<p>I'm having trouble compressing question 2 to "one or two paragraphs". So far, it's about 1000 words. For me, it's hard to just list something and not say why I enjoy doing that or why it's my favorite. Does UChicago discriminate against long essays for short answer questions?</p>
<p>I have the same problem, my essay about favorite movies/books/etc is about 1200 words adn I'm not sure what I can cut out of it.</p>
<p>I would say-- make sure it's not a laundry list. A list of titles of things won't do anybody any good. Don't name drop for the sake of name-dropping.</p>
<p>Try choosing one or two or three things that you feel you can elaborate upon, and go with those. You don't have to talk about everything you like-- in fact, I only talked about one. I don't think the essay is a "let's see if you're up to our intellectual standards" essay as much as it is a "let's learn something about you" essay.</p>
<p>Well mine certainly isnt a laundry list I only talk about 1 book and 1 movie, but I talk a lot about the similarities and significance between the plots of each.</p>
<p>Mine is sorta half-n-half. There are parts where I list 5 or 6 things but I always follow it up with an explanation about their similarities and differences.</p>
<p>"Mine is sorta half-n-half. There are parts where I list 5 or 6 things but I always follow it up with an explanation about their similarities and differences."</p>
<p>Yeah, same here. Every rep that I've talked to says it's not really that important of a question, they just want to see what you're interested in.</p>
<p>d_leet, i don't think they are asking about a literary analysis of the two things, i think they want to know what your interested in and why, not about plots.</p>
<p>I don't think its so much about why you're interested in whatever though, because to me that just seems like a really lame essay saying I like"whatever book" because such and such..</p>
<p>It should definitely be more about why you like whatever than the whatever itself. The essays are supposed to convey who you are, not your techniques in literary criticism.</p>
<p>i wrote basically a laundry list and got in. this is your chance to be pretentious, though. take advantage of it.</p>