<p>Alright, I did the roommate essay as a poem (which I thought was my best essay for any college I applied to). It was full of simple sentences in which I said random facts about myself ex: </p>
<p>"I'm nearly ambidextrous.
I drive a Saturn, not a Lexus.
I ran junior high track.
I do my best to avoid crack.
I'm a Sagittarius.
And quite gregarious."</p>
<p>It was like 60 lines, pretty simple sentences but amusing.</p>
<p>So was this a) very cliche and sure to be dismissed by the admissions officers or b) a creative spin that they would view as unique.</p>
<p>Also, I sent in an extra rec from the principal of the elementary school where I coached 5th grade basketball (because it was a very dank rec.)</p>
<p>I mean my stats are good, but Stanford is a bit of a reach and I felt that playing by the rules I would look a little bland; I had to do something a little out of the ordinary to get noticed.</p>
<p>so i’ll preface this with the fact that i’m not an admissions office nor do i really know what they want exactly but my thoughts are:</p>
<p>that was a really good idea because it helps to deonstrate your ability to think outside the box on these essays, which demonstrates uniqueness, which is always a plus. even if someone else was creative enough to do that, i still think its a pretty dank idea.</p>
<p>my one thing, which is REALLY minor, is that the prompt said what is one thing that you would want your roomate to know, where you list multiple. some officers might see that as the “not following directions” bull*****. but like i said, this is a REALLY MINOR point, and i’m not even 100% sure that it said one specific.</p>
<p>Excellent advice coming from Stanfords #1 prospect, ‘illburndebate’.</p>
<p>Stanford will probably like this, so long as it doesn’t show an obvious lack of maturity at some point. If you worked hard on this to make it authentically you, I don’t see how this would work against you even if they didn’t like it too much–I don’t think they’ll penalize attempted creativity, and they really do take a holistic approach.</p>
<p>the<em>chronic</em>420: i apologize for bringing this to your thread</p>
<p>but if “beef supreme” here is going to call me out i’d like to know why he tells you they use a hollistic approach yet he calls me out on a single stat.</p>
<p>We punctuate exclamatory sentences with a period or exclamation point, not a question mark. I made my name without Taco Bell in mind, but I’m pleased to see you have the mental capacity to make such an association. Maybe I was wrong about you. To answer your question, most applications feature inclusive and exclusive qualities. When a holistic review process is used, such as with Stanford, the inclusive qualities (such as a qualifying SAT score, GPA, class rank) are dropped, but exclusive qualities (meaning parts of your application that could disqualify you even with an otherwise strong application) remain. Being in the third decile almost immediately disqualifies you without having the remainder of your application feature something absolutely amazing, to make up for it. Sadly, yours does not. Therefore, I can safely call you out on a single stat, even though its a holistic application review.</p>
<p>wait, so is class rank an inclusive or exclusive quality? you’ve got it in both places. </p>
<p>plus i’m still wondering why a third decile ranking at an extremely competitive school (which my state’s admissions officer even said to me during my tour) would be so terrible. it’s not like i’m sixth decile at a school of idiots</p>
<p>Look at where kids in the third decile historically have gone. Look at where kids in the second decile have gone. If you see kids who were around your rank, who have gone to schools like Harvard and Stanford, then perhaps I stand corrected. But I’m willing to bet that only a handful of kids at the top of the first decile go to top 5 schools every year, maybe if your school is insane 10-15 kids do, but certainly none in the third decile. Class rank can be inclusive or exclusive. If a school loves kids from the top 10%, like UT, its inclusive. If it’s a school like Stanford, where 94% are in the top two deciles, its exclusive.</p>
<p>I’m sure you have heard this, but the admissions officers have seen everything. This technique of using a poem for your roommate essay won’t be something crazy new, but as beef said, they can’t mark you down because you tried to be creative. The roommate essay is meant to show “you”. If the essay shows “you”, then you’re good. If not, then…</p>
<p>lol, I wrote a letter to my roomie, which I snatched this idea from previous admits who did the same…but I can bet you that no other applicants will have what content I wrote inside. ^.^</p>
<p>It really depends on who is reviewing this/when/what mood they are in. If they are bright and cheery and looking forward to reading apps at the time your app is reviewed, they will probably laugh. If they are in a bad mood/tired/want to get home, they might find the simple rhyme scheme, lack of adhering to the prompt etc. cheesy and annoying. It really does depend. Personally as a student, I find it to be hilariously funny and pretty awesome, but if i put myself into stereotypical middle aged college admissions officer mode, I would probably find it incredibly simple, cheesy, overthought, etc.</p>
<p>It really does depend on who you are. From the little that I can observe about you (and I 100% admit I am stereotyping and you can def respond and tell me I’m wrong and it’ll be cool), it seems like you aren’t usually a poetic type and kind of tried to do this simply to distinguish yourself from others, and if that is true, I think the admissions officers might see right through it. But again, I don’t know about the other 99% of your app, or you as a person, so this is just what I see from this thread.</p>
<p>You walk a very thin line when you attempt to do something out of the box that really isn’t you (I have a couple friends who felt the same way and did similar things w/ mixed results). I can guarantee you the extra rec won’t hurt, actually it will more than likely help you at least a little bit, and as far as the essay goes, it will either raise your chances substantially (from the average 7% to around 40-50% at least aka might be the thing to get you into Stanford), or will reduce it from like 7% to around 1-2%. Potential large gain with minimal risk, I like the move personally. </p>