<p>Are you being risky or are you being creative? there's a difference.</p>
<p>UChicago usually likes quirky essays. One of my English teachers actually told me to write a poem for their question no 2 (which asks for your favorite poems, books, etc.); she said that they weren't as much looking for your answer but how you answered it.</p>
<p>In the college essay books I've read (like the Harvard one) none of the essays seem to be about some extracurricular they enjoy. I'm thinking of writing about that, because there doesn't seem anywhere else on the app that I can elaborate on one of my ECs. I'm scared I'll come off as boa****l though. What should I do?</p>
<p>that said "b o a s t f u l"
I don't know they have astericks.</p>
<p>ohhhh i get it. haha they even get it when it's inside another word.</p>
<p>^ that's pretty funny.</p>
<p>Anyway, a lot of people write on ECs, so don't worry about it.</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing the UVA link on essays. Dead on advice.</p>
<p>I highly, highly recommend On Writing the College Application Essay by Harry Bauld- its a truly enjoyable book to read, and is a very comprehensive and succinct do and do not index.</p>
<p>my brother wrote about how stupid the essay topic was for his applications. </p>
<p>He quoted south park several times throughout the essay, with strong profanity. He explained how stupid it was to ask a teenager to write an essay about a time in their life that felt like the end of the world (the essay topic).</p>
<p>He's going to MIT now</p>
<p>stanford asks the same question, do u think your teacher's method will work for the stanford question too?</p>
<p>re #49: is the essay is the reason that he was admitted to MIT?</p>
<p>Risk does not compensate a good topic and good writing. If you want to compensate for an avergae SAT, do it by writing a mind-wrenching, comunicative, intelligent essay; one that will make the reader think, take a deep breath and say "hmmm ,very true" or "wow, never would have thought of it." I'm a professor and counselor, and I have a program to which the admission is almost exactly the same as a college admission (grades, an admissions test, resume, department recomendations and an essay). I never take the "risky" essays as serious. They seem to me like desperate intents to be unique. Speaking to various admissions officers, more than half told me that they receive those types of essays all the time, and they come off as arrogant, disrespectful and even shallow. Only when it comes from a student with fantastic grades and excellent recomendations, do they take them seriously. Now, writing in poem format even has to do with what you put down as your intended major. If it's Engineering and you write me a poem, I'll tell you to go back to career orientation. My suggestion, write in poem format if it is absolutely relevant to your intended major, and if you wish to use humor, use a type of humor that will make your grandparents laugh and a teenager won't get.</p>
<p>I wrote a semi-serious essay about how I have a messy room and what that says about me, and it got me into Georgetown and BC (I didn't apply to any Ivies). The Georgetown admissions officer that read my essay even sent me a handwritten Christmas card (I applied EA) saying that he hoped my new roommate would adjust to my "unique organizational style". </p>
<p>It was probably a nice break for the admissions officers from the typical Georgetown "why I want to be President and save the world" essays.</p>
<p>Haha, I wrote about my messy room too (and sent it to Duke among other colleges). Though I didn't focus on just what that says about me, but integrated other parts of me into the essay.</p>
<p>So apparently, while my topic wasn't an overused one, it wasn't that original...</p>
<p>Whenever I read threads like this or advice on "just being yourself, they really want to know about YOU" I think of the NYT article about some girls in Newton, MA. Two essays were published. One was a completely predictable, competent but wholly uninteresting piece about a teacher who challenged her. It was obviously very much calculated to appeal to fuddy-duddy school administrators. The other was a genuinely honest essay about the student's conflicting feelings about the small-town Kentucky background of her grandparents, a place and people that she both loved and found limiting. The writer of the Kentucky essay told them something REAL about herself, and did it well. And she was ripped up one side and down the other on this board and several others for having the temerity to reveal the negative thoughts she had about her personal experience with a region and milieu within this country. In my opinion, she wrote an excellent and honest essay, but she was deemed unfit for any of the elite New England LACs she applied to, and people here seemed to agree. People said that her guidance counselor should have stopped her from using it. I found all this stunning, frankly. Ironically, the college that accepted her was Centre. </p>
<p>The moral of the story seems to be that you should tell them something real only if it is something they want to hear. As the great poet James Merrill once said, "Sincerity is a pose like any other."</p>
<p>We moved from a non-competitive school district to a highly challenging one when my dd was entering 5th grade. In 7th grade, her math teacher told us that she should have been tracked for double acceleration (rather than single acceleration). But that the systems were not in place for her to 'catch up' at this late date (ie, it should have happened at an earlier grade).</p>
<p>My daughter got permission from the school board to take a specific test prior to entering 8th grade; depending on her score, the school would agree to put her ahead. She then proceeded to homeschool herself over the summer, in preparation for the test. We offered to hire a tutor, but she wanted to do it herself (admirable, but probably a wrong decision).</p>
<p>Her score on the test was 1 point below the cutoff, so she was not put ahead. She took it in stride and had no regrets (of having spent her summer poring over algebra, or whatever it was).</p>
<p>To me, this story TOTALLY tells you about her - about her love of learning, her pro-active position on her education, her ability to roll with the punches her self-discipline, her time-management skills, and her risk-taking.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it is about 'failing' to reach her goal.</p>
<p>What do you think? Effective story to reveal herself? Or bad choice?</p>
<p>MIT has the topic about the world's end and all that stuff now. I wonder why they give such topics? Should I make up some story about a close friend's death for the essay? I dont know what else to write about in the essay. The only other option I find plausible is humor and I'm not sure if I can do that effectively.</p>
<p>Students are likely to suffer setbacks in college, especially at a place like MIT. How will the student cope? It is reassuring, to a degree, if the student has had experience coping successfully with difficult situations.</p>
<p>I would not recommend making anything up.</p>
<p>mtpaper: If she tells the story so that it reads "I tried and failed, and wasn't horribly disappointed," then no. Not if she's applying to highly selective schools, anyway. If she writes it so that she can rhapsodize about "My Summer with the Beauty of Algebra," and how although she didn't get the placement she developed a special relationship with math and/or an appreciation of the pure love of learning for learning's sake, then maybe. I'm sorry to sound so cynical. I think that it would go over better at one of the more earnest LACs than at a place like MIT or Cap Tech, where they would want one of their students to triumph in math no matter what, but of course I could be completely wrong.</p>
<p>If it's a school that takes parent recs, YOU can write it up very effectively, highlighting the points you make in your post. It's definitely a good insight into her from the parental point of view.</p>
<p>yes, in fact that's what I decided. One of her schools wants a place for parents to add their 2 cents, so I've written up a recap of the incident. </p>
<p>My dd has plenty of other essays to use, and writes easily without stress. So there's no need for her to use it.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>