoid.

The first way to approach your college essay about adoption is to focus on the theme of identity. In general, topics related to identity tend to lead to outstanding college essays because they’re inherently personal and vulnerable—two foundational traits of a personal statement . Adoption essays are no different.

When writing about adoption and identity, applicants tend to focus on their identity prior to and after being adopted. For some, a personal statement might detail the journey of reconciling their identity at birth with their identity in their adopted family. For others, it might center on an identity they’ve held all along.

Whatever your story is, you can be authentic in how you present your journey with your identity.

Biology or Psychology

You could also take a more academic approach to your personal statement by exploring your adoption through a biological or psychological framework. This approach may work especially well if you want to go into either field.

Exploring your adoption through a biological or psychological lens might look like an investigation into your own experience of nature versus nurture. Where do you see similarities between you and your adoptive family? Do you have any traits you think are genetic?

With this approach, you can show a keen academic interest in a subject while also exploring your own background and identity.

If you were adopted into a family whose culture differs from that of your birth family, then you might choose to write about your identity through the lens of culture.

The majority of applicants who take this approach write about their journey reconnecting with their birth culture. Others write about what it was like to adapt to a new culture when they were adopted. And others yet discuss the feeling of being in between cultures.

No matter what your own experience has been, you can write a strong essay by reflecting on how your cultures have shaped who you are today.

Two Mistakes to Avoid

While you don’t have to think too much about avoiding cliches, there are two common mistakes to be on the lookout for as you’re writing and revising your personal statement.

Focusing too much on negative or difficult emotions

Adoption can be a challenging subject to write about under any circumstances. In a college essay, it can be especially difficult because the stakes are high and you’re writing for an audience of faceless admissions officers.

While you may have heard that you need a “sob story” to get into college, the truth is that college essays are most successful when they don’t dwell on the negative. That’s not to say that you can’t write about anything difficult that you’ve faced. But you want your admissions officers to have positive emotions when they think back on your file, so your essay should ultimately resolve with some kind of light, hope, or positivity.

Telling a story that is about your adoption, not you

As we’ve already covered, adoption is a solid topic for a college essay. But you don’t want your college essay to be only about your adoption. It should, in the end, be about you .

Whatever you reveal to your admissions officers through your adoption story should serve two purposes: 1) to give insight into who you are, and 2) to reveal something about your core strengths. (If you want to know more about either of those purposes, hop on over to our guide to college essays .)

So don’t simply detail your adoption or focus only on the aspects that have been positive or negative for you. Write about them only for the purpose of telling admissions officers something about yourself.

The bottom line

If you feel so inclined, go ahead and write your college essay about being adopted. You might approach the topic through the lens of identity, biology, culture, or something uniquely your own. Whatever approach you take, make sure to keep the focus on you, not your adoption, and to conclude your essay on a positive note.

Looking for inspiration? Check out our college essay examples . We have a bunch—and they’re all graded and annotated by former admissions officers.

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Think Simple Now — a moment of clarity

How to end your dependence on other people, finding my way out of depression, be more, do less, how to overcome perfectionism, how to have everything you want, 25 things to avoid for better relationships, the illusion of control, unconditional love – a story of being adopted.

It’s safe to say that one of the greatest feelings in the world comes from the warmth of being unconditionally loved. Whether that mean the love of your spouse or partner, or the connection you share with your mom or dad. Or even the loving bond between your siblings and friends.

I’m extremely grateful for all the love that I’ve had in my young life. But the truth is, there are many parts of the world where unconditional love is lacking. With wars taking place each and every day, messy political battles, starvation, and greed; the world needs you more than ever.

Because even in the darkest of alleys, remains the fact that we as humans are meant to love.

I wrote this essay nearly 4 years ago during my sophomore year of high school, and to me, it captures the essence what unconditional love really is. Certainly, my birthparents weren’t the only ones to show me this mysterious force, but the story carries an invaluable lesson that you can probably relate with.

Unconditional love is the solution to all of the worlds’ ills.

While the details of this story may differ from yours, I ask you to go forth and share the light within you.

This is a tribute to my birth parents – because of their unconditional love I am able to share my passions with the world – I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

The night before, I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake tossing and turning. What was I to expect? What was I to call them? Mom? Dad? I will never forget the day I hugged my birth parents for the first time in a mid-sized chain restaurant. I was 12 years old.

“ But why? ” I often recall asking my mom, when the subject of being adopted came up. “ Because they loved you honey ,” she would patiently reply.

Ever since I can remember, my parents have been nothing but honest with me concerning adoption. For this reason, I have become comfortable openly talking about adoption.

I’ve always found it funny, how when a person I know discovers I am indeed adopted, they are always afraid to ask questions. Now, I know they are just trying to be respectful, but I have nothing to hide.

My parents’ honesty and candor regarding adoption has caused me to admire the both of them, greatly. I realize that not all children are as lucky as myself. I have heard stories of adoptee parents who have hid the fact from there children that they were adopted.

This saddens me deeply. Being adopted is nothing to be ashamed about. I am truly grateful for how my life has turned out thus far.

My birth mom at the time of her pregnancy was not married to my birth father, their relationship anything but stable. Receiving news that she was to have a boy , she began to think.

She couldn’t stand the thought of me not having a father; a father to play catch with me outside in the backyard; a father to take me camping on the weekends; a father to give me the always dreaded “ birds and the bees ” talk.

For this reason my birth parents agreed, for my own well-being that I was to be put up for adoption. For my birth parents to put up their only son for adoption, shows how much they loved me. To do what they did must have been one of the hardest things they had ever done; but when it came down to the future of their baby boy, they knew what they had to do. To this day I thank them.

My parents always wanted to have kids, and like many other families, adoption didn’t even register in their minds. They tried to have kids the “normal” way. Nothing. They tried again and again and again. Still nothing.

Finally after a visit to the doctors they discovered that having biological kids were not part of God’s plan. For a couple whose only dream was to raise their own children, this discovery became -as my parents recall- “ one of the lowest points of their life. ”

Biological kids may not have been in God’s plan, but the man up stairs had something else up his sleeve.

My parents – still distraught over their inability to have their own children – had nowhere else to go, they turned to prayer. It wasn’t long before their prayers were answered, in a form a of a phone call. A friend of my mom, who ran a daycare center, knew of a lady who’s sister was putting her baby son up for adoption.

My parents jumped on the bandwagon. With in a few weeks I was in their hands. Who said not being able to have biological kids was a bad thing?

It was finally the day! The day I was to finally meet the two people who brought me into this world. I picked out my favorite pair of jeans, a nice t-shirt, and a sweatshirt – in which an outline of snowboarder gracefully covered the front.

My dad, mom, little brother, cousin, and I were to meet my birth parents for lunch. I had been waiting for this moment all my life. Who was I going to look more alike? My mom? My dad? My mind was bombarded with questions on the drive (which seemed like forever) over to the restaurant. We got to the restaurant and parked.

With every passing moment, my heart began beating faster and faster, for reasons I can’t explain. At the last moment I became scared, so scared I almost couldn’t move. We opened the door to the restaurant and walked in. Off to the side, there was a couple with a table reserved. The couple – my birthparents.

The next few minutes are hard to recall, as it all happened so fast. All I remember is hugging both my birth mom and birth dad and feeling a sense of joy fill my body. I was the luckiest kid in the world. I had four parents who would give the world for me. I had seen pictures of my birth parents as a child but nothing beat a real life photograph of them.

We continued on to have lunch, which was filled with lots of questions – none concerning adoption, of course. What was my favorite color? (blue) and so forth. I can honestly say that was one of the best meals I ever had.

Every day, I thank God for how things have turned out in my life. It is amazing how our lives are a mere result of cause and effect. If one small piece of my past were altered, it would change the world today. I respect my birth parents for giving me up, for doing what they thought was right, at the time. This is a pure act of love.

To say they were successful in providing me with a good life would be an understatement. They provided me with the best life a kid could ask for.

I also thank God for not allowing my mom and dad to have biological children, for if that were to have happened, I would have not been adopted by some the most loving parents in the world. I wouldn’t be who I am today, without their guidance and knowledge. This is all part of God’s plan and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Bud Hennekes is an 19 year old college student who believes in living your passions and shares his insights at his blog A Boundless World . His hobbies vary depending on the day but more often than not he enjoys: reading, writing, conversation, meditating, and changing the world. Feel free to subscribe to his blog here.

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I Am Grateful To Be Adopted—and Yet, Adoption Is Still Traumatic

If trauma changes the way we are wired, perhaps my wires got crossed at birth

Theodora Blanchfield is an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist and mental health writer using her experiences to help others. She holds a master's degree in clinical psychology from Antioch University and is a board member of Still I Run, a non-profit for runners raising mental health awareness. Theodora has been published on sites including Women's Health, Bustle, Healthline, and more and quoted in sites including the New York Times, Shape, and Marie Claire.

Yolanda Renteria, LPC, is a licensed therapist, somatic practitioner, national certified counselor, adjunct faculty professor, speaker specializing in the treatment of trauma and intergenerational trauma.

Verywell / Madelyn Goodnight

It’s Not Black and White

Nurture Versus Nature

In the middle of a blizzard, my birthmother handed me over to my adoptive parents outside a hospital in suburban New Jersey, three days after I was born.

As I grew older, we moved into progressively larger houses, my Christmas presents were more costly, and the private university I attended expensive.

My parents remained married, and there was never any kind of neglect. (If anything, as a child of the helicopter-parenting generation and an Italian-American mother who didn’t work, I wanted less attention… but that’s another essay.)

My life was so peaceable growing up that being adopted was the only adversity I could think of to write my college essay about. This is fairly common for many adoptees—adoption isn’t cheap, so many adoptees go to families of privilege.

I didn't suffer any major traumas within my adoptive family, or in general growing up.

And yet, I have dealt with severe depression, and my psychiatrist monitors me for signs of bipolar because of genetic susceptibility combined with that attachment trauma. I’ve been in inpatient treatment for six weeks, I’ve attempted suicide twice (adoptees are four times as likely to attempt suicide as non-adoptees and deal with mental health issues at a higher rate than non-adoptees ). I receive monthly ketamine infusions for my treatment-resistant depression .

Adoption, it would seem, treated me well. Loving parents who cared for me the best they knew how, never wanting for love or anything material.

If you are having suicidal thoughts, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.

For more mental health resources, see our National Helpline Database .

It’s Not Black and White

Adoption narratives, like many other things on social media, paint things much more black and white than they actually are for many people. Anti-adoption advocates paint adoption as akin to human trafficking; adoptive parents and adoptee advocates paint adoption like it’s a fairy tale with a happy-ever-after ending.

But what if it’s somewhere in between?

Growing up hashtag blessed doesn’t erase the trauma of being removed from my birthmother almost immediately after birth. I didn’t understand this until I was older, but our body stores trauma .

I’ve always thought the inner child stuff was a little woo-woo for me, but there is an infant Theodora inside of me who didn’t have words for the trauma of being given up immediately after entering this world. She has been fighting for her life to get her needs met and be heard—and trying to kill me when they couldn’t be met.

She is responsible for the chaos that is my irritable bowel syndrome , the squeezing of my head with the chronic tension headaches I have. My head frequently aches under the pressure I feel to prove that I’m not abandonable. The premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) , as my reproductive system, my own womb, creates a violent storm through my severe mood swings and cramps.

Anti-adoption advocates paint adoption as akin to human trafficking; adoptive parents and adoptee advocates paint adoption like it’s a fairy tale with its happy-ever-after ending. But what if it’s somewhere in between?

I startle easily, too, such as jumping when I receive a phone call, even one I am expecting. I always attributed this to my undying devotion for coffee, but I recently learned this is hypervigilance , something I only ever associated with PTSD from, well, anything but adoption.

But if you’ve had that attachment severed at birth, isn’t it natural that you would always be on high alert, nervous of the next rejection?

My therapist says I go searching, and she’s right. I’ve been probing for the reasons why adoption affects me so much—when I know them biologically and intellectually, really—rather than looking at how it affects me. There’s not some big secret trauma I’m missing. There’s not one particular reason that validates my pain.

Intellectually, I do know and believe that my birthmother made the right decision for both me and herself. She was in college and wanted to finish undergrad and go to grad school, and having a kid just wasn’t in her plans—plus I know she was struggling, too, with her mental health, with substance use, with her own trauma.

But I see myself literally curled up in the fetal position, isolating, all while clamoring for love, for touch, for attachment. It’s both never enough, and I freeze up, already anticipating it leaving.

I once did a walk-and-talk session with my therapist, and towards the end, I froze in panic, unable to take another step. I didn’t know why I was suddenly so anxious and she floated that maybe I was anxious because she was about to leave me. Indignant, I said, “Um, no, I’m OK with you leaving.” I mean, I’m an adult, and now a therapist myself! I know a therapy session ends after 50 minutes. I know I will see her next week.

My conscious was OK with her leaving. My unconscious was desperately hanging on to this woman with whom I have such a deep connection, like when my umbilical cord was severed, and with it, I became disconnected from my birthmother for life.

Privilege doesn’t negate not knowing where you came from or erase that always-wondering what’s nurture and what’s nature —something you’ve probably never thought about if you’re not adopted.

The women on my mom’s side of the family all have self-described “bad feet.” They are prone to bunions, to corns, to myriad ailments of the feet. I remember looking on, envious, in a way that I didn’t fit in there.

Or my heritage. Raised Italian and Irish, but biologically Swedish. I feel like a fraud when I say I’m Italian, with my blonde hair and green eyes; I feel like an impostor when I say I’m Swedish because I know so little about that heritage. (I know these are privileges, too. Not only am I the same race as my adoptive parents, but I look so much like them, weirdly, that people are incredulous when they find out I was adopted.)

My conscious was OK with her leaving. My unconscious was desperately hanging on to this woman with whom I have such a deep connection...

I’ve never felt as much a part of the fabric, rather than the seams, on the edges, as when I visited Stockholm, where I was conceived. Even though I was only there for 18 hours and had never been there before, I felt a part of it, rather than looking at it from the outside.

My parents once briefly thought about sending me to Catholic school, and I sat in on a half day of school there once. I understood what the classes were about, I looked like the other kids, I was able to converse with them…and yet I wasn’t actually a part of the class. I’ve spent much of my life feeling like that—that I was sitting there going through the motions but I wasn’t actually a part of anything.

I don’t fault my adoptive parents or family for anything they did, because we all do the best we can with what we know at the time, right? But with that said, I’m learning there can still be profound effects—without additional trauma—of some of the usual adoption narrative.

Telling an adoptee that you “don’t think of them as adopted” is a knife that cuts both ways. It’s meant to be an olive branch, but it also discounts that it is my reality, that I was separated at birth from the woman with whom I share DNA who carried me for nine months. It invalidates the reality of the complexity of all those feelings bubbling up just below the surface, pushing them down until that soda bottle bursts, spilling out years of repressed emotions .

It wasn’t until I started regular therapy at the age of 30 that anyone genuinely and earnestly asked me what it was like to be adopted, beyond a voyeuristic way. It’s taken me years to put into words those primal feelings of rejection that live in my gut and show up in so many ways in fear of abandonment , in relationships both platonic and romantic.

In 2017, my adoptive mother died, and it destroyed me. My closest attachment and connection in the world, yanked away from me. She was my ambassador to our family. Sometimes that was her playing puppeteer, as I’d come to understand more after she died, but mostly, it was her helping me maintain the relationships with the rest of the family.

Telling an adoptee that you 'don’t think of them as adopted' is a knife that cuts both ways. It’s meant to be an olive branch, but it also discounts that it is my reality, that I was separated at birth from the woman with whom I share DNA, who carried me for nine months.

When she died, it was like I was marooned just outside the family but couldn’t get back inside. Especially since losing her, I so deeply envy the women my age who are part of multigenerational biological families—their own mothers, their own daughters/children. I know their lives aren’t perfect, but I see those deep ties, whereas I feel alone.

It wasn’t until I started a graduate program in clinical psychology to become a therapist that I really felt validated in my feelings about adoption—and that I felt permission to feel things beyond being grateful for the life my adoptive parents gave me (which I also am!). Though my views are less extreme than the anti-adoption narratives, I appreciate seeing them to give me words for the feelings I’ve repressed for so long for fear that they might destroy me if I gave air to them.

Eventually, I learned that I’d been leaving myself my entire life, the way my birth mother had left me so long ago. If I never showed my full true self or even stayed with it on my own, I’d never be abandoned again.

Our bodies and brains yearn for homeostasis and the familiar. If abandonment is what you know, it becomes “comfortable,” and self-abandonment is something you can “control.”

If trauma changes the way we are wired, then perhaps my wires got crossed at birth, or even pre-birth. Maybe my nurture did save me from my nature, from avoiding some of the things my birthparents had to deal with that surely would have destroyed me.

Or surely I’d still have issues of a different kind if I’d either been raised by my birthparents or birthed by my adoptive parents.

Either way, these adults made decisions—some that gave me the canvas, some that gave me the paintbrushes and paint. It’s up to me to take those tools from them and paint my own life.

Keyes MA, Malone SM, Sharma A, Iacono WG, McGue M. Risk of suicide attempt in adopted and nonadopted offspring . Pediatrics . 2013;132(4):639.

By Theodora Blanchfield, AMFT Theodora Blanchfield is an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist and mental health writer using her experiences to help others. She holds a master's degree in clinical psychology from Antioch University and is a board member of Still I Run, a non-profit for runners raising mental health awareness. Theodora has been published on sites including Women's Health, Bustle, Healthline, and more and quoted in sites including the New York Times, Shape, and Marie Claire.

Just one more step to start saving colleges!

Adoption as an Admission "Hook"

Question: My daughter is adopted. Should she mention it in her applications, and--if so--could this be a "hook" in the college admission process? Are there any special scholarships for adopted children?

Being adopted and talking about it in college application essays is fairly common these days. Typically, itâ€™s not a â€œhook,â€ but a lot depends on your daughterâ€™s circumstances and how she presents them. For instance, if she was adopted as an older child or spent time in the foster care system, this would certainly make her more atypical than a child who joined her new family as a baby. If her racial background is different than that of her adoptive parents, it might be fodder for an interesting essay, but frankly it wonâ€™t make her unusual in todayâ€™s competitive admission pool.

Your daughterâ€™s race, religion, or ethnicityâ€"regardless of what it isâ€" might provide her with a hook, depending on where she applies, but the adoption factor would really be taking a back seat to other issues here. She doesnâ€™t even necessarily have to have a minority background to get this type of hook. For instance, Smith College is seeking more Jewish students; Brandeis University, on the other hand, would like more applications from those who arenâ€™t Jewish.

The vast majority of scholarships for adopted students are for those who were adopted from foster care. You can go to this site for information:

Http://www.casey.org/cnc/support_retention/scholarships.htm.

You may find some options that are applicable to you, if your daughter was not a foster child.

If you complete the registration form at www.fastweb.com, you may also turn up some opportunities for your daughter.

Good luck to you as you investigate what's out there, and please let us know if you turn up anything that sounds promising that we can pass along to other readers with adopted children.

Sally Rubenstone

Sally Rubenstone knows the competitive and often convoluted college admission process inside out: From the first time the topic of college comes up at the dinner table until the last duffel bag is unloaded on a dorm room floor. She is the co-author of Panicked Parents' Guide to College Admissions; The Transfer Student's Guide to Changing Colleges and The International Student's Guide to Going to College in America. Sally has appeared on NBC's Today program and has been quoted in countless publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Weekend, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, People and Seventeen. Sally has viewed the admissions world from many angles: As a Smith College admission counselor for 15 years, an independent college counselor serving students from a wide range of backgrounds and the author of College Confidential's "Ask the Dean" column. She also taught language arts, social studies, study skills and test preparation in 10 schools, including American international schools in London, Paris, Geneva, Athens and Tel Aviv. As senior advisor to College Confidential since 2002, Sally has helped hundreds of students and parents navigate the college admissions maze. In 2008, she co-founded College Karma, a private college consulting firm, with her College Confidential colleague Dave Berry, and she continues to serve as a College Confidential advisor. Sally and her husband, Chris Petrides, became first-time parents in 1997 at the ripe-old age of 45. So Sally was nearly an official senior citizen when her son Jack began the college selection process, and when she was finally able to practice what she had preached for more than three decades.

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How to prepare transracial adoptees for transitioning to college.

Adopting a Newborn Baby

Adoption home study social worker holding a form

A Difficult Transition

For many people, the teenage years and the process of applying for colleges are a time of self-discovery and identity exploration. While most children go through this period, it may be especially pronounced for an adoptee. Your teen may find themselves wanting to know how much of their identity comes from their birth parents. Was one of their birth parents a teacher, and that’s why the profession interests them? Do they have any learning disabilities or other conditions that they inherited from their biological family?

While these types of questions are normal, they can be painful for adoptive parents to hear. But it’s important to make sure your child feels as though they can talk to you, regardless of how much the conversation may hurt. Particularly with transracial adoptees, they may feel guilt or shame about wondering about their heritage, leading to a reluctance to discuss these questions. Or maybe they’re struggling, perhaps for the first time, with their race, and they feel that they can’t discuss these feelings because their parents may not understand what it’s like to be a minority. When parenting them, your role should be to love and support the child no matter what and do whatever you can to make this uncertain period easier for you and them.

How to Make the Transition Easier

The first and most important advice adoptive parents of a child of color should keep in mind is that ignoring race will only hurt the child. Prejudice and racism are still very prevalent in today’s world, and disregarding that fact will only leave your child ill-prepared for the world they are about to enter. Because of this, it’s vital that a transracial adoptee has mentors and friends who are the same race as them. Furthermore, adoptive parents should do their research. Talk to other transracial families, learn more about what life is like for your child’s racial group by reading books by and talking to people from that group, and be willing to have conversations about race with your child.

When it comes to the college search, another big issue transracial adoptees struggle with is the college essay. Writing about their experiences with being adopted may help them work through some of their identity questions, However, terms often used to describe the college essay, such as “branding” oneself, can also serve to intensify a transracial adoptee’s feeling of being nothing more than an object to be bought and sold. Similarly, receiving rejections from colleges may bring back those painful feelings that they are unwanted.

Parenting a transracial child through the college application process can be a challenge for both parent and child. To help make it easier, remind your child that you are there to support them in whatever way you can and that you love them no matter what happens.

Transracial Adoption Benefits
7 Great Reasons to Choose Adoption
5 Famous Adoptees
A New Age: How Has the Internet Changed Adoption?

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Adoption essays explore family 'Matters'

Adoption essays explore family 'Matters'

Sally Haslanger, professor of linguistics and philosophy, shares a warm moment with her family--husband Steve Yablo and their two children, Zina, left, and Isaac, both of whom are adopted. Haslanger recently co-edited 'Adoption Matters,' a book about adoption.

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A village of children is raising new families, and "Adoption Matters," a book of essays co-edited by Sally Haslanger, professor of linguistics and philosophy, portrays the ways that families formed through adoption are altering how we define "family," "mother" and even, "love."

That village among us is 6 million strong--the current estimate of the number of adoptees in America-with 1.5 million under the age of 18. Most of those children live or have lived in new kinds of families-families inclusive of birth mothers and adoptive parents; families with international and racial diversity; single-parent families; and families where there are two moms or two dads.

"Adoption Matters" (Cornell University Press), which came out this month, offers 13 essays that combine personal experience within these new families-the growing village--with a feminist and philosophical framework through which to envision the implications of adoption for policy, culture and ideas about identity in the United States.

Haslanger's own experience dramatically and movingly illustrates the book's double purpose. Like most of the essayists, she is an adoptive mother and a philosopher.

Haslanger and her husband, Steve Yablo, MIT professor of philosophy, are both white; they adopted two black children, Zina, 8, and Isaac, 10. Haslanger was present at Zina's birth; Isaac joined their family when he was 4 weeks old.

Haslanger and Yablo were chosen to be the adoptive parents by the birth mother (in Isaac's case) and by the birth parents (in Zina's case). "Their birth families are tremendously supportive of us," Haslanger said. The resulting large, extended family has maintained mutual contact, including visits back and forth among parents, siblings and grandparents (see excerpt).

Haslanger's interest, she writes in her own essay, "You Mixed?" is in how racial identity can be "disrupted and transformed."

Her own "racial identity has changed tremendously through the experience of parenting Black children. ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ As I've emphasized, I am not marked as of African descent. But as a parent of children who are, my day-to-day life is filled with their physical being and social reality, and by extension, the reality of their extended families and their racial community. And their realities have in an important sense become mine," Haslanger writes.

In conversation, she added that local community culture has a role, too. "Zina has never been the only transracially adopted child in a school classroom in Cambridge," Haslanger said.

The essays in "Adoption Matters" explore the "contrast and overlap between the family as a social association and the family viewed as a natural or biological entity," the editors write in their introduction. Historically, "kith" has referred to the former and "kin," to the latter, they note, and they suggest adoption animates both in new ways.

Charlotte Witt, Haslanger's co-editor, includes an adopted daughter in her family. Witt, professor of philosophy and humanities at the University of New Hampshire, explores the social and personal impact of narratives of family resemblance-"You have Uncle Murray's eyes!" "Heath women should never drink!"-in her essay, "Family Resemblances: Adoption, Personal identity and Genetic Essentialism."

In "Being Adopted and Being a Philosopher: Exploring Identity and the 'Desire to Know' Differently," essayist Kimberly Leighton reports her experience as an adopted child who, as a young adult, sought-and located-her birth mother and now includes her along with her parents as "family." Leighton teaches philosophy at Cornell.

Other essays trace directly the contrast between what's considered "normal" for families according to legal and social policy and what is real life among contemporary kith and kin.

From "You Mixed?" an essay by Sally Haslanger, MIT professor of linguistics and philosophy, in "Adoption Matters: Philosophical and Feminist Essays" (Cornell 2005).

Sometimes, through parenting a child of another race, one is drawn into cultural rituals concerning the body. In the case of White parents of Black children, the most obvious are the rituals of caring for hair and skin. I remember vividly our first trip to a Black barbershop for Isaac's first haircut, our anxiety at crossing an important color line. Having moved several times since Isaac joined our family, each time we've had to negotiate the dynamics of entering with him a predominantly Black male space. And when Isaac met his birth grandparents for the first time (we visited them for a long weekend), one of the most important trips of the weekend was to the barbershop, where we were introduced as family.

The issue of girls' hair is even more laden and contested: a friend and mentor confided in me shortly after our daughter Zina joined our family that when she gave birth the second time and the doctor announced, "It's a girl!" the very first thing that went through her mind was, "Oh my gosh THREE heads of hair to do each morning!" I had only the vaguest appreciation of what she meant until I found myself trying to comb out my sleeping (toddler) daughter's hair to find myself two hours into it with her awake, screaming, and me in tears. But I have been guided and coached by friends and acquaintances, by beauty store clerks, the crowd at the barbershop, by Zina herself.

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on April 13, 2005 (download PDF) .

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10 College Scholarships for Adopted Children

What’s covered:, 10 scholarships for adopted students, tips for applying to scholarships.

College scholarships are awarded for a variety of reasons, with everything from excellent academics to athletic achievement to duck-calling ability providing opportunities to earn money for higher education. In addition to skills and accomplishments, factors like where you live, what you plan to study, and your background (such as being adopted) can qualify you for numerous scholarships—for example, these 10 scholarships for adopted students.

1. Foster Care to Success

Amount: $2,500-$5,000

Deadline: March 31

Eligibility:

Been in public or private foster care for the 12 consecutive months leading up to and including 18th birthday, or adopted or placed into legal guardianship after 16th birthday, or been orphaned at least a year at the time of 18th birthday and not subsequently adopted
Under the age of 25 at the application deadline in the year they apply
Orphaned or in foster care while living in the U.S.—U.S. citizenship isn’t required
Accepted or expecting acceptance into an accredited, Pell-eligible college or other post-secondary schools

Since 2000, Foster Care to Success has awarded over $15 million to 2,000 students, helping students from foster homes in all 50 states achieve brighter futures. The scholarship is available to undergraduates only and is renewable for up to five years or until the student earns their degree. The Foster Care to Success program has a long history of success, with a graduation rate of 65% and an annual retention rate of 85%, both above the national average.

2. National Foster Parents Association (NFPA) Youth Scholarship

Amount: $500

Deadline: April 2022

Parent or supportive adult who is a member of the NFPA
Senior in high school

Application Requirements:

Minimum of two letters of recommendation from foster parents, social workers, residential center, principal/teacher/guidance counselor, or employer
High school transcript
300- to 500-word essay on “how my foster care experience has shaped my future goals”

The NFPA’s mission is to support the caregivers of the nation’s most vulnerable children and youth, but through this scholarship, they provide financial assistance for college to birth, foster, kinship, and youth adopted through foster care. The NFPA Youth Scholarship is open to applicants graduating high school or getting their GED.

3. Together We Rise Family Fellowship

Amount: Up to $18,000

Deadline: May 2022

Ages 18-23 (applicants age 17 can apply with a guardian’s signature)
U.S. Citizen
Lived in foster care while living in the U.S.
Lived in public or private foster care for the 12 consecutive months before and including their 18th birthday, or was adopted or placed into legal guardianship from foster care after their 13th birthday, or was orphaned for at least one year at the time of their 18th birthday
Accepted to or expects acceptance to an accredited, Pell-eligible college or other post-secondary institution
Minimum 2.5 GPA
High school transcript
College acceptance letter
Foster care verification
Three- to five-page personal statement
One- to three-minute video testimonial
Letter of recommendation

This prestigious award is designed to propel youth in foster care into higher education through financial, educational, and wrap-around support. Fellowship winners are selected using a variety of factors—including extracurricular activities like community service and volunteer work, academic merit, career ambitions, and their application essay. Fellowship recipients have an established track record of success at some of the nation’s leading colleges and universities and graduate at an astounding 95% rate.

4. Adoption STAR Academic Scholarship Program

Amount: Varies

Deadline: Varies

Adopted or in foster care and has overcome adversity
Demonstrated good character and high achievement
History of academic progress through high school
Plans to attend a four-year college
Two letters of recommendation—one from a teacher or guidance counselor
1,000-word (or less) personal statement
Willingness to share their name, photo, personal statement, and an update after they begin college

The Adoption STAR Academic Scholarship Program provides financial support to high-achieving students of good character with college aspirations who have either been adopted or are in foster care. The scholarship seeks out students in particular who have overcome adversity and demonstrated academic improvement as they progress through school.

5. Nicholas & Helena Patti Foundation Scholarship

Amount: Up to $6,500

Deadline: November 1, 2021

Preference is given to those who have been orphaned or raised in a foster home
Limited to persons with Italian parentage
Enrolled at an accredited college and completed one year of study
Have selected music or education as their field of study
College transcript
Strong academic performance and demonstrated musical talent
Two letters of recommendation from foster/adoptive parents, social workers, home advisors, guidance counselors, or teachers
500-word (or less) essay on how winning the scholarship will help them fulfill their personal and professional goals and how music has impacted their life
Current photo

This scholarship assists adopted students and students in foster care to meet their personal and professional goals of attending college takes multiple factors into consideration—including ethnicity, musical aptitude, and academic success. In addition, applicants should demonstrate leadership and a commitment to serving the Italian-American community.

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6. UMPS CARE Charities All-Star College Scholarship

Amount: Up to $10,000

Adopted or exited foster care to permanent guardianship at, or after, age 13
Demonstrated financial need
Minimum 2.5 GPA
Incoming college freshmen under the age of 20
Four short answer/essays
One from a teacher or administrator
One from a personal reference, such as a social worker, coach, or mentor
One from a parent that highlights how the applicant has grown since the adoption
Copy of adoption or legal guardianship paperwork

UMPS CARE Charities All-Star College Scholarship helps give applicants a healthy lead into their future by providing financial support and mentorship. In addition to awarding more than a quarter of a million dollars in scholarships since its inception, UMPS CARE All-Star College Scholarship recipients are paired with an MLB umpire and their family who stay in contact through phone calls and care packages, while also providing on-field experiences at major-league ballparks.

7. Holt Adoptee Scholarship Contest

Deadline: July 2022

Adoptee (from any agency, domestic or international)
Graduating high school and planning to attend an institution of higher education
A creative interpretation of a prompt that changes annually, past prompts are:
What’s in a name? Revealing the stories behind our adoptive names, birth names, and nicknames. Tell us how your name(s) impacts your identity.
A Portrait of Me: An Adoptee. A creative expression of who you are.
If you were to register for an “Adoptee 101” class next fall, what would it teach you? Who would teach it? Why?
A 200-word (or less) artist statement

Holt International awards three scholarships annually through its Holt Adoptee Scholarship Contest. Applicants are encouraged to creatively respond to a prompt and accept a wide variety of mediums, including self-portraits, essays, digital art, zines, songs, original choreography, poetry, and short films.

8. Daniel A. Terry Scholarships

Amount: $2,000

Deadline: May 2022

Eligibility:

Natural or legally adopted child of a California firefighter who died in the line of duty
Age 27 or younger
Possess a high school diploma, GED, or in their final year of high school
Certificate of enrollment from university or post-secondary institution
Family photo
500-word (or less) essay answering “How did your experience as a child of a fallen firefighter affect your life and how will this scholarship impact your future?
Two-page (maximum) autobiography
Completed W-9

This scholarship honors its namesake’s more than three-decade-long commitment to building better lives for California firefighters by providing financial support to the children of the state’s fallen firefighters.

9. Nebraska Foster and Adoptive Parent Association Scholarship

Amount: $250

Deadline: April 2022

Granted permanent residency
Possess a valid visa that does not prohibit educational studies
Granted temporary protected status along with approved Notice of
Action issued by Citizen Immigration Services and verified through CIS Form G-845 or have been granted asylum along with the approved Notice of Action
Must have been a ward of the state of Nebraska
Can’t receive 100% tuition reimbursement from another source
What was the most defining moment in your life and how has it made you a better person?
Highlight your personal experience of foster care, adoption or guardianship.
Once I graduate from college, how will I make an impact on society?
How has the COVID Pandemic affected my foster care/adoption journey?
Why I should be considered for the Nebraska Foster & Adoptive Association
Scholarship.
Photo of applicant
Two letters of recommendation

The Nebraska Foster and Adoptive Parents Association (NFAPA) awards this scholarship annually to a student who has received foster care, adoption, or guardianship and wishes to pursue their education beyond high school. Depending on the amount of funding available and the number of applicants, the NFAPA may award more than one scholarship in a year.

10. Vermont John H. Chafee Education and Training Scholarship

Amount: Up to $5,000

Deadline: March 2022

Vermont resident
Experienced Department for Children and Families (DCF) custody after the age of 14 (after age 16 if exited to adoption or legal guardianship).
26 years or younger and have not participated in the program for more than five years
Attend an accredited school approved for federal Title IV funding (Pell grants, federal Direct loans)
Unified scholarship application
Vermont Grant application

The Vermont John H. Chafee Education and Training Scholarship provides recent high school graduates who’ve been in the state’s foster care system to prepare for their futures by providing funding for job training programs and higher education. Through this program, students can enroll in any program and attend school either full-time or part-time, so long as the institution is accredited and approved for federal Title IV funding.

As the price of college continues to grow, so does competition for scholarships. Luckily, there are a handful of steps you can take to improve your odds of winning an award:

Research scholarships and apply for ones that meet your own unique traits and strengths—for example, scholarships for adopted children, scholarships based on nationality, or given to speakers of a certain language
The more scholarships you apply for, the greater your chance of earning an award—shoot for the stars and apply for big awards like the Horatio Alger Scholarship , but don’t overlook more niche awards, like those focused on adopted children
Understand the requirements, follow the directions, and proofread—there is nothing worse than pouring time and energy into an award you don’t qualify for or sinking your chances of winning by making a silly mistake or error.

Curious about your chances of acceptance to your dream school? Our free chancing engine takes into account your GPA, test scores, extracurriculars, and other data to predict your odds of acceptance at over 500 colleges across the U.S. We’ll also let you know how you stack up against other applicants and how you can improve your profile. Sign up for your free CollegeVine account today to get started!

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Choosing Your College Essay Topic | Ideas & Examples

Choosing Your College Essay Topic | Ideas & Examples

Published on October 25, 2021 by Kirsten Courault . Revised on July 3, 2023.

A strong essay topic sets you up to write a unique, memorable college application essay . Your topic should be personal, original, and specific. Take time to brainstorm the right topic for you.

What makes a good topic, brainstorming questions to get started, discover the best topic for you, how to make a common topic compelling, frequently asked questions about college application essays, other interesting articles.

Here are some guidelines for a good essay topic:

It’s focused on you and your experience
It shares something different from the rest of your application
It’s specific and original (not many students could write a similar essay)
It affords the opportunity to share your positive stories and qualities

In most cases, avoid topics that

Reflect poorly on your character and behavior
Deal with a challenge or traumatic experience without a lesson learned or positive outlook

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Spend time reflecting on and writing out answers to the following questions. After doing this exercise, you should be able to identify a few strong topics for your college essay.

Topic category	Reflection questions
Your background, identity, or talents
Your challenges
Your values and beliefs
Your role models
Your accomplishments and goals
Your academic and personal interests
Your character and qualities	would your friends and family use to describe you?

Writing about yourself can be difficult. If you’re struggling to identify your topic, try these two strategies.

Start with your qualities

After identifying your positive qualities or values, brainstorm stories that demonstrate these qualities.

Qualities	Stories
Loyalty and concern for others	on nights when she was sick from her chemo treatment
Hard work and commitment
Selflessness and sacrifice

Start with a story

If you already have some memorable stories in mind that you’d like to write about, think about which qualities and values you can demonstrate with those stories.

Stories	Qualities
	Resilience and growth
	Patience and empathy
and getting my friends to participate in an episode where salmon was the secret ingredient	Creativity and initiative

Talk it through

To make sure you choose the right topic, ask for advice from trusted friends or family members who know you well. They can help you brainstorm ideas and remember stories, and they can give you feedback on your potential essay topics.

You can also work with a guidance counselor, teacher, or other mentor to discuss which ideas are most promising. If you plan ahead , you can even workshop multiple draft essays to see which topic works best.

If you do choose a common topic, ensure you have the following to craft a unique essay:

Surprising or unexpected story arcs
Interesting insight or connections
An advanced writing style

Here are a few examples of how to craft strong essays from cliché topics.

Common topic	Why it’s difficult	How to make it work
Extracurricular activities	Your application already lists your extracurriculars
Your role model	It’s not about you
A traumatic experience or death in the family	Negative and may seem like you’re trying to win sympathy points
Struggling with new life situations (moving homes, parents’ divorce)	Cliché narrative and insight
Becoming a better person after community service, traveling, or summer camp	Cliché narrative and insight

Here’s a checklist you can use to confirm that your college essay topic is right for you.

College essay topic checklist

My topic is focused on me, not on someone else.

My topic shares something different from the rest of my application.

My topic is specific and original (not many students could write a similar essay).

My topic reflects positively on my character and behavior.

If I chose to write about a traumatic or challenging experience, my essay will focus on how I overcame it or gained insight.

If I chose a common topic, my essay will have a surprising story arc, interesting insight, and/or an advanced writing style.

Good topic!

It looks like your topic is a good choice. It's specific, it avoids clichés, and it reflects positively on you.

There are no foolproof college essay topics —whatever your topic, the key is to write about it effectively. However, a good topic

Is meaningful, specific, and personal to you
Focuses on you and your experiences
Reveals something beyond your test scores, grades, and extracurriculars
Is creative and original

Yes—admissions officers don’t expect everyone to have a totally unique college essay topic . But you must differentiate your essay from others by having a surprising story arc, an interesting insight, and/or an advanced writing style .

To decide on a good college essay topic , spend time thoughtfully answering brainstorming questions. If you still have trouble identifying topics, try the following two strategies:

Identify your qualities → Brainstorm stories that demonstrate these qualities
Identify memorable stories → Connect your qualities to these stories

You can also ask family, friends, or mentors to help you brainstorm topics, give feedback on your potential essay topics, or recall key stories that showcase your qualities.

Most topics are acceptable for college essays if you can use them to demonstrate personal growth or a lesson learned. However, there are a few difficult topics for college essays that should be avoided. Avoid topics that are:

Overly personal (e.g. graphic details of illness or injury, romantic or sexual relationships)
Not personal enough (e.g. broad solutions to world problems, inspiring people or things)
Too negative (e.g. an in-depth look at your flaws, put-downs of others, criticizing the need for a college essay)
Too boring (e.g. a resume of your academic achievements and extracurriculars)
Inappropriate for a college essay (e.g. illegal activities, offensive humor, false accounts of yourself, bragging about privilege)

Here’s a brief list of college essay topics that may be considered cliché:

Extracurriculars, especially sports
Role models
Dealing with a personal tragedy or death in the family
Struggling with new life situations (immigrant stories, moving homes, parents’ divorce)
Becoming a better person after community service, traveling, or summer camp
Overcoming a difficult class
Using a common object as an extended metaphor

It’s easier to write a standout essay with a unique topic. However, it’s possible to make a common topic compelling with interesting story arcs, uncommon connections, and an advanced writing style.

If you want to know more about academic writing , effective communication , or parts of speech , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Academic writing

Writing process
Transition words
Passive voice
Paraphrasing

Communication

How to end an email
Ms, mrs, miss
How to start an email
I hope this email finds you well
Hope you are doing well

Parts of speech

Personal pronouns
Conjunctions

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Adopted into an Identity Struggle: An Exploration of Themes Presented in Wo Ai Ni Mommy and Somewhere Between

Read the instructor’s introduction Read the writer’s comments and bio Download this essay

“Do you feel like you’re more Chinese, or more American?” director Stephanie Wang-Breal asks young Faith in the closing scene of Wo Ai Ni Mommy , a documentary that chronicles Faith’s journey of adoption. Born in China but adopted by an American family when she was eight, Faith (Sui Yong) initially struggled with living in her new home and was reluctant to learn the English language. Just fourteen months later, though, she replies to Wang-Breal’s question with a confident “American,” and a little nod. Witnessing this scene, however, made me wonder whether Faith really understood and meant what she said—as a young nine-year old, she likely had not explored the meanings of identity and belonging yet. While watching this film helped me to better understand the experiences of international adoption in a family, it also raised many questions for me: Will Faith struggle with her sense of identity and belonging as she grows older? Will she ever feel truly American, or truly Chinese? Where is home to her?

International adoption is a burgeoning phenomenon today: Since 1991, over 70,000 Chinese children have been adopted in America; worldwide, more than 250,000 children live with adoptive parents outside the nation of their birth. In recent years, international adoption has been brought to the spotlight through the media, as well-known celebrities Angelina Jolie (together with her husband Brad Pitt) and Madonna publicized their adoptions of children from less developed nations, and various filmmakers have undertaken documenting the lives of adoptees. Yet much of the public remains unaware of the multiple challenges that international adoptees face. In fact, one may argue that this recent publicity surrounding international adoption has simplified it to a mere act of goodwill in the minds of the public—common is the notion that being adopted is a “happy ending” in itself. Wo Ai Ni Mommy is one example of a film that offers a glimpse into the struggles and the joys that internationally adopted children and their adoptive families face, but fails to adequately address the identity struggles that many adopted children experience. This paper is thus an attempt to explore in greater depth some of the complex issues, ranging from insecurities about their appearances to uncertainties about their pasts, that internationally adopted children grapple with as they search for their self-identities.

Adoption takes children away from their birth parents and places them in new families and communities that they are expected to accept as home. International adoption goes one step further by placing children in a whole new country, with parents who often look, speak and behave differently from the child’s biological family. Whether or not children are aware of their adoption when it happens, they sooner or later grow conscious of it; in fact, many of them regard being adopted as a core part of their identity. Yet while adoption is often a “site for … identity thinking,” it is at the same time a “‘crossroads of ambiguity’ at which identity seems to break apart” (Yngvesson 37). For international adoptees, discovering their sense of selves can be particularly challenging as they deal with uncertainties about their past and questions that arise from their relationships with parents and peers. Reconciling physical differences with their families, dealing with feelings of abandonment and insecurity, and living with questions about their origins are just some of the complex issues that complicate international adoptees’ personal identities. Yet understanding in a deeper way the issues that adoptees grapple with is the first step in empowering parents, teachers and society at large to better support these adopted children as they journey to discover, define, and develop themselves.

The origins of international adoption are often traced to the mid-1950s, when foreign nationals began adopting Korean “war orphans” after the Korean War (Yngvesson 21). Various conditions in both sending and receiving nations continued this trend of international adoption in the later half of the twentieth century. While civil wars in less developed countries and China’s one-child policy resulted in a lack of adequate care for large numbers of children, increasing rates of childless couples in the West coupled with decreasing numbers of domestic children available for adoption there led many parents in Western countries to look abroad for adoption (Yngvesson 29). Today, Sweden has the highest rate of international adoptions (Yngvesson 48). The demand for international adoption in Sweden began in the 1960s because a declining birth rate and a decrease in domestic children available for adoption coincided with a time when involuntary childlessness between couples was at a high of 10–15%. Sweden’s Adoption Centre, one of the most influential organizations for international adoption, was also instrumental in Sweden’s growth in the number of international adoptions in the 1970s and 1980s. Adoption Centre’s organizational structure and operational transparency have facilitated the continued rise of international adoptions in Sweden until today (Yngvesson 48).

Despite the rise in international adoptions throughout the past century, this phenomenon has not been without controversy. Back in 1986, “concern … at the large number of children who [were] abandoned or [became] orphans,” together with a “conscious[ness] of the need [for] universal principles” (United Nations) regarding foster care and adoption precipitated the UN General Assembly’s Declaration on Social and Legal Principles Relating to the Protection and Welfare of Children. There, foster care and “appropriate institutional placement” in the child’s birth country was determined preferable to international adoption (Yngvesson 20). Though this position changed seven years later at the 1993 Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, a divisive issue remained: that of whether the Convention should encourage international adoption or restrict it. On one hand, a child’s “need for a family” (Yngvesson 20) led some to believe that international adoption should be endorsed; on the other hand, the understanding that a child’s identity is inextricably tied to his/her past convinced others that international adoption should not be excessively promoted. Ultimately, the Convention concluded that in light of the child’s need for “a family environment,” international adoption would be privileged over domestic foster care and institutional care, but only after domestic adoption had been considered (Yngvesson 20). I argue that this contention over what constitutes “the best interests of the child” (United Nations) reflects an acknowledgement of the challenges that the international adoption process poses to both adoptees and their families. Recent Swedish studies indicate that international adoptees are “three to four times as likely to commit or attempt suicide, … five times as likely to be drug-addicted, and two to three times as likely to abuse alcohol or commit crimes” (Yngvesson 107). While this may be in part because parents were more likely to give up children deemed problematic for adoption, I believe that the extent of these glum statistics also point to the fact that international adoptees face many difficulties after adoption.

Such difficulties are portrayed in Wo Ai Ni Mommy and Somewhere Between , both films about Chinese girls who were adopted into American families. Wo Ai Ni Mommy , a 2010 film by New York based filmmaker Stephanie Wang-Breal, follows the journey of just one child, Faith, as she grows up in an American home. Separately, Somewhere Between depicts the stories of four separate Chinese teenagers who were also adopted by American families. This film was produced in 2011 by Linda Goldstein Knowlton, an American who herself adopted a baby girl from China; she in fact introduces the film as a gift to her daughter. Wo Ai Ni Mommy does contain scenes that hint at the difficulties of belonging in a new country, yet it seems to portray a linear process of Faith becoming more American without much attention paid to how her past affects her identity. In contrast, Somewhere Between conjures for the audience a complex fabric of what it means to be adopted from another country, as it explores the girls’ struggles and confusions as they reflect about their experiences.

Pertinent to both films is the fact that the adopted girls, being Chinese, look very different from their American parents. Fifty years ago, this would have been a big cause for concern because at that time, many believed that the more similar the child was to his or her adoptive parents, the more likely the adoption would “succeed;” thus, transracial adoptions were rarely supported (Howard and Altstein 1). Subscribing to the idea that parents would be better able to “identify with a child who resembles them,” adoption agencies in the past have tried to match children with adoptive parents who were as similar to them as possible—physically, emotionally and culturally (Howard and Altstein 2). When transracial adoption began increasing in the 1960s-1970s, it was vehemently opposed by some—the National Association of Black Social Workers at its 1972 conference went so far as to claim that “Black children in white homes are cut off from the healthy development of themselves as Black people” (Howard and Altstein 14). While this claim may sound extreme, it was not an uncommon belief that being adopted by parents of a different race would be harmful for the child. One of the strongest arguments against transracial adoption was that “white families, no matter how liberal or well intended, cannot teach a Black child how to survive in an essentially racist society” (Howard and Altstein 16). International adoptees, though defined by being of a different nationality, are also often of a different race from their parents. The fact that parents of international adoptees find it difficult to relate to the racial experiences of their children is made clear in Wo Ai Ni Mommy, where in a discussion with Dr. Amanda Baden, a transracial adoption psychologist, Faith’s father makes the remarkable suggestion that “maybe (Faith) sees herself as white when she looks in the mirror.” Baden clearly disagrees, but offers the claim that “many white parents don’t have a real history about talking about race” as an explanation for his lack of empathy. Yet this acknowledgement does not discount the reality that because many parents of transracial and international adoptees are unable to fully empathize with the experiences of their children, children feel alone as they navigate issues of racial identity.

Though in the post-Civil Rights era race is no longer explicitly regarded as an indicator of one’s worth, it remains a universal experience that how we look affects how we view ourselves. For international adoptees, physical differences, often obvious to the eye, play out in adoptees’ lives as well. In the film Somewhere Between , Haley Butler’s mother admits that before Haley turned four, she had already begun to realize that she looked different from her family and expressed her wishes to have “blond hair and blue eyes” like her older sister. At fourteen, Haley is able to joke with Knowlton that she is “a banana, yellow on the outside but white on the inside.” Yet her looks do continue to affect her. A later scene at her school depicts her friends teasing her and asking if she was a Chinese orphan, following which she comments (albeit lightheartedly) that “at times like this, I wish I was white.” For Sara Nordin, a Swedish adoptee born in Ethiopia, the incongruence between her external appearance and her official citizenship complicates her sense of self. We perceive this tension clearly when she says, “I have tried to absorb the ‘black’ but then I have difficulty holding onto the Swedish. I have tried to absorb the ‘Swedish’ but then I haven’t understood what I see in the mirror” (Yngvesson 35). Nordin also shares that growing up, she felt torn between identifying with her Swedish friends and with her immigrant friends, and that made her unable to “decide [herself] where [she] belonged” (Yngvesson 130). The experiences of Butler and Nordin are powerful indicators that one’s identity is inextricably tied to one’s appearance. Though Faith herself does not comment on her racial identity in Wo Ai Ni Mommy , her parents’ concern in helping her understand her race (made clear in their discussion with Dr. Baden) is reflective that it is a prevailing issue for her. International adoptees, whose closest family and friends often look vastly different from them, often question this aspect of their identity.

Apart from the present experience of looking different from their parents and peers, international adoptees’ uncertainties about their past also greatly impact their views of themselves. The idea that they were once given up by their birth parents is one that haunts many adoptees throughout their lives. Responding to a question on coping with the word “abandon” during a conference on adoption, Jenna Cook in the film Somewhere Between tears up as she admits that “even though 99% of me believes that I was really placed, I think somehow I can’t get rid of that one percent… I can’t get rid of that small thought that maybe I was abandoned.” She shares that it is this persisting idea of abandonment that has influenced her perfectionist personality; that the idea of not being “good enough” drives her to “search for way[s] to compensate” by striving for excellence in what she does. At the same time, the knowledge that they could be leading drastically different lives makes some adoptees feel disconnected from their adoptive families. In the film Wo Ai Ni Mommy , Faith’s question to her parents “Why would you want a Chinese girl for a daughter?” similarly hints at an understanding that while she was chosen by her parents, she could just as well have not been chosen. In this question we catch a glimpse of Faith’s uncertainty of whether she truly belongs in her new home. Because in adoption parents have a choice over the children they adopt, and this choice is seemingly arbitrary, children may at times question whether they really belong in their new home. Feeling rejected by their biological families and yet still an outsider in their adoptive families, adopted children find it difficult to identify a place and community where they truly belong.

Ambiguity about their origins is another thought, one step further into their pasts, that complicates many adoptees’ sense of belonging and identity. It is a widely accepted belief that “descent creates solidarity;” we see this in the fact that words like “roots,” “blood,” and “home” are closely associated with one’s identity (Legrand 247). In her research about genealogy, anthropologist Caroline Legrand found that adoptees in particular spoke of genealogical research as a “search for origins,” and regarded the process as a “seeking [of] their identity” (Legrand 246). Haley Butler in the film Somewhere Between is one example of an adoptee determined to find her origins. Her claim to her friend Ann that “I’ll be looking for my birth parents until I’m grey and wrinkly” translated to action in the film as Haley went back to her province, did DNA testing, and eventually reunited with her birth family. Recounting the experience, Haley shares that this new knowledge of her family is comforting, and that receiving a Chinese name from her birth parents “meant a lot” to her. Undoubtedly, not all searches for birth families and communities will end in success – for many adoptees who have little information about their birth places, the chances of ever finding their birth parents are very slim; among those who reunite with their birth families, some adoptees regret doing so for these new relationships burden them. Yet I believe that the act of searching in itself, and even the prior longing to know where they come from, stem from a sense of incompleteness about their sense of identity. This uncertainty about their past is a major influence that confounds many international adoptees’ perceptions of themselves.

Not everyone agrees that international adoptees regularly grapple with questions about their identity. Anthropologist Signe Howell, in his work with Norwegian adoptees, found that most of them were indifferent to finding out about their origins, and were content with the “place in their adoptive parents’ family trees” (Howell 262). At least in Norway, he asserts that adoptees who regard their genealogy as an important part of their identity are but “a vocal minority,” and he quotes an adoptee who says that “Personally, I am not interested in biological roots” to reflect this point (Howell 258, 260). In a strong statement, Howell suggests that adoptees who concede to the notions that “blood is thicker than water” and that kin must be “of the same flesh and blood” “render themselves deeply unhappy” (Howell 258, 267). He proposes instead that international adoptees are “de-kinned and re-kinned when they were abandoned and adopted”—by this he means that the abandoned child, “stripped of biological kinned relatedness,” is “socially naked” and is later “socially and emotionally kinned by their new parents and family in their new country” (Howell 264). In Howell’s view, international adoptees’ struggles to find their identity are perpetuated by the myth that blood relations determine one’s identity, and can be overcome by defining oneself by one’s sociality, instead of biology.

While Howell’s assertion that the link between blood ties and personal identity is a mere construct may contain some truth, it does not deny the tangible impact that holding on to this idea entails. Howell concedes that “Americans seem to be more preoccupied with their roots than Norwegians,” possibly because as a nation of immigrants, “Americans are generally more aware of their racial-ethnic identity” (Howell 259). Yet this distinction between the experiences of international adoptees in different receiving countries indicates that while his theory of “de-kinning” and “re-kinning” may sound plausible, in practice it does not easily extend to all international adoptees. The belief that “blood is thicker than water” is one that is deeply ingrained into society, and it undoubtedly affects many international adoptees’ opinions about where they belong and who they are. In particular, as Faith grows up in America, where race and background are seen as a big part of one’s identity, she will likely regard her past as an important part of who she is. Though I agree with Howell that biology alone does not define one’s identity, I believe that totally neglecting it—as he proposes adoptees should—is something that not many can do. Notwithstanding the fact that each adoptees’ experience differs, and that some may easily find belonging in their adoptive homes and families, I believe that there are nonetheless a large proportion of international adoptees who, at some level, struggle with defining themselves, Faith included. Though her words when she was nine may have indicated otherwise, I believe that as she grows to understand the complexities of identity and belonging, she will face challenges in defining her personal identity.

From the outset, lawmakers have recognized that “adoption does not make the adopted child of the blood of its adopter, nor of the blood of his ancestors” (Yngvesson 22). Although international adoption is sometimes presented and perceived as a simple process of the adopted child integrating into his or her new family, I believe that many international adoptees face complex struggles in figuring out their self-identity. The search for one’s identity is a personal journey but is also a universal experience; at some point of time all of us grapple with the question “Who am I?” For international adoptees, answering this question can take a lifetime to answer and can cause much grief and distress. Granted that each adoptees’ experience is unique and that one cannot make a blanket generalization of the challenges that they face, this essay presents a glimpse of certain struggles common to many adoptees. With a greater understanding of some of these challenges, it is time for researchers and policymakers to explore how they may better equip parents and teachers to support international adoptees as they journey to define and develop themselves.

Works Cited

Howell, Signe. “Return Journeys and the Search for Roots: Contradictory Values Concerning Identity.” International Adoption. Eds. Diana Marre and Laura Briggs. New York: New York University Press, 2009.

Knowlton, L.G. Somewhere Between. Long Shot Factory. 2011.

Legend, Caroline. “Routes to the Roots: Toward an Anthropology of Genealogical Practices.” International Adoption. Eds. Diana Marre and Laura Briggs. New York: New York University Press, 2009.

Simon, R.J. and Alstein, Howard. Adoption, Race and Identity: From Infancy Through Adolescence. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1992.

United Nations. General Assembly. 95 th Plenary Meeting. Declaration on Social and Legal Principles relating to the Protection and Welfare of Children, with Special Reference to Foster Placement and Adoption Nationally and Internationally. 3 December 1986.

Wang-Breal, Stephanie. Wo Ai Ni Mommy. P.O.V. 2010.

Yngvesson, Barbara. Belonging in an Adopted World: Race, Identity and Transnational Adoption. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Adoption: An Essay

What is it like to suddenly be contacted by the birth parents you've never met.

Posted October 27, 2011 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

Adopting an Identity

It's a day just like any other in my freshman year, and my mom tells me my dad cried over the contents of the envelope she just handed to me. I have a hard time believing her, because I've never seen my dad cry and because dads, by the laws of nature, aren't supposed to cry. But the envelope concerns me, and it concerned my dad enough to cry about it.

Pretty soon, I'm crying, and my mom's crying. Our faces are like shiny red beets while tears fall into our open mouths as we try and fail to talk to each other through the tears. We only manage blubbering, guttural noises.

Inside the envelope are letters and pictures. My mom says they're from my biological parents, and that idea doesn't process, because the handwritten letter from my bio-father looks so much like my mom's handwriting that I think she's playing some sort of trick on me. She's not.

I flip through pictures of Chimene and Richard, these accidental lovers, and of the two half-siblings I never knew about. It's surreal; I feel only half awake as I flip among the pictures and wonder who these people are and wonder who I am because of these letters.

I felt out of place in my family. I would see families stockpiled with love. But love felt awkward since I didn't know how to give it, because I didn't, and in some ways still don't, appreciate everything my family does for me.

And I didn't see myself in my parents. They didn't read; they didn't like the kind of movies I like; they didn't share my atheism, my cynicism , or any personality quirks. I didn't understand the concept of all this familial love, because I wasn't sure how to love my parents when I felt disconnected from them.

My mom lingers. I think she feels as though she's obligated to help me along this emotional journey because she's my mom, and that's her job. All I can think about is how similar this is to the moment in the second grade when I was told I was adopted. I laid on the king-sized bed in my parents' room, talking about my day, wide-eyed at the fact that a girl in my grade was adopted. And then my mom told me that the girl and I had similar life stories.

My mom claimed she told me when I was young, but I didn't remember. At 8, I was told I was unique in a way I didn't want to be. We sat in silence for a while, and I wanted nothing more than to go away and cry. So I excused myself and got a Pepsi from the fridge. My mom accompanied me, and I can't remember feeling more sad, embarrassed, and angry in my entire childhood at the fact that she wouldn't leave me alone.

My biological mother uses an abundance of "teehees" in her structurally strange, typed letter because apparently she's funny, and laughter can't be captured on paper. I can't connect with her "teehees." I can't see any humor in the impersonal black ink. I can't connect with a person whose letter is like a resume, a list of altruistic hobbies and likable characteristics. Yet, I look at this paper and see myself in her love of books, her terrible humor. And I feel almost a sense of... relief.

I can't relate to my parents. And now I'm reading about this woman, seemingly so foreign, this woman who's training for the Iraq war and likes to plant, whose first love is God followed by her husband John, this woman who's half like me. Only half, but that's half more than I can say for my parents.

I sift through her computer-paper memories printed in the dull-colored ink. Then I move on to Richard. I already like him. He gave me actual pictures, glossy, without fingerprint smudges, true and genuine, just like his handwritten letter that tells me he took time and effort in this compilation.

I almost feel like an intruder looking at his best friends, his brother, his beard that makes him look like The Dude from The Big Lebowski . Richard begins by feeling obligated to tell me that I wasn't a mistake, that there was a good reason why I was brought up by a different family, blah blah. I don't need comfort from a man I don't know.

But I do know him. It's terrifying to the point where my hands begin to shake.

I know him because I'm the carbon copy of him, from his cheekbones to his aspirations. Our canines are identical, our eyes mirrors, our dimples cousins, our smiles duplicates. As I read the letter, I grow more and more dumbfounded. I want to major in film, and I think NYU is just about the most amazing school there is. So when I read that he majored in film production at NYU, I'm literally scared.

The similarities don't stop there. We're both adopted, we both love movies to no end, we like math, we prefer Judaism to other religions, we're both this, and we're both that. This letter is staring me in the face, telling me that I'm not random, that it's OK to not be like my family because I'm not exactly a part of them.

It's natural to want to believe that humans are independent. We all like to think we have freedom, that we're not controlled by anyone or anything. But science suggests that we are biased creatures with predispositions originating from either our genes or our environments. The nature versus nurture debate has been going since the dawn of psychology. Some say that we are a product of our environments; how we grow up and the conditions we grow up in help determine who we are today. For instance, someone can be a bitter adult due to a poor upbringing or a selfish adult because of a spoiled childhood.

The opposing view of this is that we have genetic predispositions that shape who we are. It's in our genes to like or dislike something; we're already programmed to be a certain way. Scientists have looked into this study by observing twins who have grown up in different environments. Theoretically, if nature wins out, they should be very similar people; however, if nurture is the dominant factor, they would be completely different people.

Homelife, culture, and peers definitely play a role in the makeup of a person. But then there are people like Oskar Stohr and Jack Yufe, identical twins reared apart. One was raised as a Catholic and a Nazi while the other was raised in the Caribbean as a Jew. They both liked sweet liqueur and spicy food, tended to fall asleep while watching television, flushed the toilet before using it, kept rubber bands on their wrists, and had quick tempers. When they met, they were both wearing blue, double-breasted shirts, mustaches, and wire-rimmed glasses.

And this might seem like a freakish coincidence, but it's not an anomaly. Among other examples, there are also the two Jims; twins reared apart named Jim who had sons named James, first wives named Linda and second wives named Betty, dogs named Toy, vasectomies, a woodworking hobby, fondness for Miller Lite, chain- smoking habit, and more similarities they shared.

It seems that nature wins this debate. But I didn't need studies to tell me that. I learned it in a letter.

I don't resent my parents because I'm not able to relate to them. What used to bother me was my brother. It's clear to see that Gerald Singleton King, Jr. is my father's son. They have matching hot-heads and hairlines and a knack for business. My brother borrowed my dad's eyes and my grandpa's height to become who he is. And when you turn to my mom, you can see how G.J. has her social skill and empathetic demeanor.

Then there is me. The shortest person in my entire extended family, the only blue-eyed girl, the sort of person to read Infinite Jest for fun while everyone else has a magazine in their hands. My entire family always told me I was an artist, but I'm pretty sure that's because they didn't know what else to call me.

I always wanted to do something different, and I'm not sure if that's because I was already labeled as different or because I genuinely wanted to. But then my brother went to Brown University and then to Stanford. I had no room to do something awesome because my brother was better; my brother was biological.

It took me a while to stop comparing myself to G.J. I stepped back and remembered: Yeah, I'm different. We don't share the same biological source, so how can my brain cells compare to his?

And I have to remember. It doesn't happen often, but I have to remember that my parents aren't useless. I know I take them for granted; every suburban teenager does.

If they didn't raise me Christian, I wouldn't have found my voice through atheism. If they didn't provide for me well, I wouldn't feel the need to provide well for others. If they didn't teach me the laws of the world, I wouldn't know how to rebel against them. While I found solace in the letters, I had to remember—have to remember—that my ability to relate to strangers doesn't compromise the fact that my parents are, and always will be, superior because they raised me.

Richard is rather poignant. All bio-fathers should be as cool as Richard. No one has ever told me that I'm special the way Richard is telling me I'm special. He writes, "Your existence in this world means a lot to me. It's difficult to put into exactly the right words, but it's kind of like... When you were born, it validated my existence. No matter what I did or did not accomplish from that point forward, there would always be you."

I think I needed Richard's letter more than Chimene's letter. Maybe that's because I was able to relate to him so well, and I needed a father figure to relate to. My dad always had my brother; they bonded over sports and muscle. And I had my mom, which was fine.

But I think I rejected my dad a lot, not only because he was sports-crazed, and I wasn't, but also because I only ever remember the bad things about him. Like the time he threw mashed potatoes in my hair at Thanksgiving. Or whenever he would yell something rude at me, then adopt a gentlemanly Southern accent for his customers on the phone. Or when I called 911 when he collapsed unconscious on the stairs and never received a thank you.

I'm not saying I needed a father figure or that Richard would fulfill that gap I (perhaps) have in my psyche left over from an unrequited relationship that was never really formed. The bottom line is, it's nice to hear that I'm special.

My mom told me she's scared that when I'm upset, I lock myself in my room and look at the battered envelope and dream of a life with a family that would accept me. I don't. I hadn't even touched the envelope for a second time until last week, trying to write this paper and remember why my bio-parents are still important to me.

I wanted to meet them when I was younger. I wanted to live a different life when Hinsdale was too small or too dull for me. I dreamed of the day I would turn 18 and find them wherever they were lurking. It frightened me to think that there were people walking and talking and living out there who came together under erroneous circumstances of which I was a product.

I struggled with the idea that I had two sets of parents, four sets of grandparents, double order of everything, and I'd never get the chance to know half of them. It didn't seem fair that there were two people whose blood I shared living normal lives without me. I never grasped the phrase "blood is thicker than water," because I didn't know whose blood ran in my veins.

I understand my mom's fear that I might get along with my bio-parents if I met them and abandon her to have a hunky-dory relationship. But I think my mom's fear is irrational. She's my mom. It's not as though I'd go running off with some woman I didn't know only because she gave birth to me.

My biological mother wasn't the person I talked to every day after school about my day. She wasn't the person that drove me to all the soccer games I never even played in. She wasn't the person who bought my Christmas presents, who wasn't afraid to touch me when I got the flu because I was stubborn and didn't want a flu shot, who searched online for weeks to find a replacement for my striped Ralph Lauren comforter that I ripped unintentionally while taking a nap. Chimene had nothing to do with my life, nor did she have the right to, because she had never been a part of my life.

I don't know whether or not I want to meet them now. I'm not sure I could stand the humility. "Oh, hi, my name is Maz, and I think I'm your daughter." Yeah, I'm sure Hollywood has already covered that conversation.

And I feel as though I'd be an inconvenience. Out of nowhere, a daughter of sorts comes into their lives. I know they basically plopped right down into my life with that envelope, but I needed to know who they were; I needed just a little bit of information about them in order to accept myself and the differences between my family and me.

If we reversed the scenario, if I contact them, I would feel obligated to keep talking to them, or else it would be too awkward to have a potentially life-changing encounter, only for communication to fizzle out after one or two meetings. And I'm sure that's a hassle, for both them and me, as well as my parents. I don't think my mom could handle it; all her fears would come creeping back, and horrid little ideas would form in her mind in my absence.

But, most importantly, I don't see the point in getting to know my bio-parents anymore. When I was little, I nearly begged for a different life. And now I'm off to college in a semester—I'm forced to have a different life. I don't feel that longing anymore, the sort of longing that requires endless amounts of hoping and pining for something not quite in your reach.

Because the thing is, I'm sure my bio-parents are wonderful people. They sound like wonderful people. But I don't need or want their approval. I don't need or want a relationship with them. I know they exist. And that's enough for now.

Paul C. Holinger, M.D., M.P.H. , a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, is a professor of psychiatry at Rush University Medical Center and author of What Babies Say Before They Can Talk .

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Would it matter one way or the other mentioning "adopted" on the application?

Any comments on discussing “being adopted” on the college application or in the essay? This would be for a student who was adopted into a “like” family, where this fact would not be obvious.

I have two nieces who were adopted, after being placed into their families within days of their birth. They look like each other and their adopted family, but they are not from the same birth mom. The oldest was born to a teen who apparently was in denial, and “didn’t know she was pregnant” for 7 months. She took OCP’s, pain pills for cramps, etc during the first 5-6 months, and smoked through out. Some alcohol as well. No prenatal care until delivery. The younger one was born to a teen having her second teen pregnancy in two years. No smoking, drugs or alcohol, but back to back pregnancies, with nutritional issues and low birth weight.

Both these girls were adopted into a family that gave them every opportunity. They were read to early, played musical intruments before kindergarten, etc. Early on, they were ususally way ahead of their peers at major milestones. Then, about age 12-13, they both started to struggle a bit. The oldest started to struggle more academically, and the youngest started to act out behaviorally. After evaluation, experts reminded the parents that the family was coming to grips with the fact that nurture/environment could not completely make up for nature/genetics/first nine months in the womb. They were told adopted kids often exceed their peers as children, but their genes and early “exposures” become obvious by their teen years.

The oldest is a junior, and will be working on college applications soon. She is the hardest worker. She is the type of student that teachers love to have in their class. She does not get the highest grade, but works the hardest, and puts everything into it. Give her a research paper or project and she’ll have the best one in the class. But she has test anxiety and does not test well, esp on standardized testing and ESPECIALLY on math testing. She took the SAT on a Sat, and the PSAT the following Wed at school. She worried about the SAT “counting” and blew off the PSAT as something that didn’t ultimately matter (she was not going to be NMF anyway…) She got a 490M/570CR on SAT, but a 61M/58CR on the PSAT. She has a 3.4 unweighted, taking honors and AP classes.

Would explaining, perhaps in the essay or elsewhere, that she has had to overcome a diffucult “beginning? be advisable” It seems there are compelling reasons that she may not be able to “live up to” the standards of her zip code, her gated community, her peers… she has two college grad parents with advanced degrees, but was born to birth parents without high school diplomas, whose grandparents did not have any college either.

I thought her test scores would not be an issue, as she and her folks were looking into LAC’s, the type listed in “A+ colleges for B students…” but niece now has her sights set on one of two “flagship” state U’s (instate), and with huge admission numbers, and less than holistic evaluation of applications…

She is going to psych herself out of improving her SAT scores, but they are hoping for at least of 500+ on the math retake. Can she expect this with a 61 on the PSAT? Or is the math on the PSAT different. She has dropped the SAT prep class, it was making the pressure worse. She will retake the SAT in June. She took the ACT in Jan or Feb–did worse that the SAT and will not be submitted those scores or retaking.

She has good EC’s. She was in pre-pro training for ballet for years, has good volunteer hours at the local hospital. She now has a part time job.

Suggestions? Comments? Experiences? This is the type of kid who will go far, but only if she can get beyond her test scores.

It does not sound to me that she has a story of difficulties overcome. In fact, she has had a lot of advantages. Now if she suffered from something like fetal alcohol syndrome or it was found that her mother was a crack addict, it would be different. Or if finding that she was adopted turned her world upside down as she entered adolescence. But test anxiety? Being a B student? I don’t think it will fly.

To mention the adoption in that context sounds to me like trying to make an excuse, for something that wouldn’t be too convincing anyway. If the problems is that due to prenatal factors or genetics, she just can’t perform all that well… well, that is no different than some kid with the misfortune to be born with a lower IQ. It’s not a hardship that she has overcome, and apparently not a diagnosed learning disability – but rather she would be claiming an inherent lack of ability due to birth circumstances.

Meanwhile, there are kids who were born to teenage moms who were not adopted, lived with their moms or foster families in very dire circumstances, and somehow against all odds have met the admission requirements of those top schools. Of course, kids like that are few and far between – but the admissions office at an elite school will have a few.

Your niece should try the ACT and take a prep course before retrying the SAT – and if she can’t get her scores up she should look go back to looking at the many excellent colleges on the “A+ Colleges for B Student” or Colleges that Change Lives list.

I’d like to add one more thing: there are many, many kids from affluent families who are the biological children of their parents, and whose moms were healthy and ate right during pregnancy, and have wonderful childhoods and then they hit puberty and things go south. I have seen it happen to some of the best and the brightest of the kids who attended elementary school with my own. At least 3 of a relatively small group of kids who were part of the GATE group in my son’s grade elementary school did not do well in high school, and did not go on to 4-year colleges. Good, highly involved, highly educated, nurturing parents. I know another kid, also from the GATE group, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in adolescence… obviously he had some rough times as well.

I understand the temptation to look for a “cause” for the difficulties encountered in adolescence – and with an adopted child it certainly is a temptation to blame it on the teen mom who smoked during pregnancy, the low birth rate, etc. But the fact is there is no real evidence of causation – at best it is just a guess. I’m just afraid that by “blaming” the birth parent, there is a little bit of of a tendency to start to give up, rather than to focus on working toward overcoming whatever barrier exists.

Or SAT optional colleges.

There are lots of colleges in the country who would be delighted to have your niece. I would have her concentrate on her strengths, of which it sounds like she has many, as opposed to explaining her weaknesses in some way that sounds like an excuse.

Adoption as an essay topic focused on"who she is", the path her life has taken, what makes her “her.” Possible good idea. Might be her best essay topic, might not.

Adoption as an explanation (apology, excuse) for why her scores are what they are. Bad idea.

She need to choose schools which match her interests as well as her stats. If the state flagships are a reach, that is fine. She should apply but not get her heart set. Then, let her wow them with her great essays, the wonderful recs from the teachers who love to have her in their class. Not try to convince them her scores were caused by the wrong birth parent.

She also needs to choose schools which match her academic abilities, including test taking (do the classes she would be taking grade performance mostly on tests or will she have chances to use her research abilities?) This is all part of finding the best fit for her.

In addition, she should find a few LACs that she also loves and will have a better chance to get into than the flagship (in the event she is not accepted to those). Students should always have safeties to fall back on.

Then, about age 12-13, they both started to struggle a bit. The oldest started to struggle more academically, and the youngest started to act out behaviorally

I realize this won’t be a newsflash for some of us But I think it is called adolescence ,which isn’t limited to kids who were adopted :eek:

Also- while learning disabilities are sometimes not diagnosed if mild until high school or even later, they can’t be blamed in all circumstances.

There are lots of schools which rely less on testing and more on other criteria, we are looking at some of those ourselves

Besides- even if being “adopted” was believable as an excuse for “difficulties” ( which I agree it is not), she wouldn’t want to be at a school which relied heavily on testing or similar criteria for entrance, as that skill set could be very important contributor to success at that college.

I honestly don’t see adoption as relevant in any way to college admissions in this case. IMO, the odds are that “adoption” would be a lousy essay topic.

Good college essays present something of interest about a living, breathing teenager – hopefully something that allows an admissions officer to picture a happy, well-adjusted contributor to the campus community.

I’m not a big fan of the “overcoming life’s adversity” essay to begin with. This one seems particularly tenuous. I’d rather see an essay about some small event from recent teenage years that shows some personality.

I would definitely not go down this path. It would sound like she is trying to make excuses for average SAT scores by going back 19 years. Now, it would be a different story if her prenatal situation caused a lifetime of severe health or psychological issues, but even then- she probably wouldn’t be even applying to college if her life had been so debilitated. But really- her scores are not even low. They are average. Just like all the other average people in this country. It would sound like she’s saying- “hey, I’d really be a freekin’ genius if it weren’t for my derelict birth mother. Now I’m just average. Geeeshh!”

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Harvard business school announces 3 new application essays.

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Harvard Business School.

Harvard Business School announced a surprising departure from its single, open-ended application essay to three short essays with specific prompts. The HBS website sums up the kind of applicant the school is seeking: “We are looking for future leaders who are passionate about business, leadership, and growth.”

The prompts for the class that will begin in fall 2025 instruct applicants to address each topic in turn.

Business-Minded Essay : Please reflect on how your experiences have influenced your career choices and aspirations and the impact you will have on the businesses, organizations, and communities you plan to serve. (up to 300 words)
Leadership-Focused Essay : What experiences have shaped who you are, how you invest in others, and what kind of leader you want to become? (up to 250 words)
Growth-Oriented Essay : Curiosity can be seen in many ways. Please share an example of how you have demonstrated curiosity and how that has influenced your growth. (up to 250 words)

The prompts ask applicants to go beyond simply asserting their allegiance to the ideals of business, leadership and growth. Each of the three questions asks for evidence: “experiences,” “experiences” and “an example,” respectively.

The prompts do not expect a straightforward list of what happened in the past. Rather, they encourage reflection on how these experiences affected present realities and future goals.

Applicants are asked to reflect on past, present and future as an ongoing process of becoming who they are now and who they wish to become. Even the “Business-Minded Essay” is about past choices and future impact; it also assumes you “plan to serve.” The “Leadership-Focused Essay” does not ask applicants to recite a list of titles, but to discuss who they are and how they relate to others; not what title they aspire to, but “what kind of leader you wish to become.”

Perhaps the most surprising essay prompt is No. 3, which asks about curiosity. It opens the door for applicants to discuss a more personal aspect of their candidacies. The prompt asks not about end result, but about the process of change. Once again, the emphasis is on “growth.”

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In short, the prompts ask about person and process.

How The 3 New Prompts Differ From Last Year’s Single Question

This year’s prompts give applicants more direction than the previous open-ended instruction, which was: “As we review your application, what more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business School MBA program?”

Applicants may find it easier to follow these more detailed instructions and to stay on topic. They no longer need to face an open question and a blank page.

Another aid is the shorter word limit. The essay on being business-minded has a limit of 300 words, and the essays on leadership and growth through curiosity are limited to 250 words each.

A third difference is the specific inquiry about business. Last year’s prompt allowed candidates to choose anything they thought would be important for HBS to consider. Some applicants struggled to decide whether to focus on business or something beyond work. While the “Business-Minded Essay” is still personal, it does ask applicants to reflect on their careers.

One might also speculate that the new, more directive prompts makes it easier for the admissions committee to compare essays across applications, while still leaving room for considerable variation in how applicants choose to address the essay prompts.

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Gregory lawrence kaster.

Gregory Lawrence Kaster, of Minneapolis passed away unexpectedly June 22 at the age of 70 surrounded by his partner, spouse, and best friend of 38 years Kate Wittenstein and loved and loving friends. He was predeceased by his parents, Theodore and Wilma Jean Kaster of Park Forest, Illinois. He is survived by Lawrence and Elizabeth Kaster of Los Angeles, Jessica and David Barranco of Paradise Valley, Arizona, Andrew and Vicki Wittenstein of Brooklyn, New York, Cousin Alice Arnold of Chicago, Illinois, and many loved nieces, nephews, great nieces, and nephews.

Greg attended school in Park Forest, Illinois, and received his BA (1975) and MA (1978) from Northern Illinois University, and his PhD (1990) from Boston University before joining the Gustavus Adolphus College History Department in 1986. His PhD dissertation examined the language that he called the "labor jeremiad" of organized workingmen in nineteenth-century America. His research and teaching interests included labor history, the history of masculinity in America, slavery and abolitionism, the Civil War, film, visual culture, biography, dissent, and memory and history. His publications include a chapter comparing the films Django Unchained and Lincoln in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (Bloomsbury, 2014), an essay on the American labor movement, 1790-1860, in Encyclopedia of American Social Movements (M.E. Sharpe, 2004), and "Labor's True Man: Organized Workingmen and the Language of Manliness in the USA, 1827-1877" in Gender and History (April 2001). The latter grew out of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers directed by distinguished labor historian Melvyn Dubofsky.

In the classroom, there is nothing Greg liked more than informed and energetic discussion of the course materials or what he called "working out" with the sources. An outstanding, compassionate, and gifted teacher, his work in the classroom was recognized when he was named the 2018 winner of the Edgar M. Carlson Award, the College's highest teaching honor. He particularly enjoyed teaching courses on the U.S. Civil War, the 1960s, and recent U.S. history. He also served as the inaugural holder of the James and Patricia McPherson Endowed Professor of American History position from 2019-2023.

Above all, Greg will be remembered by the Gustavus community as a passionate advocate for the power of the liberal arts, especially the humanities, and for being a trusted mentor to faculty and students alike. He was instrumental in bringing many notable speakers to campus, who helped the Gustavus community appreciate the value of the liberal arts in understanding and navigating the present. He was the creator and host of Learning for Life @ Gustavus, an in-depth podcast celebrating Gustavus, its people, and the liberal arts. The podcast recently aired its 150th episode. Those interviewed include Jillian Hiscock '05 (owner of A Bar of Their Own, the only bar in Minnesota devoted entirely to women's athletics); English Department colleague, Dr. Martha Ndakalako (whose areas of study include Namibian women's digital literatures and the #ShutItAllDown feminist protest movement); Representative Samantha (Sam) Vang '16 (one of the first two Hmong American women to win a Minnesota House seat); and Dr. Bernard Powers '72 (Professor Emeritus of History at the College of Charleston and founder/director of the Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston). Greg was a leader on campus in many ways, most visibly in chairing the Faculty Senate and Faculty Personnel Committee. He also worked closely with the Board of Trustees, holding several Board committee positions over the years.

A proud Chicagoland native and New Yorker by marriage, Greg was a city person who delighted in the political-cultural energy and diversity of vibrant cities, including Minneapolis and St. Paul. Among his favorite pastimes were dining out with family and friends and shopping at different food purveyors in the Twin Cities. His favorites included Eli's black and blue burger, the hollandaise sauce at Our Kitchen, octopus at Gardens of Salonica, sandwiches and meat at Clancy's, and feta and olives from Bill's Imported Foods. He also loved Greek Town restaurants in Chicago (serving horta and saganaki), Union Oyster House in Boston, Zabar's in New York, and going from the Logan airport directly to lunch at the Daily Catch on trips to Boston's North End. His love of good food was matched by his love of conversations about food with servers, chefs, fellow diners, family, and friends. Every Wednesday, he drove to Sun Street Bakery in Minneapolis to get doughnuts for the breakfast group at Grant Park. Greg also enjoyed walking city streets and parks; traveling; going to the movies, jazz clubs, and the theater; following politics; and working on his courses and projects amid the life-affirming sounds and smells of a great coffeehouse.

He loved celebrating and supporting colleagues, students, alumni, and friends through food, notes of encouragement, and phone calls and catalyzing connections between them. Greg loved children and was so proud to be adopted uncle or grandpa to many. He took children and their ideas and feelings seriously and treated them with much dignity. He not only had an inherent magnetic capacity for human connection on a personal level, but also a compassion for humanity in a universal sense.

Greg and Kate, also a member of the History Department at Gustavus Adolphus College, were the happy companions of a black lab named Sam, who was predeceased by his and their feline companion, Cooper (named by Kate in honor of the brilliant African American scholar, feminist, and writer, Anna Julia Cooper).

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Greg’s name to the Shelf of Hope (at Agate Housing and Services), the National Endowment for the Humanities, or a cause of your choice. A memorial service will be held at the Elliot Park Hotel (823 5th Ave. South, Minneapolis) on Sunday, July 28th at 1:00p.m. An additional memorial will be held at Alumni Hall at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN on Saturday, October 12th at 9:00 a.m.

Published on June 28, 2024

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Learn to write a college essay about adoption, exploring themes of identity, biology, and culture. Avoid common mistakes and focus on your unique journey. ... If you feel so inclined, go ahead and write your college essay about being adopted. You might approach the topic through the lens of identity, biology, culture, or something uniquely your ...
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Awareness of being adopted began as far back as I can recall and has never been a taboo family topic. Adoption didn't affect my life in any sort of way as a child. As I matured, the realization of the impact being adopted has had on my life has evolved. This insight created a new level of gratitude for my family and my life.
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