<p>So looking through all these threads, something I keep hearing is that the adcom wants interesting people, people who will contribute some passion or something or other.</p>
<p>So I want you guys to give any stories you have about smart kids you know who are completely boring. Because honestly, I don't know any. All the kids at the top of my recently graduated class were unique and interesting, and all had a niche somewhere. None of them were "boring" or "dull." Do these kids exist?</p>
<p>The closest example I can think of is a girl who finished 5th in our class. She was pretty antisocial and kind of a loner. However, she did have a solid group of friends, and played 4 years of basketball. To a lot of people, she may have seemed boring (since she wasn't the partying type) but I knew her personally, and she was personable and funny, in a sarcastic, cynical way.</p>
<p>btw, she was waitlisted at her top choice (WUStL), so she'll be attending UCLA</p>
<p>im pretty sure that the “interesting” that adcoms are talking about isn’t partying vs. non-partying.
its not a social sort of boring. nor is it the sort of personality traits that are only picked up by friend. interesting, for them, i guess, means being active in learning and in the world.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean interesting in that sense either.</p>
<p>And it can’t simply mean that, if they say things like “contributing to the vibrancy of the campus” and “creating a unique social atmosphere” and so on.</p>
<p>There are a few kids in my kids’ high school that I would have to say are not very interesting. They study hard, get good grades, but don’t participate very much in school activities. Some of them are very accomplished at certain things (like music) that take up much of their time. I suppose it’s debatable whether a very technically proficient violin player is “interesting” or not.</p>
<p>I know a guy who was near the top of the class, but only had one EC (academic club) and spent almost all his free time doing schoolwork. He is very intense, competitive (he always asked how I did on tests and bragged if he did better), condescending, and simply flat out boring and annoying to talk to. His high grades got him in at some places, but not as many as he hoped (also waitlisted at WashU).</p>
<p>In fact, most of the people in my morning homeroom would have called me boring. Because I always did homework then (who wants to do spanish at home?) and rarely talked. I just never became friends with those people, which I kind of regret. One guy hated me (for whatever reason) but the rest probably thought I was simply boring, which no one in any of my real classes would agree with.</p>
<p>And you cant always tell by just seeing them at school. Schools won know if they were loners, but they can easily tell if they are interesting (which happens alot). In the real world, how hard you work and how smart you are is only half the battle. You have to be able to get along with others otherwise you cant go anywhere.</p>