<p>Alright prove me wrong but im thinking about things to write about/ talk about for my MIT essay/interview and my passion is actually in yes... okay here it goes... in Pokemon. Ive loved it since ive been a kid and know every single thing about it. I know everything you could possibly fathom about the games and the pokemon within them. Ive battled competitively and casually with friends and just cant shake the addiction. Im criticized by my peers for "not outgrowing that stage" but oh well. I know MIT and other schools look for passions and quite frankly, for how childish and geeky it may be, Pokemon is just that, my passion ;/ Tell me what you guys think and if i should even bother mentioning it. Thanks</p>
<p>Well, your passion is what you make of it. Just obsessing over Pokemon won’t help much. Have you done anything with that passion, like creating something noteworthy? Maybe a fan game or something? If you have a passion but nothing to show for it, it won’t mean much.</p>
<p>This sounds like a good candidate for the “what do you do for fun” essay, but I wouldn’t try to turn it into an EC.</p>
<p>Or if you didn’t create anything with it, how did it change you? How did that passion make you into who you are today?</p>
<p>well i could definitely speak of how it changed me, but like, is it gonna be the kind of essay where they start reading and scrap it half way through when they see the word “Pokemon”?</p>
<p>Too nerdy for MIT? Pokemon? Maybe in the early 2000’s. Nowadays, Pokemon is pretty much as mainstream as you can get when you start talking about videogames. I highly doubt they would throw your essay away once they see Pokemon. They’ll either be like “What’s Pokemon?” or “Wow I remember Pokemon!”, maybe if you’re lucky “I’m a pokemon fan too!”. Like the others said, it’d make a good interests topic. </p>
<p>For example, did the long hours of EV training and IV breeding teach you dedication in other areas of your life? Did competitive battling, predicting your opponent’s moves help increase your cognitive abilities? I bet you also had tons of debates on controversial moves and pokemon that some consider unfair <em>cough</em>Garchomp<em>cough</em>Stealth Rock<em>cough</em>, which teaches you how to argue logically. Talk about how Pokemon is not just something you like that not everyone likes, since everyone has that, but not everyone has something they REALLY like to the point they actually consider writing a college essay about it~</p>
<p>OMG BOP thats exactly all the stuff i was thinking1 okay thankyou for giving me confidence ive made my decision then, i just dont know how to pack all my Pokemon adventures and experience into 250 words or less :(</p>
<p>I know a few Pokemon fans here at my MIT dorm, so obviously it’s not that nerdy compared to the rest of us. I don’t know if I’d write about it in an application essay, though.</p>
<p>Rspence, well why not? im not trying to contradict you rudely but that really is my passion… should i try and figure out something else or?
also if you dont mind me asking, what did you write about?</p>
<p>bump10char</p>
<p>Eh I guess you could write about it…I wrote about Scrabble in mine (yes I play tournament Scrabble and go to NASPA clubs). As long as you don’t sound like someone who is obsessed with Pokemon and does nothing else, you should be fine writing about it.</p>
<p>well no im most certainly not obsessed but i just like the strategical aspects of it and how expansive it is, but thank you very much for your criticism.</p>
<p>I think the Admissions Officers are way past this - I mean, they work at MIT…they’ve seen quite a few things, I’m sure of it. If that is your passion, go write a kick-ass essay about it, I seriously doubt that it would hurt your chances.</p>
<p>My daughter is also a Pokemon fanatic, and cosplayer. She also writes (co-writes) online role-playing with Pokemon characters and other characters. She focused on the activity itself and didn’t mention Pokemon----talked about creativity and cooperation and online communities. Just a thought. How does your Pokemon life make you a person who brings something interesting/special to MIT? How does it relate to a life skill or your personality?</p>
<p>First ill answer the life aspect of it, from the hundreds of hours of competitive play, breaking down the statistics and moves of each pokemon, how to EV/IV train them to further crush my opponents, learning from the experience from battling each person and growing from that and gaining yet another strategy from my new adversaries is literally a complete analogy for anything competitive in my everyday life. When i play games with my friends i realize to look at the deeper, underlined things behind the game, advancing my knowledge and thus increasing my chances of winning all from the hours of competitively battling in pokemon. From pokemon the phrase “more than one way to skin a cat” has come to life, ive learned no matter how many strategies i master, theres always one out there that can defeat mine - so i learn to counter it. This mind set applies to all paths of life and allows me to be more open minded to peoples ideas and then using them to amplify my own. Thats only a little bit of how it applies to my life…</p>
<p>From pokemon i can bring a sense of nostalgia to my peers at MIT. I can remind them of their younger days and temporarily take their minds of of their current struggles in college and the grueling homework they’ve been doing for the past three days. Who knows, maybe if enough people have a commonality a club of a sort can be formed and we could meet every so many days to see how one another are doing and visit our own little utopia, if only for a moment. </p>
<p>Again this is not close to everything i could say, there is so much more.</p>
<p>bump bump bump</p>
<p>I’m sure you can write a compelling essay on this but be careful with how you phrase things to make sure you don’t come off as too competitive which is a benefit up to a fault. When I see a phrase like:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>you are crossing the line and emphasizing your expertise in a negative fashion. Good luck on the application process.</p>
<p>Oh, I don’t think Pok</p>
<p>You could be a bit more romantic about it. Remember, show — don’t tell.</p>
<p>If colleges demanded more essays of me, I’d probably have written one about pokemon (and/or yugioh) by now.</p>
<p>thank you very much for the replies! i definitely wont come off as too competitive! I suppose “crushed” was bad diction ;/ ill be sure to be slightly more eloquent when i write it !</p>