<p>Dean J may have forgotten to include Jane Austen. Oh, and the why my dad/granddad is my hero. Or, the “poor little orphans, now I feel so guilty for making daddy buy me a Mercedes” sort of essays.</p>
<p>As another tip: make to carefully craft any sort of “this is what I did and this is what I learned” essay. A lot of these fall into a really boring two-paragraph format where the first paragraph describes some sort of club/sport/activity that the student participated in and then the second paragraph describes how the above taught the importance of commitment, perseverance, teamwork, leadership, etc. These tend to not really convey a lot of personality and correspondingly end up being pretty uninteresting to read. The concept is solid–just make sure you nail the execution. Be specific, and don’t be afraid to make the ‘lesson’ part implicit.</p>
<p>Yeah, no “team sports taught me the value of working together” or sports taught me never to give up, either.</p>