<p>so, i'm looking at chicago's essays right now...many people tell me chicago is highly intellectual..and no doubt, their essay topics show that philosophical nature...</p>
<p>could we maybe brainstorm? so we could bounce ideas off of each other?</p>
<p>I wish I had some ideas to bounce. Maybe they’ll just “come to me” like the other essays I’ve written have.</p>
<p>I would think this is a great idea and would jump at the opportunity to get some feedback on essay ideas, but unfortunately, I just don’t feel comfortable doing so on a medium such as CC; especially with other '14 UChic applicants.</p>
<p>Meh, I looked at the essays and went entirely in the opposite direction, towards the most base and crudest of topics.</p>
<p>I really don’t think that the University is quite looking for intellectual topics, just that it gets a lot of intellectual applicants who tend towards those kinds of topics in essays.</p>
<p>BTW, I’m writing my main UChicago essay about wifebeating.</p>
<p>Wifebeating - Bad guy or Just Strict Disciplinarian?</p>
<p>I don’t necessarily think that’s the best way to go…</p>
<p>O.o that’s an interesting topic to write about, I think >.></p>
<p>But I definitely do believe that UChicago is well known as an intellectual community. That’s one of the main reasons I picked it.</p>
<p>I’m still brainstorming for my UChicago main essay, and I have to get on it since I’m applying early action >.o</p>
<p>I have a few ideas, but they’re just very rough prompts floating around in my head, watching to attach my hand to pen and paper 
I find that sitting at the computer, staring at a blank screen is very unproductive. Hello AIM and Facebook! (Procrastination station)</p>
<p>^haha…well, the main essay just basically asks you why do you pick chicago…but the other essay…i can’t really find a good topic…aghh…</p>
<p>how you get caught or not caught…like…shop lifting? lol…i haven’t done that! haha…but stuff like that? or cheating? </p>
<p>…and wifebeating? yikes…</p>
<p>Well I think they want you to avoid anything that reflects poorly on your character. Think out of the box…like…“How I got caught in a web” of something or other. I saw one girl wrote how she got caught in a sandstorm, which was kinda cool.</p>
<p>Hope that sets ya on the right track :p</p>
<p>was that metaphorical? aha…getting caught in the sandstorm part…lol</p>
<p>Haha, yes the web part was made to be sort of a metaphor It would be strange/scary if you were caught in an actual spiders web :o</p>
<p>This will sound a bit contrived, but I got an idea for my essay last year that had to do with seeing my town as a tourist might see it. I went around town and pretended to be a tourist just to write the essay. That was for my Common App essay, but the same sort of idea could work for a UChicago essay. Just try to see things from a different perspective than you might otherwise.</p>
<p>Re: wifebeating -</p>
<p>My Scav team decorates wifebeaters for our team shirts each year (low-budget style, with sharpies and a certain lack of cohesion!). When I first joined, they referred to them not as wifebeaters, but ‘negative spousal interaction apparel’.</p>
<p>… they later switched to ‘domestic justice apparel’… <em>cringe</em></p>
<p>(I love my team but we do some awfully offensive things)</p>
<p>Just to defuse the cringing (justified, of course), the wifebeating comes in because I was once rather infamously caught defending wifebeating in front of my class. It was not a pretty scenario.</p>
<p>But, yeah, no actual domestic abuse involved.</p>
<p>how could you possibly defend wifebeating?</p>
<p>One cannot.</p>
<p>Ahh, I kinda see what you are saying. I’m supposing that you failed miserably to defend wifebeating, and that taught you something? Or something O.o</p>
<p>It’s different, that’s for sure.</p>