The majority of colleges are undeniably liberal. Of course your essay may be about your love for baseball or whatever, but a subliminal undertone that shows how liberal you are will go a long way. Something as simple as a reference to one of Noam Chomsky’s or Obama’s books will instantly have them thinking of you highly. The last thing you want to do is center your essay around that. Make sure to keep it subtle. A simple stab at corporate greed. Maybe an anecdote to how much you supported occupy wall street. Assuming you know a little about politics you can get creative with a few subtle references.
I strongly disagree with this. Unless politics are somehow relevant to the overall theme of your essay, I don’t believe that they should play any kind of part in it. You’re making some broad generalizations that aren’t necessarily accurate. Universities do tend to lean more to the liberal side, but there are plenty of conservatives and even hardcore republicans reviewing admissions essays as well.
And your evidence for this is what? Interviews with admissions officers? “Common sense”? Voodoo?
If you see college admissions as some sort of shallow, greed/pride-driven system, where you have to market yourself as what they want and not who you are, in order to get in, then why are you applying / did you apply to college?
Maybe I’m a tad cynical about admissions too. I think that colleges, at the end of the day, want people who are going to use their education to do something in the world. Top schools may take it a little farther; they may be looking for world-changers, innovators, deeply diverse applicants, and people who strive to be excellent. And because of their competitiveness and rigor, you may need more “proof” that you can handle the work, and that you will do a lot with your education. So, yeah, I guess they do want you to be a certain something. But don’t think you can tailor your major, extracurriculars, and essays to sound like the “ideal” person. It’s hard to know what colleges’ true motivations are behind admitting certain people unless you’re a part of that process. But it will be easy for them to see whether you’re doing things to fit a mold or because that’s who you really are.
So if you’re trying to get into college, I don’t think that putting liberal undertones in your essays is going to be the best use of your energies, haha.
If by “liberal” you mean overtly idealistic/less pragmatic, then of course. You want to make the college believe that you can change the world in some meaningful way.
^ I do concur. But not so much liberal when used in the political sense.
Throwing Noam Chomsky into an essay sounds like desperation, and will look that way to any admissions officer.