<p>Hi everyone!! I am currently revising my college essays...I'm not sure if I mentioned it or not before, but my main essay if prompt 3 (going against common idea), and I will be using an example from my 8 years with horses. Now, my English teacher claims that it is written in "equestrian" language too much, and that admissions would find it difficult to read. However, she has proven to be very unreliable and snarky thus far, and honestly I tried to keep it simple while writing and creatively explain the few areas that may confuse non-horse people. Plus, I don't believe she even finished reading my essay before giving advice (she said that 'what i did that goes against the norm' isn't coming through', even though I spent a good 3 paragraphs writing about it and it was basically the entire second half of the essay) </p>
<p>I also ran the same essay by a college counselor, who didn't find language to be an issue. I would personally imagine that admissions committees have read far more essays than even the counselor, and it is impossible that I am the first equestrian applying to the schools that will receive my app. </p>
<p>Basically, my question is how much do admission people know about all kinds of sports and activities and clubs? Surely they can interpret slightly more than layman's terminology? It seems like they'd be pretty savvy with a lot of the above, since they have evaluated thousands of prospective students. If you're still with me by this point, I thank you for your time and all opinions/advice! </p>
<p>oh, I kind of have the same problem.
I’m considering writing about a video game or something related, but terms such as “guild” or “party/crew”, “guild war”, “area of effect” “whisper” and some other stuff may not connect 100% the strings in their head even if they have heard it before. And who knows who is going to read your essay?</p>
<p>Also, the connotation of any specific word may be different for you than it is for them. Even the topic. (I’m a bit paranoid on that topic part… lol)</p>
<p>I personally am going to explain some stuff out as briefly as possible. Better to be safe than sorry I guess?</p>
<p>You probably do want to avoid specialized jargon whose meaning is not obvious to, or which tends to be interpreted incorrectly by, people not deeply into the activity.</p>
<p>In grad school, I was once marked down for insufficient footnotes in a paper because what I as an engineer thought was common knowledge, the business professor thought was information that needed to be cited. </p>
<p>Write as an expert who is writing for laymen. Find some examples of equestrian articles or books written for a general audience on how best to do this, like old SI articles about the Olympic equestrian events or the recent books on Seabiscuit or Secretariat. They will either just use layman’s terms or will briefly explain the term so it can be used repeatedly in the article/book.</p>