<p>Does it matter if my essay is somewhat (actually, completely) impersonal? I just wrote about a crazy idea of mine but the essay isn't really personal. Should I be relating myself to the essay somehow? Or is UChicago just looking for how I think and it doesn't matter too much? The prompt doesn't exactly lend itself to talking about myself.</p>
<p>Of course, someone will most likely be able to answer this better than I will be able to, but I will just tell you that my essay was completely impersonal and I got deferred. Was it because my essay was impersonal? I honestly don’t know (although I’d doubt it), but I agree that the prompt doesn’t exactly lend itself to helping one include both personal experience and substantial intellectual inquiry. Personally, I thought that I talked about myself enough in the other 4 short answers/essays, and in the extended essay, it was time to showcase the abilities my mind, but, again, I got deferred so I really don’t know if that worked.</p>
<p>I’d say that anything that you write will reflect some aspect(s) of you. Earlier in the season I heard an admissions officer say that his favorite essay last year was one in which the student talked about the differences between a mechanical pencil and a regular one. Hardly a “personal” topic, yet it revealed the particular qualities of the young person’s mind, as well as the way that he expressed himself. </p>
<p>My first advice is always to be true to yourself: make sure that your essay conveys something real about you and your mind, either through its content or its structure (or, ideally, through both). The admissions folks are intelligent, educated people; even if you’re not talking about yourself explicitly, they will ‘get’ something about you. The worst essays, I believe, are the ones that are robotic or have been so heavily edited by several people that they’ve lost the essence of the candidate.</p>
<p>Does that make sense?</p>
<p>Yes, that does, thanks.</p>
<p>My essay (I wrote the one about getting caught) was a huge shpeal that quite literally talked about nothing. It wasn’t a personal story - at least not in the nonfiction sense - though was witty (at least I thought so…). The whole thing had no point, no focus, no nothing… which was the whole point (so I guess it had a point to have no point). Even though my essay had nothing to do with me, though, I still got accepted, so yeah, if it’s impersonal, go for it. Just make sure it doesn’t sound robotic, like beatitudo mentioned, and make it as weird, quirky, and just plain out-there as you want it to be.</p>
<p>^Unless that’s not you, of course.</p>
<p>One admissions officer said, the essay should be something that if someone picked it up off the cafeteria floor and started reading it, they would know who it belonged to. (Not likely in our huge school, but you get the idea.) Even an impersonal subject should have your personal voice. It should make the admissions officer think, “we’d like to have this student here.”</p>
<p>I also did the games essay. Mine was completely impersonal and I was accepted EA.</p>