<p>A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe <bold>an experience</bold> that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you. </p>
<p>I know the prompt says I need to talk about "an experience" indicating that I should concentrate on one event, but I think I could write a much better essay about the culmination of my life.</p>
<p>I'm writing about my diverse life. I'm making sure to mention my Mexican step-grandfather, my paiute step-grandfather, aunts, uncles, and cousins, my afghani brother, and my panamanian aunt. I'm also making sure to mention my republican step-mother, democrat mother, independent father, and libertarian step-father, and I'm also mentioning the religious diversity in my family: my athiest mother, my agnostic/deist father, my ghost dance paiute family, and my finatically christian step-mother and grandparents. I'm pretty sure that I can convince them that the white, blond haired girl is the most diverse applicant they have ever dreamed of. I also want to discuss that so much diversity in my family made me a unique individual and forced me to choose my own religion and political party (and to an extent my ethnicity) at a young age, which encouraged abstract and complex thought to be brought to the forefront of my life at a time when most kids only still hadn't developed basic ideas about their identity.</p>
<p>So my question is, do you think it will hurt me that I am not following the prompt to a t.</p>
<p>Is there any way you could possibly organize your essay, which would be about your diverse family, around a single moment? A family gathering of some sort? Or any conflicts which arose from having such a diverse family which you might have been caught in the middle of? You might be able to get across the fact that you will bring diversity to the college by the essay you're talking about, but just saying "my relatives are like this, and because of that, I'm like this" might not be the most exciting and memorable essay. And you want your essay to be memorable, I think.</p>
<p>To me, reading an analysis of how your family's diversity affected you would be a dry read. But if you could somehow provide the same analysis with an interesting (or craaaazy) anecdote, you could SHOW me what you mean, as well as telling me.</p>
<p>I don't know. That's just me. And I think that would be a compromise between the prompt and what you're talking about. Instead of talking only generally or only about one experience, you'd be writing about an experience, and then sort of zooming out onto the general.</p>
<p>Eh. If I make no sense, I'm sorry.</p>
<p>To me, it sounds like you are trying to portray yourself in a way to appeal to your notion of what adcoms want. I wouldn't buy it. Instead of portraying yourself as a Heinz 57 of beliefs and ethnicities, focus on one meaningful moment, like Stercus suggested. I really do not think that adcoms are looking for campus diversity by choosing the people that singularly represent diversity.</p>
<p>Think about it: most Americans have republicans, democrats, and multiple religions and ethnicities in the family, especially when we include extended family.</p>
<p>I agree, it does seems to much like you're 'forcing' it, so instead show it through an example. :)</p>
<p>I really think people are overanalysing my post. I just wanted an answer to a simple question, not an analysis of my currently unwritten essay. I just gave a quick, thoughtless summary of essay in order to clarify my question, but obviously that was a bad idea because now everyone is misrepresenting what I meant my essay to be. If you would like further clarification about what my essay is suppose to be, then I will send you my essay when I am done, but as for now, I just wanted a quick answer.</p>