<p>11 universities. 10 of them are 100% done and over with.</p>
<p>Then there's Bucknell. </p>
<p>They want me to write essays to distinguish myself, and in what form? This:
[quote]
At Bucknell, learning happens almost everywhere - classrooms, laboratories, residence halls, athletic fields, and the local community; and it takes on many formats - coursework, research, artistic endeavors, spiritual exploration, student-run groups, volunteer projects, and more. Together these learning opportunities are known as the residential learning experience. Please list three or four ways in which you would participate in Bucknell's residential learning experience. For each item in your list, describe what you might gain from the experience and what you might contribute to the experience.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I really dont know what to do here. I'm not going to write "i play tennis, i will enrich your tennis team, I will get better at tennis." or stuff like that, that will not distinguish me at all. But what kind of stuff can i write here? There really is no room for creativity. I'm kinda stumped.</p>
<p>Man, did I ever hate that essay! If I didn’t like the school so much, I probably would have crossed it off the list. Probably my favorite part of getting in elsewhere ED was not having to further work on the crappy essay I wrote for Bucknell.</p>
<p>My advice is to just BS your way through. At this point, you don’t have much of a choice. There is no way to make this kind of essay interesting or unique, so don’t get it right, get it written.</p>
<p>Ha. Those essays are what made me ax Bucknell from my list.</p>
<p>sorry, i don’t have any ideas. maybe get creative and describe something specific for each thing. i.e. tennis: I will carry the Bucknell tennis team to the collegiate national championships with my killer backhand. At the championship match, the score will be 40-40 in the last game. I’ll serve the ball, sending it hurtling towards my crouching opponent…" etc.</p>
<p>My college daughter was looking at her brother’s prompt to one school which basically asked him to identify qualities of the school and then state how he would take advantage of them. She thought it an odd prompt since the obvious way he would take advantage of them would be by GOING THERE. Another school asks the applicants to state their goals and how the college will help them get there. What goals? Isn’t college a time to figure out what your goals are? Maybe the goal is to go to college to figure out what one wants to do. Some of the questions are pretty inane.</p>
How would ‘going there’ automatically imply he is taking advantage of those opportunities? If he is citing the generous research programs at a college, for example, he should discuss how early he would start conducting research, in what field, with what level of mentoring, etc. And the whole thing with kids going into competitive colleges not know what they want to study is just beyond me. Sure it’s a time for discovery, but if you want to stand out, you’ve gotta at least write down some potential professional or academic goals.</p>
<p>I am curious as to how many students cut schools off of their lists because of the essays. I practically forced my son to keep going and despite visiting Tufts twice he was turned off completely by the essays. I wonder if the colleges care if students find the essays to be a deterrent or if they are snooty enough to think that only those who want to invest in their essays deserve to go there? This makes me wonder how the faculty feels - do they want great essay writers or great students of their subjects?</p>
<p>Oh, sure, I get that, but where is the proof that they have used the right criteria in selection??? Where is the outcome data to support this idea?</p>
<p>Uchicago’s essay freaked me out- i asked my counselor to send the reco and transcript package, but when i seriously started considering the application - the essays and the probability of me getting in were so great that i decided to forget abt it.</p>