<p>Ok, so the essay I can answer best would be: Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.</p>
<p>Well the truth is I was a troubled youth who got into a lot of trouble for fights and hanging around with a bad crowd and ended up going to a residential treatment facility and a community based treatment, they were multi-purpose and had kids with drug problems and just problems staying out of trouble and required having a misdemeanor charge or more (it mostly based around fixing conduct disorder). Well I was always smart and did good on tests throughout middle school but I slacked in homework and even skipped school at times. I even had to go to an alternative school part of my freshman year before being admitted into these treatment programs. </p>
<p>Well partly into the community based program (spring freshman year) was when I started doing good in school, enrolled back into the public school fully with an IEP and got my first 4.0 term. I still got into trouble that summer and ended up going to residential treatment (group home) for 6 months. The lucky thing was the place was in my home town and allowed me to go to school in a neighboring public school district where I got to choose my classes. I had my first AP that year and the first term I had 8 classes but our groups lasted too long so my quality slacked because they wouldn't let me stay up to finish all the time, and in my AP ended up with a C+, my lowest grade since 1st term freshman year which was a D. After being discharged I had B+ as my lowest grade since, and last term I finished with a 4.27 for term. I jumped from a 2.1 (1st term freshman year) to a ~3.5-3.7 (end of Sophomore year, not sure because I don't have access to my transscript since in the middle of my last term) cumulative and have almost all honors and 3 AP classes and play sports year round and will most likely be put into National Honor Society after Junior year.</p>
<p>Anyway, I was going to say how these programs helped me realize there was more to life than being the "cool tough guy" and that I really had a passion for learning and wanted to make a positive influence in the world. If I get straight A's till the end of senior year I will be Valedictorian and I want to go to Stanford or MIT for Physics/Computer Science double major (reach schools). I think my story will make me unique and catch their eye past all the "I have so many EC's, really high grades and lots of volunteering", but will they see me having a criminal past, even though it turned around early years of high school, as a bad person and will pollute their community or do you think that it will move them and impress them how I turned it around so well?</p>
<p>I just want to know some other peoples opinions before I write it. My treatment staff at the group home (who were mostly psychology/sociology college students going to either a private school or our local CC) said my story would be great on an essay but my dad (who has a bachelors) says that I should just write about good things. I personally think they will find it inspiring. If it matters I'm white and from the lower-middle class. I don't feel impoverished except that I can't afford to always go to the mall and always go out to eat like a lot of my friends, I got into fights, I never stole but I was in - and drove - a stolen car with one of my old "friends" who did. Anyway I'm going too much into detail and you get the picture. Do you think writing this essay would be a good idea?</p>
<p>Do you know how many kids with idyllic, untroubled (and essentially boring) lives wish that they had something like this to help then stand out in their essays and get into an elite college?</p>
<p>You must write about this. In fact, if your colleges are going to know anything about this, you might lose your otherwise potentially good chances completely for failing to reassure them about your background. I mean, either way you’re going to have to account for yourself in your application; there’s no better way to do this than to turn your troubled background into a hook.</p>
<p>When I had an opportunity like this, the essay risked making me appear mentally unstable and I had to be careful to make the opposite impression; you have to do the same to avoid seeming like a behavioral issue. The key is to be sincere and moving. Be sure to have an experience you can describe that evinces your transformation.</p>
<p>If you can describe your background and then persuade the admissions officer that you’re a better person than the other applicants because of it — and do this all eloquently — you will have a considerable edge in admissions over your peers.</p>
<p>Tell your father that. If he still feels the same way, offer to write two essays and send the “safe” one to half of the schools you are applying to. But know that admissions counselors are rarely enthusiastic about safe essays.</p>
<p>Well the whole thing pretty much nudged me into the right direction because I started to become more religious (due to multiple family members succumbing to cancer last year), so that keeps me from wanting to be involved with thieves, and I was in there with legit gangsters and stuff so I don’t want anything to do with those kinds of people anymore. So if I were to think of an event afterward it would be either a religious, self-preserving, sometimes “I wouldn’t want this to happen to me” thought that makes me dislike immoral things. I’m scared to say this because I get this impression that college professors and such are atheist and look down at religious people as being stupid and believing fake fairy tales, thus lowering my chances for being religious. Otherwise I just wouldn’t reveal my religious views, because one day I want to become a professor myself.</p>
<p>Colleges and the communities that rule them are pretty liberal, but that doesn’t mean they’re anti-religion so much as it is that they are anti-conservative (this is me being honest). By that I mean that they’re primarily put off by the themes of social conservatism while attracted to the themes of social liberalism. However, their attraction to one theme of liberalism — ideological diversity — is what will ultimately make an essay that talks about religion in a sufficiently compelling way effective.</p>
<p>The difference is that one is spiritual and the other is political (which equates in a suble way with evangelism). Essays that detail spiritual development — if done right — are often some of the best that admissions officers get to read because of their simultaneously introspective and passionate nature. The best application essay that I’ve read on CC was about a kid’s religious conversion.</p>
<p>Of course, these essays are very hard because getting preachy or ideological is easy and a no-no. Your goal would be not to talk about your religion, but to talk about your experience with it, and to make the reader experience the feelings you did.</p>
<p>Well, I thought I was reading a draft of an essay right there I think you ought to do it. Tell your Dad your going through the programs and being successful is a great positive and compelling story. I’d want to establish that there has been a defined stretch of time since you got into any trouble. Don’t avoid talking about the part religion played in your progress. That is important too. What Philovitist said about spirituality, that is an important dimension to show. Your concerns are unfounded and wrong. It’s admissions officers not professors who read your essays, btw.</p>