<p>hi, i'm going to be a senior next year and i already want to start on my michigan essays.
i'm a girl who wants to be accepted to the college of engineering.
my essay for engineering will probably be pretty strong, the longer essay is something i can do, but i really cannot figure out the main one:</p>
<p>
[quote]
We know that diversity makes us a better university – better for learning, for teaching, and for conducting research.”
(U-M President Mary Sue Coleman)
Share an experience through which you have gained respect for intellectual, social, or cultural differences. Comment
on how your personal experiences and achievements would contribute to the diversity of the University of Michigan.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>i honestly feel like i have nothing to add to the diversity, other than the fact i really do wanna experience diversity. i've volunteered at my school and i tutored pretty regularly at my old grade school. i also tutored at a capuchin soup kitchen in detroit, which may seem like a cool experience but in reality i just played connect 4 with 2nd graders who called each others' moms crackwhores.</p>
<p>i guess, if you don't mind, if you've been accepted or attend (i know they've used this essay in the past), what kind of stuff did you write about? why do you think it made you unique?</p>
<p>oh another thing, it says on the essay tips page:
[quote]
Tell us why we’re great. Talk about campus programs you’ve attended. Tell us why you’re a great fit for Michigan.
[/quote]
do you think it'd be good then to write about the female engineering camp i'm attending in ann arbor in july (after i go, of course)? is that what they mean?</p>
<p>Well, for one thing, you’re a woman wanting to study engineering. You’re already kind of unusual for that. If you wanted to talk about your experiences as a girl who was turned on by science while a lot of your female peers lost interest or started feeling like they weren’t capable, you’d be touching on an issue that a lot of educators care deeply about.</p>
<p>You could also write about how the homogeneity of your life experience thus far makes you really hungry for the kind of experience U-M can offer. Maybe you won’t add a of diversity but you plan to be an avid consumer of the environment diversity can create.</p>
<p>A lot of students would exaggerate their soup kitchen experience as some eye-opening, life-changing insight they got into the life of the poor. You could really show your honesty by discussing your frustration with how tutoring homeless kids for an hour or two wasn’t that kind of experience for you, that you questioned how much it helped them and changed you, and that it’s increased your drive to have to do more service and to gain a more meaningful understanding of people experiencing socioeconomic challenges.</p>
<p>And by all means, talk about being on U-M’s campus for a female engineering camp.</p>
<p>i thought i would bring up the whole being a female in the engineering essay but thats a really good idea! thanks! i’m already feeling somewhat inspired</p>
<p>My daughter is a an engineering major at Vandy. She got in with average stats. We’re pretty sure it was the female in engineering thing that got her in. Our S is looking there also for engineering. He has better stats and we are more fearful he won’t get in.</p>
<p>Just be yourself. If it is free form talk about why you want to do engineering and why you are passionate about the school. Which schools are you looking at?</p>
<p>I wrote about how my argumentation class had a discussion about affirmative action, and how I took a stand that wasn’t with the crowd. Try that, it worked for me!</p>
<p>I wrote about how growing up in Huntsville, Alabama, how being the only girl in stuff from school to the group of boys I grew up with wasn’t that noticeable till puberty started, how my life has made me realize what to believe in and how I want to experience so much more to learn more, and in the end, how regardless of any demographic identity I have, I can make it on my own, without being treated as “special.”</p>
<p>So basically, in flowery story language, looking back, I was a cheap shot, but an honest one. Triple diversity: Geographically underrepresented, a girl, and a Republican.</p>
<p>michigan is my top choice, michigan state is my safety – both the only likely ones since they are in-state. applying to wisconsin since my dad is a proud grad alum and maybe northwestern as a reach.</p>