Huggins 1

Aidan Huggins

Ms. Gonzalez

ENC1101-0026

31 October 2023

College and Rhetorical Determinations

Creating my application for college was one of the most stressful yet liberating moments

of my life. The feeling of sending an application that would change the course of my livelihood

made me extremely excited and ready to leave high school behind forever, as I had never

enjoyed school. Two of the most important pieces of work I used to create my application for

college were my college essay, and my resumé. Both had the same purpose of getting me into

college and were catered to the same group of admitters, yet the way each were structured

differed and turned them both into unique artifacts that both exceled at getting me into UCF. In

this essay, I will use rhetorical situations to analyze and break down both of my artifacts and

question how and why each did their part in getting my application to UCF accepted.

First, I created a resumé to use to apply to college, as resumés are important to make

yourself look desirable to whomever you’re trying to get to hire you or pay attention to you

compared to the potentially thousands of others trying for the same position as you. I used

rhetorical situations when writing the resumé since it would serve no purpose if it was not

effective in succeeding at the goals I aimed for. Grant-Davie explains rhetorical situation as:

“...the context in which speakers or writers create rhetorical discourse…more

specifically…a complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or

potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced

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into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to bring about significant

modification of the exigence,” (265).

This explains that rhetorical situations are the building blocks of any project that will help make

it effective and serve a purpose.

Two excerpts from my resumé

The main components of a rhetorical situation are the exigence, or purpose, the rhetors,

or authors, the audience, and the constraints, or obstacles. The exigence of my resumé was to

apply to and get into college to further my education and to find a job and earn money to buy

products, go out with friends, and begin transitioning to living without my parents and their

financial support. The rhetor was me, as I was “selling” myself by providing my good points and

experiences to influence the audience to accept my college application, as seen when I’m talking

about my skillset. The audience is the college admissions board, since they overlook and read

every application to determine who gets into a college. I used specific words and short sentences

to make myself sound more professional to captivate and intrigue the audience. This is proven

using the objective part of my when I say, “self-motivated, compassionate…opportunities to

increase knowledge…significant impact…” (1).

Lastly, one constraint in my resumé is that I’m not a jack-of-all-trades that can do

anything, as I only specialize in certain areas and skills, making me valuable for said skills only.
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Two more excerpts from my resumé

Another constraint is that I state in my resumé the types of jobs I’ve had, which aren’t

official as the US government doesn’t earn tax off me, meaning I’ve never had a job despite

having worked for years. This could potentially be a turn-off to colleges, as they would have

little way of proving all my information.

Next, I had to write a college essay to submit for my application to college during my

summer before college. The essay’s topic was to write about “an obstacle that affects your life

and how you overcame/adapted to it”, and it had to be around 1200-1500 words long. I wrote my

essay about my severe food allergy to eggs, and how eating them can put my life in danger, and I

used examples of times when I had ingested eggs by accident and how I reacted and fixed the

situation. I used rhetorical situation to exemplify my essay and gain the “pity vote” from the

admissions team from telling them about how difficult it is to live with an egg allergy and how

I’d coped with it up until present day. Laura Bailey Carroll states in her essay:

“Rhetorical analysis asks how discourse functions in the setting in which it is found. In

the same way that a commercial for denture cream seems very out of place when aired

during a reality television show aimed at teenagers, rhetoric that does not respond well to

its context often fails to persuade,” (56).

This explanation fits the description of my college essay, as the story I used to persuade the UCF

admissions team only works in specific scenarios, for example, the topic of my essay. If I wrote
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about my egg allergy when my essay prompts a different topic, the admissions team would

notice that I’m not capable of following directions, thus hindering my chances of getting into this

university. This plays into the exigence of my essay being so that the admissions team at UCF

accepts me into the school so I can pursue my education at this university.

Excerpt from my college essay

Since the audience of my essay was the admissions team at UCF, I, as the rhetor, needed

to cater to their language to sound more sophisticated and professional to make my chances of

being accepted heightened. I had a writing tutor help me throughout the writing process so that I

could create a truthful and plentiful paper, while still adding some flashiness to expand upon my

essay to make it more favorable for the audience. This was the toughest part of writing my essay,

as I had to make multiple revisions over the smallest words, and it would cause my motivation to

decrease after each revision, but I kept it up and persevered as I really wanted to get into UCF

more than anything, and I’m glad I did. One example of these revisions is from the first sentence

of my essay. I don’t usually use dashes in my writing, but my tutor insisted I put “in sweat and

laughter” inside dashes because I sounded better than putting a comma after laugher (1).

To add on, there were many constraints when I was writing this college essay. One major

constraint was time, as I only had two months to create this essay, and it took me a little over a

month to write it with all the revisions I had to go through. I had submitted my application a few

weeks before the deadline for early admission, so I was stressing out a good bit around this time.

Another constraint was my motivation. As previously stated, my motivation dipped for a bit
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while creating my college essay, as it was strenuous and a lot of effort, though I’m glad I

continued and finished it, as I’m very happy with my final product and grateful for my tutor’s

assistance.

Another excerpt from my college essay

Lastly, word count was a major constraint as I had to reach 600-800 words for my essay

to be considered at all. This wasn’t necessarily difficult to achieve, but there were a few mental

gymnastics my tutor and I had to achieve to make the word count without destroying the

structure of the essay. As an example, talking about my hunger and creating multiple sentences

about eating healthier and ways I achieved this, while true, were stretched into longer sentences

just so I could reach the word count quicker, especially when listing multiple foods like “…

salads, avocados, broccoli, and bell peppers…” (2).

To conclude, both of my artifacts exceled at providing me a great chance at getting into

UCF with my application. The resumé did a fantastic job at highlighting my key characteristics

and how dependable and responsible I am, and while I never had an official job, the jobs I had

listed proved that I didn’t just spend my time doing nothing. Additionally, my college essay used

many methods to effectively get my application accepted. I used fancy words and phrasing to

make myself sound sophisticated, and I perfectly matched the theme of the essay to prove how I

overcame a serious struggle, appealing to the admissions teams. Overall, both of my artifacts had

their pros and cons, but since both showcased more of who I am and how I would be a great fit
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for UCF, they achieved their goals of getting me accepted into college. Now that I’m finally

here, I’m starting to enjoy school for the first time, and I have mainly my rich application and my

determination to thank for that.

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Works Cited

Carroll, Laura Bolin. “Writing Spaces.” Writing Spaces, Writing Spaces, 2010, writ-

ingspaces.org/past-volumes/backpacks-vs-briefcases-steps-toward-rhetorical-analysis/.

Grant-Davie, Keith. “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents.” Jstor, Taylor & Francis,

Ltd., 1997, www.jstor.org/stable/465644.

Huggins, Aidan. “My Eggsistencial Crisis.” Common App, 2023.

Huggins Aidan. “Resumé.” 2023.