<p>Please, would anyone be willing to perhaps spend ten minutes reading my Why Reed essay? </p>
<p>I am including an excerpt so you may decide whether reading and commenting on this style of writing is worth your time.</p>
<p>"Widdle away half of your combined childhood and teenage years in the library.
Could that ever be a qualification for Reed? A qualification that is not a measurement of my multiple-choice might nor my ability to commit two hundred pages to long-term memory, without forgetting the location of FDRs mundane death (sauna), in one night? This surely is a phantasm produced by my strained senses, I pessimistically mutter to myself."</p>
<p>Too boring for the 49 who have viewed this?</p>
<p>I, for one, think there should be no outside influence on the submitted essays; maybe some others agree that it should be 100% you.</p>
<p>The purpose of the “Why Reed?” essay is to allow the admissions staff to gain a better insight to who you are and why you are a good fit for Reed’s academic philosophies rather than to flaunt your intelligence or spread your ideologies. I have not read your essay and am speaking to the general Reed application pool when I say this: do not try too hard; write as yourself and you’ll have much better chances.</p>
<p>That being said, I would agree with vosson: the essay should focus on you and who you are, so when using outside influences, emphasize their effect on you as a person rather than explaining your beliefs on said sources of influence.</p>
<p>Thank you.
By outside influence, do you mean tailoring my essay to Reed’s board of admissions? Because I was not consciously trying to do that…</p>
<p>I think it means not having strangers involved, at all.</p>
<p>Again, what vossron said. It should be about you and you only since the purpose of the essay is to eloquently explain to the admissions staff why you would be a good fit for Reed, not vice versa.</p>
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<p>Uh…doesn’t “widdle” mean to urinate? Or did you mean “whittle?”</p>
<p>Thank you for pointing that out.</p>