<p>What makes it different from just saying interest?</p>
<p>'intellectual' part just seems hard to understand.
BTW, I am talking about the first essay question on the supplement.</p>
<p>can anyone explain what this question is asking for?
thanks.</p>
<p>Well, interest could mean something like ping-pong. Intellectual interest is more like a favorite subject in school, or perhaps something that you find interesting outside of school that is still somewhat intellectual, like World War II or something.</p>
<p>thank you koala717
:)</p>
<p>no prob :)</p>
<p>or chess, or some kind of strategy, or music in a theoretical sense, etc...</p>
<p>not baseball, or cooking, or charity work</p>
<p>Any fellowship, scholarship, graduate program, professional school that you apply to will require you to state, in writing, what it is you want to study and how you are going to utilize that particular institution's resources to study it. </p>
<p>In this particular case, its Cornell's way of knowing whether or not you have truly thought your decision through in applying to the college, or you simply liked its ranking and decided to apply.</p>
<p>To this day - I'm currently a Sophomore in Human Ecology - I'm CONVINCED that the reason I was admitted to Cornell, ahead of those with SAT scores 150 points higher than mine, was because of my answers to the two essays that you're referring to.</p>
<p>I've never regretted my decision to come. Hang in there, put some thought into your essays, and stay motivated.</p>
<p>thanks ehg6 and sparticus800</p>
<p>diversity of people and the desire to understand them -- does that qualify as an intellectual interest?</p>
<p>maybe. when i filled out my supplements, it was two essay questions. the first asked me to explain my intellectual interest. and the second asked me to explain how the school was going to fulfill that interest. you should think of it as a way to show them that the school is a good fit for you.</p>
<p>I agree with ehg6's interpretation.</p>
<p>JohnC613, Yes, your interest is "sociology":</p>
<p>" Sociology, the scientific study of human social behavior. As the study of humans in their collective aspect, sociology is concerned with all group activities: economic, social, political, and religious. Sociologists study such areas as bureaucracy, community, deviant behavior, family, public opinion, social change, social mobility, social stratification, and such specific problems as crime, divorce, child abuse, and substance addiction. Sociology tries to determine the laws governing human behavior in social contexts."</p>
<p>what about my dedication to a career in medicine?
or what about intellegence (I talk about what makes the students I tutor learn, and articificial intelligence in a calculator program I made which is unbeatable in tic-tac-toe, and different people on my math team solving the same math problem in different ways)
can't decide which of these two to use</p>
<p>Dedication to a career in medicine isn't going to be as unique as an interest in the study of intelligence. I think it is interesting that beyond your interest in math (evidenced by your being on a math team) that you have stood back and observed that the students on the team approach problem solving in different ways. Same with trying to understand how the kids you tutor learn. But the important thing is that you are satisfied with what you have written.</p>
<p>hey i'm a chess player, but i'm just wondering, is chess an "intellectual interest"?</p>
<p>Sure... just make certain that you tie the lessons of chess back to logic and strategy, more generally. Chess has a lot of applications to philosophy, political science, and math.</p>
<p>I was wondering for intellectual interests, does have to be necessarily something you learned in school? I love working with kids and am interested in their behaviors and choices and stuff like that. But i would also like to help others by talking through problems and whatnot. How would I be able to use this. I'm having trouble forming coherent ideas to use.</p>
<p>Sounds like you are a human development major.</p>
<p>or behavioral psychology.</p>
<p>um...can art (as in draw/paint/design) count as an intellectual interest? I want to talk about how my interest from art evolutionized into business --> marketing and all that~~</p>
<p>I disagree that ping pong and such cannot be an intellectual interest. I have an intellectual interest in bussing tables at a local restaurant. I try to find new and innovative ways to do it more efficiently, and I think about what I do and how I can improve it all the time. I also wrote a manual for my boss called "the theory of bussing" that I wrote like a text book describing how to be a bus boy. That may not be your average "intellectual interest" but probably is a lot more interesting then your run of the mill essay about chemistry or psychology. if you have something that you think about a lot, and you can write a pertinent essay about it, write it.</p>