<p>I've written and scrapped 4 versions of page 217. Today I happened to look up at the clock at 2:17 and jumped in fear. Oh my goodness, I can't take this much re-writing hahah
Those sadistic Penn adcoms, I bet they labeled it "optional" just to watch us struggle with the temptation to not write one at all. Curse my overachieving habits D:
Has anyone just written something mindblowingly brilliant for this essay? Want to give me some inspiration so I can write and scrap a 5th essay? Or if not, tell me where I can find some inspiration?
Oh, and, what did you try to say with your essay - was it an overview of your personality, did it reflect your aspirations, did it convey your interest in Penn? All three?</p>
<p>I just had fun with it, canary. My essay says nothing about me academically, nothing about me as a leader. I just pretended that I was writing my autobiography and wrote about an experience that was meaningful to me as a child – one that shaped how I view the world today. My advice is this: Take off your college application hat and replace it with a creative hat. Instead of viewing this essay as one more chance to tell Penn why you’d be a good student, just write as if you are making an entry in your journal. </p>
<p>(I was accepted ED, fwiw).</p>
<p>Same issue. Well, Kind of. </p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>I wrote mine about a unique experience over summer 2008. Nothing fancy, just straightforward prose. Good luck!
Applying RD BTW</p>
<p>I’m applying RD as well</p>
<p>Mine really didn’t “show” anything specific about me, probably my personality? through the writing you could probably tell how i view the world and things that are important to me (i wrote about returning back to CHina to stay with my relatives after 8 years of not having any contact with them)</p>
<p>good luck!</p>
<p>^^^^dude I wrote about going to China too, XD</p>
<p>Oh, so story-telling all around? I’m kind of surprised actually, for some reason, I imagined that most of these responses would take place in the future. </p>
<p>Thanks for the advice, Hapa! At this point, my college admissions hat might be permanently stuck on my head, but I’ll try hahahah.</p>
<p>I wrote a fun one too, but it’s only 400 words long. I’m beginning to wonder if the people who wrote 750 word essays are really bad writers, or I’m just really concise… too concise… Probably somewhere in the middle. Just like being deferred or waitlisted. WHY!!!</p>
<p>400 words doesn’t sound too short to me…
The admissions officers will probably appreciate your short-and-sweetness :)</p>
<p>Ah indeed, they be saying to my essay: shawty let me guy you a drank.</p>
<p>ha I had a great idea about writing the page 217 essay. Just assert that you finished the autobiography around page 215, and start writing endnotes, thus circumventing having to start on page “217” (which theoretically should be around age 30) and you can feel free to write about any part of your life. This was inspired by David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. However I didn’t have enough time to write it, but I still got in. My roommate wrote his, but yet he was deferred.</p>
<p>Hey who knows, w/o the essay, your roommate might’ve gotten rejected instead of deferred haha 
That idea would work, except for that the prompt specifies that you just finished your 300 page autobiography. Unless you did that many pages of endnotes, and decided to write an entire page of endnotes hahaha… which actually would be sort of neat formatting.</p>
<p>Cadillac, clearly I said “short-and-sweetness” not “shawt-and-sweetness”
Wahaha. I am so funnay. xP</p>
<p>i am stressing out. i might not just do one.</p>
<p>@CanaryK, my roommate had better academic stats than me as well as some damn fine essays. It’s just that I think I was probably more well rounded than he was but still, he would never have gotten rejected, Penn just hates my school -> IMSA</p>
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<p>Wow, either you must have miscalculated badly or you’re gonna die early.</p>
<p>ha didn’t really think too hard about it, I guess should be around 50 something if you plan to live to 80.</p>
<p>80? It’s the future, we’ll all be alive until we’re 200. Or we could say 300 to make it easy - it’d be somewhere around age 217 then haha.</p>
<p>pjc, I didn’t mean to insult your friend, I just didn’t think it was a valid case against the essay
And I know how you feel - Stanford has refused to accept anyone (except swimmer/divers) for the past like 5 years. And my school almost always sends someone to each of the ivies plus MIT. We had 7 people at Duke ED and 3 people at MIT EA this year (out of 450 total kids). So clearly it’s not our fault, stupid Stanford D:
But yeah, if I can’t come up with a good one, I’ll just skip it; it’s good to know that the adcoms don’t auto-reject if you skip the essay haha.</p>
<p>I have a friend who is currently in the Huntsman program at Penn and she said you could honestly write about anytime in your life - i think she wrote about something that happened to her like 3 weeks before. Some people wrote about super far in future or in the past. </p>
<p>dude at my school the only people that get into Stanford are double legacies or more. No one else has a shot, no matter academic/extracurricular ability. Gr Stanford.</p>
<p>Aw, thanks. Your Stanford comment made me feel better about myself. Probably not your intended goal, but hey I’ll take what I can get hahahah</p>
<p>Okay, I have a fifth draft of my 217/300 essay… does any kind person want to edit it, please? Preferably a non-Asian, because I want to see how someone who doesn’t sympathize with the topic views my essay, I’m scared that it’s a little too bitter/angry sounding.</p>
<p>goddamn colleges hating us =(</p>