<p>Not going into any personal details or any suggestive language or visual imagery or any other gross details. Just mentioning it and one or two lines of elaboration as to why I mentioned it. Don't want the admissions officer to blush! Is it a good idea?</p>
<p>What’s the question and what’s the context? It’s all about context.</p>
<p>No, not a good idea.</p>
<p>Applying to college is a businesslike endeavor. Unless you are a gynecologist, a urologist or a prostitute, you probably don’t need to discuss sex in the course of doing business. Do you want your history teacher to include just a “mention” and “one or two lines of elaboration” about his or her sex life during class? Or the person who puts new tires on your car? I don’t. And most people don’t.</p>
<p>Dude, w t f …</p>
<p>No</p>
<p>…Just, no.</p>
<p>common guys
i heard people in the states are really frank about their sexual lives and its not a taboo discussing about it.
as for the context i was thinking of mentioning it in the response to the question “what i will do with a free afternoon tomorrow” and I thought that being honest was great</p>
<p>@Sikorsky: My English teacher talks about sex all the time and I live in Saudi Arabia!! She went to a college in UK. Go figure. And I didn’t say that I would give any details. Just mention it.</p>
<p>Oh, why didn’t you tell me from the beginning what answer you wanted?</p>
<p>I think it’s a great idea!</p>
<p>But it isn’t. It’s a terrible idea. And juvenile, too.</p>
<p>@Sikorsky: Sorry man you sound offended. Its just that I have already submitted the supplement and some people I talked to about it thought that it was a stupid stunt. Won’t help now but still was trying to get reassurance.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You heard wrong.</p>
<p>Americans have something of a double standard about talking about sex. People might talk frankly with their friends, and there are certainly very explicit books, movies, and song lyrics in American popular culture. But we have a sense of what is appropriate in “polite company” that is much more restrained (or repressed, depending on who is describing it) than European cultures, or even the British. You can buy magazine with nude women in them in the US, but we do NOT have nude pictures in our mainstream newspapers or on broadcast television. (“Broadcast” television are the channels everyone gets; there are cable channels that people could choose to get or not get that may show more explicit material.)</p>
<p>One of the blunders I’ve observed among foreign visitors to this country–typically, foreign grad students–is an inability to correctly discern which audiences are receptive to vulgar language or frank sexual references and in which situations that would be entirely inappropriate.</p>
<p>This is inappropriate.</p>
<p>Would seem to me that regardless of the topic, writing about something without the details is not a good idea. If you really don’t feel you can explain why you’d devote an afternoon to having sex and “show” not “tell” us about the experience, then it’s a loser of an essay.</p>
<p>Oh, Rayan, that’s unfortunate. DeskPotato is right: America is very prudish in a lot of ways.</p>
<p>Have you maybe confused us with the French?</p>
<p>just one more thing i got the question wrong. it was “what do you do for the pure pleasure of it”
@DeskPotato: thanx for your insights man. although its a bit late now. i just hope the people who read my app are a little hiphop</p>
<p>@qialah: its not an essay. there is a 150 character limit. that’s just some 20 words.</p>
<p>@Sikorsky: hahahaha…i am seriously thinking about applying somewhere in France now!!!</p>
<p>Oh, OK. Well as long as you said something along the lines of “I would spend the afternoon in safe, consensual, monogamous sex, pleasuring my legally adult partner and allowing her to do the same to me.” You’ll be fine.</p>
<p>I wish it was cleke03. I wish it was. Although I still don’t get whats the big deal. To be frank its one of the only things that I do for the pure pleasure of it. And I was being just honest.</p>
<p>@qialah: Are you studying to be a lawyer or something?! And as i said the question was what do you do for the pure pleasure of it. I changed the answer of the other one.</p>
<p>Consider that every question that is posed is intended to help the admissions committees to determine what you, as an applicant, might add to the student community.</p>
<p>An answer which made you sound like an interesting person, a person who might contribute something, accomplish something, bring something to the community while you are there or bring credit to the institution when you are gone is the type of answer that would make you attractive as an applicant.</p>
<p>This was your opportunity to say that, just for the pleasure of it, you read, solve math puzzles, play music, volunteer in a soup kitchen, jam, harmonize, write computer code, run, follow political blogs, debate philosophy, paint, write poetry, plant flowers, bake, or do other things that seem positive and constructive.</p>
<p>@DeskPotato: I get your point. A little late but i get it. I guess I took the recommendation to be humorous a little too far. To make it worse I wrote that in MIT’s app. Well I hope that my IMO participation this year will make up for it. Check out my chance post some 3 months back. I know. I know. Chancing is a real stupid thing to do. But back then I was a newbie and had just started thinking of going to the US and it seemed to be a fun thing to do.</p>
<p>OP,
what the admissions committee is interested in is what will you bring to the campus, should they choose to accept your application.</p>
<p>So in asking what you would do during free time one afternoon, anything having to do with having sex is not going to impress them as to how your presence would enhance the campus experience. More likely it will make them wonder as to whether you have the good judgment and maturity to deal with living on the campus, whether you have the maturity to exhibit appropriate behavior in various situations.</p>
<p>I sure hope this essay is not going out to all of the schools on your list through the common application.</p>