GRE Sample Essay 10

Educational institutions should actively encourage their students to choose fields of study that will prepare them for lucrative careers.

Write a response in which you discuss your views on the policy and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider the possible consequences of implementing the policy and explain how these consequences shape your position.

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Response for GRE Sample Essay 10

The statement linking education with careers misses the central point of education being all about encouraging students to think for themselves. Perhaps, the brightest and the sharpest mind in recent history, Albert Einstein, pointed out that –“Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.” It may seem all too obvious but bears statement in the context of the topic that what sets humans apart from the rest of “creatures great and small’ is the ability to think. Indeed, all the goodies that we enjoy and take for granted today, like the internet, modern medicine, safe drinking water, democracy, administration, etc. represent the triumph of education over training for “lucrative careers” in a very fundamental way.

Lucrative careers have been around ever since the emergence of human societies. Administrative officials, merchants, physicians, teachers, judges, magistrates, clergymen, etc. have been a part and parcel of the society since long. But the real impetus for the phenomenal progress in these fields and hundreds of others has come from “training the mind to think.” The turning point was, in hindsight, the 17th-century French philosopher, Rene Descartes’ proposition, ‘Cogito, ergo sum’, translated into English as “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes contributed immensely to building the framework of the modern scientific method apart from inventing analytical geometry.

This narrative of “lucrative careers” in a way, defeats the very purpose of education, as the education system encourages through school, college and beyond, an unhealthy preoccupation with grades and marks. It sets up an unhealthy race among students to secure right grades and marks to make it to one of the top-ranking institutes. What gets discounted in this process is the meaningful assimilation of knowledge. This, in turn, hinders a comprehensive understanding of the subject and how it relates to them as individuals and as members of society.

An unintended consequence of this emphasis on careers is the mushrooming of coaching classes, training institutes, and similar such entities that promise to train students to clear various competitive exams to get a ticket to gravy training careers. While the existence and popularity of such centres external to the education system can hardly be faulted, whether these centres add value to the educational inputs gained in schools and colleges is debatable. What may be inferred from the operational failure of public and private sector enterprises which the products of the education system come to manage is the emphasis on lucrative careers that seems to be wholly misdirected.

Sadly, the first casualty in this headlong rush to prepare students for lucrative careers is the capacity to think, to reason, and to engage in constructive debate. This is further aggravated by the wholesale outsourcing of thinking to media’s experts on everything from politics, governance, administration, etc. The emergence of social media has added another dimension to the problem and is creating ever bigger problems, societal divisions, and tensions. What emerges from this is a pretty dismal picture of increasing polarization of competing factions and impending conflict (s) at all levels of the society.

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GRE Essay Score

This article scores a 5 because:

The analysis is well-structured and shows a cogent flow of points to be analyzed. The lack of information about a patient’s medical history is an important observation that shows good analytical competence. The main idea of the analysis is well-articulated and is put forth coherently. For more topics, visit: GRE Essay Topics with Answers

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