<p>Personally, I dislike playing on stereotypes but I haven't read your essay so I don't know what to say. The humor that you're describing sounds --.. I suggest that you have friends read it... and give an objective view. Have older people read it too.</p>
<p>Tufts is definitely one of the more open-minded colleges out there for essays. I wrote about myself in my Who Are You and optional Guerrillas or Gorillas? without holding much back, and they evidently worked well enough. There's no real telling if you'll get read by a 72 or 27 adcom, so just be yourself without being offesnive or seeming excessively creepy. Saying you love anime is ok, saying 'my goal in life is basically to learn Japanese because I'm absolutely obsessed with manga' is bordering on disturbing. Pick a less extreme phrase like, "I'd love to learn Japanese so I can finally understand managa as it was meant to be read" makes you seem like less of a potential hikikomori.</p>
<p>For frivolous essay topics, just remember that the point of any essay is to find qualitative things out about you - your academic intelligence is usually just extrapolated from your test scores and grades, and essays are your main way of showing that you're slightly different than x others with similar stats. You don't need or necessarily want to distinguish yourself from the rest, like that 'I'm a clown (literally)' guy who, as legend goes, was accepted to Harvard for being different. If you're funny, that makes the college's social life better than someone who would spend most of their days shut in their room studying or watching manga. Adcoms are going to be making assumptions about you from your essays, so just be careful that they don't take extreme comments remotely serious. Sarcasm should be clear to anyone, not like an inside joke only your close friends would get.</p>
<p>To wrap up an overly long post, just ask others to read your essays. Old, young, short and tall - the more variety of feedback, the better prepared you are for adcoms to not be offended or take you the wrong way.</p>
<p>Great advice for all, '08Holla! Best advice for humor I've seen so far!</p>
<p>
[quote]
I was thinking of writing my essay in the newly minted Sarah Palin style. So far i have "Maverick Maverick Maverick Maverick, Maverick Maverick Maverick Maverick, Maverick Maverick MAVERICK Maverick, Maverick, Maverick, Maverick!" What do you guys think?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I lol'd.
10char.</p>
<p>thanks!! :)</p>
<p>the humor youre going for is quite blatant, and theres nothing wrong with that for certain audiences, but i think the admissions officers would really appreciate humor that is more subtle and deadpan. use irony and slight sarcasm as opposed to loud and unabashed humor with lots of exclamation marks</p>
<p>thank you :)</p>
<p>if you're funny, your essay will probably be funny. your essay will take on your voice, so don't force anything...just be natural and let your thoughts flow</p>
<p>however,
i think a fresh, witty, kind of...not so obvious humor would be better as the admissions officers are probably old people with different humor from humor in "sex drive" or "the 40 yr old virgin" ; )</p>
<p>if you need help, just ask me. essays are one of the few things i'm good at :p</p>
<p>haha ok thanks :)</p>
<p>my 500-word common app essay is much more, err, subtle kind of funny haha. my teachers love it, but it's still conclusion-less :( sigh. hate. essays.</p>
<p>Yeah, good question.</p>
<p>so ONE of the humor examples I listed was real, and I took it out of my essay, but a teacher that had read it with it already in was really sad that I took it out. "but it was funny!"
haha
so I guess...I'll play it safe-ish but not TOO safe.
(I put it back in)</p>
<p>Depends what college you're applying for. The University of Chicago, for instance, looks for funny intentionally I think. They specifically say you can be crazy and funny or somber and serious in your essays. For somewhere like that, I'd say go for it, but for somewhere that doesn't seem to encourage interesting answers [easy to tell which, since they also don't have particularly interesting questions], stay on the interesting side of conservative.</p>