<p>My recalcitrant S2 has at last begun his essays. (Don't get me started on the delay.....) He feels he has nothing compelling to say, and wants to write about his lconsiderable leadership experience in band as to what he's learned through the other rank leaders' he has had. This would include his experiences with several special needs students he has responsibility for, being responsible, blah blah, stuff I think is good but unremarkable. </p>
<p>He rejects the notion of writing about his dramatic hospitalization and life with a chronic and unusual disease as "making them feel sorry for me" and also rejects the notion of writing about his film (of her home and church) for a terminally ill friend (he wants to major in film) as "too personal and manipulative". He wrote about that for his AP class last year and it honestly makes me cry to read it. She died the week he delivered the film in hospice and it was the last time she ever saw her friends and town. Certainly I want him to invest in what he writes, but any suggestions as to how to steer, change, decide?</p>
<p>I agree with you that his experience in band, while likely to be well-written and thoughtful, isn’t going to differentiate him sufficiently from all the other kids (if he’s applying somewhere selective - if not, it probably won’t matter either way). </p>
<p>Schools want to know what has made him the person he is, how he is different from all the other great applicants, and what he can contribute to their school. I would tell him that if he writes an essay that makes the school ‘feel sorry for him,’ then he has failed in meeting the essays objectives. Schools don’t admit people they feel sorry for. And if he writes about the power of film and how he’s used it, and it comes out ‘manipulative,’ then he’s not done a good job there either since admins are pretty savvy and know when they are being manipulated. To make yourself vulnerable, by revealing something deeply personal, without making yourself pathetic or sounding manipulative is a tall order for a teen-age writer, but given that he’s done it for an AP class, he should try. Ultimately, though, it’s his essays so he has to decide.</p>
<p>If he doesn’t want to write about the film making, perhaps the girl’s parents will submit a letter of recommendation for him. Personal letters that add insight into an applicant’s personality are often welcome if they aren’t from a family member. If he doesn’t want to talk about his health challenges, the guidence counselor at his school can put this into his or her recommendation letter. </p>
<p>Our students are required by the school to provide answers to a number of questions including what am I most proud of and what challenges have I overcome? It gives them an opening to include this in their letters of recommendation. Perhaps this strategy would work better for your son?</p>
<p>The most important thing in my mind is that I don’t pick a topic that one can write so much about that the essay becomes sketchy (a mere recitation of facts). I’d like rather to write about something specific in detail (in an interesting way of course) so there needs to be a quite a bit of material about the topic.
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<p>As someone that has lived with MD since childhood, I understand your son’s reluctance to write about it on an essay. It is the choice to let him define his life, and not let his life be defined for him.</p>
<p>I also know that when I told my parents that I was not going to play that card on my admissions essay that they thought I was nuts and tried their best to change my mind. My parents tried to convince me to write about the people that I had known that had died… no that was not the foot I wanted to put forward. </p>
<p>The thing is that I do not see personal tragedy as something I have accomplished, I chose instead to focus on the rather mundane accomplishments that I had.</p>
<p>BTW: if I had a kid applying to college and they wanted to do the same thing that I did, I would probably hit the roof and try to convince them otherwise.</p>
<p>@bowtie, I know just what you mean, and that is very much how he feels. And, that is how we raised him — everyone has something, and this is just your something. We try to operate by a simple question “Do you want to do this” followed by “Then we’ll find a way to make it work”. I thought his fierce independance and strong will are good things to highlight, but he has to “go there” to explain it thoroughly. We’ll see what he decides. His issues have helped shape him, but certainly that is not "all " of him.</p>