<p>Is anyone considering doing Option 5 for the third essay? It is the one where you can make up your own prompt and respond to it.</p>
<p>*Also does anyone think that Option 2 for the third essay is unusually straightforward when compared to the other options. All the others seem to require a great deal of creativity, while #2 is pretty straightforward. Could this be the UChicago trying to distinguish between those creative applicants and those who are not and would rather take the easy way out? Maybe im just paranoid.</p>
<p>Offering an essay as bait for less-creatively-oriented students would be viciously cruel, so I don't think that's the case. Then again, this is the school that has me in a 9:30 lecture class MWF all of next quarter, so their capacity for cruelty is quite large. </p>
<p>I think it's just a matter of how you present yourself overall. I would say that if you have, for example, a lot of supplemental material (like a CD you recorded or published poems or something) that showed a creative side, you would worry less about impressing on the essay topics. However, they give you the fifth option for a reason, and that's to let you shine, even if it means taking a chance. I think they like daring essays, within reason of course. </p>
<p>Or, you could answer #2 in a creative way. I don't have access to the app so I have no idea what the question is, but if there's a neat angle you could take on it I would suggest doing that.</p>
<p>This is from Libby Pearson, admissions officer, on the "A few tips in anticipation for this year's essays,"</p>
<p>
[quote]
our essay is not "supposed to be" anything... funny, a particular number of pages, about you, about the cure for cancer, etc. That is what is so great about having new questions every year -- we have no expectations when we begin reading in November. Any preconceived notions we have when we read the questions in the summer usually fly out the door when we read the first ten essays of the year.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So if you give a straightforward answer, you're fine. I think there's some confusion between straightforward and insightful-- your essay can be "normal," but it should have some important ideas and concepts in it. At the same time, you could write something "creative" with little substance to back it, and that wouldn't get you anywhere.</p>
<p>Also, the admissions office chooses its questions very carefully, and is aware that there are many ways that questions can be answered. They would not choose a question where one way of answering was clearly superior to another.</p>