<p>I'd like to express myself to the fullest extent possible, but I haven't lost a parent, been hit by a car, or needed to deal with a miraculous life-changing event.</p>
<p>I don't think that'd be a problem, except going through what I can find on admissions, it seems like the essays that reveal the most about people, supposedly, are the ones where they've had to rebound after hardships.</p>
<p>So I'm really looking forward to Chicago essays that I'd love to do, but not so much for everything else.</p>
<p>What has changed me, however, aren't my own hardships, but other peoples' difficulties. I created a community service organization on my own. Honestly, originally as something that would look good on an application, I'm not going to lie. A month later, it turned into something that's really changed my life.</p>
<p>Is writing about that going to be okay? Will I be selling myself short if I admit I wasn't really into it at the beginning, provided I focus on the transformation?</p>
<p>I have to agree with juxtaposn, especially if you are going to start off your essay with "I'd like to express myself to the fullest extent possible, but I haven't lost a parent, been hit by a car, or needed to deal with a miraculous life-changing event." If you are going to fully express yourself, then don't do it through a accomplishment or life changing event. Express yourself through your personality. </p>
<p>One event or thing in your life does not define you as person. Unless you are a great writer, I think writing about starting up like a community organization and how it changed how life would only hurt you by highlighting how shelted you are and the lack of depth you had/have. If anything it would leave me asking so what. Why should I care if a 17 year old kid started this organization up. He is only 17 years old, how much of this stuff is his own and not his parents. Does this come from a real passion to help others or a need to inflate your ego or have an "impressive" EC for college addmissions. I do not even know you, or read you essay but I am just showing you the different types of biases I and other people may have when reading an essay like this.</p>
<p>I disagree that you can't portray yourself negatively a little bit if something happened to change that. While this isn't a huge deal, I admitted to Wellesley that I didn't consider the school for a while because it was all girls lol. </p>
<p>I think those, essays about some revelation, can be sort of tiresome, but I think whatever the topic is, as long as it is important to you, will come off as such as long as you are being honest in your writing. Adcoms can tell really quickly if you don't really mean what you're saying I think. Just try to do it in such a way that makes it a little bit different if you choose to do that. </p>
<p>I wrote my main common app essay about the most ridiculous insignifcant thing. I got the idea from an afternoon I spent with my best friends, nothing huge. I had the same problem thinking I had to write about some profound topic or something that had a huge impact on my life but in the end I just wrote about myself.</p>
<p>Really, I don't think it needs to be a contest as to who has had the most awful thing happen to them. When I started thinking about my essay around this time last year, I was trying to think of the scariest thing that had happened to me, because I felt like I needed to have "overcome" something. But I'm a middle-class white girl, both of my parents are still alive, and the only death I've ever gone through was my great-grandfather's when I was 5, and I don't think I even cared. I also think it's getting a little too in vogue to write your essay about the most minute thing you can think of, and that seems to be what adcoms are promoting these days.</p>
<p>It's really overstated and easier to say than explain, but really, just write something--anything that you feel reflects you, be it a story about a bug crawling across your window or one of the hated "big race" stories. Just make sure it reflects your unique personality-- there really aren't any don'ts if you stick to that. I wrote my essay about a made-up experience in math class, which I used to talk about how nice it would be if like math, everything in life had an easy, definite answer, but that I like it better finding my own answers blablabla. It was a nice way to play down my C's and one D in math throughout the years, too.</p>
<p>Sorry to beat a dead thread to life, but I admit I find the OP's point at least mildly amusing in that, I was hit by a car at some point, and it was a highly unpleasant experience, but even with that, I adamantly refused to use that as my essays. Or my parents' financial hardship that was very traumatic for my brother and I, also refused to use that. IMHO, it's important to accentuate the positive and not tell a sob story.</p>
<p>Of course, I didn't get into my first choice (Wharton) and am at NYU Stern, so take my advice with a grain of salt, heh (For the record I'm happy at Stern and wouldn't transfer if given the opportunity today).</p>
<p>If you have something original to say about the sport, or if it's impacted your life a very, very lot, then it would be a good topic, but if it's just something like the cliche 'my coach taught me how to succeed in life' type thing, then you might want to consider something else. So, try to bring an interesting angle to the sports idea.</p>
<p>I would avoid writing about something too "big." Most often, there just isn't enough time to write something BIG well. As to sports, I agree with the person above me. Unfortunately, I can't really think of a better suggestion.</p>
<p>As to the positive versus negative debate, I think writing about something negative is okay if it has a positive spin, or if it shows a process. If you show how a traumatic event shaped your future (in an original way), there is nothing wrong with that.</p>
<p>Ha, I'm curious to hear what that essay was like, as well =)</p>
<p>I'm planning on writing my essay on a "normal" event in my life... one that clearly demonstrates my values and personality without my ever having to reflect upon the experience and explain WHY it does so. Out of the application essays that I have read, I think that the best are the ones that paint a picture of the applicant without the applicant ever actually having to explain his/herself (if that makes any sense). Although I'm hardly an authority on the subject (I'm a rising senior, and I'm going to be getting a lot of advice as well =P), this classic advice is incredibly helpful: show, don't tell. I hate reading essays where the applicant spends the entire essay explaining everything to the audience: "Playing in a professional hopscotch league taught me patience, perseverence, and tolerance!"</p>
<p>I portrayed myself negatively in one of my Stanford essays. The prompt was to describe a picture of my choice, and I chose one of me at age 12 looking exceedingly bored and apathetic in a world-famous art museum. I titled it [Anniushka], Bored at the Prado, 2001. I contrasted that former version of me with the much more interested (and hence interesting) version that I have since become. (I did admit that certain art museums still have a soporific effect on me.) Nothing in particular about the experience that I wrote about effected the change; instead, I used the experience as a tool to describe myself as I am now. </p>
<p>I mentioned my particular hardship (brother's death from cancer) in two of the four essays for Stanford, but I didn't dwell on it too much, and I certainly didn't portray it as "Woe is me, what black, black years, but thanks to my wonderful powers of resilience and the benevolence of such-and-such a person in my life, I am now back on track and loving life, aren't you glad?" The most time I spent on it was saying, basically, "This was, of course, a tragedy, it affected me greatly, but all in all, my years spent with him were a blessing and having a brother for 12 years was a wonderful thing, even though I lost him." No hard feelings. No sappiness. It wasn't engineered to pull on the heartstrings of the admissions people or make them feel sorry for me. I tried to write it in such a way that the reader wouldn't feel sorry for me. And I didn't take more than twice that number of words to express that sentiment. And I didn't make the hardship the point of the essay. My point was the things for which I am grateful, and my brother was one of those things.</p>