Religion and Sexuality a good essay topic? UOFM community essay.

College Essays
1

One of Michigans supplemental essays is
“Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by (among other things) shared geography, religion, ethnicity, income, cuisine, interest, race, ideology, or intellectual heritage. Choose one of the communities to which you belong, and describe that community and your place within it.” Min: 100 / Max: 300

I was thinking this might be a good opportunity to talk about my identity as both a lesbian and a devout Catholic, and how originally I thought that I had to be one or the other, but have realized that I can still go to church and have a faith-centered life without having to compromise my sexuality - and how I thought my identity as a lesbian meant I couldn’t be religious.
Now, however, I’m worried that it might be either to cliche of a topic - whoopdeedoo another gay sob story. Or sort of tmi and to personal/controversial. I’m not really worried at all about Michigan being homophobic or anything like that, they have a lot of great lgbtq resources on campus, and that’s actually one of the reasons I think Michigan would be a good fit for me, so I want them to know about it. Of course I could just sprinkle it into my common app essay or my ‘why michigan’ essay, rather than having a whole essay about it. But I don’t really have any other good ‘community’ thing I could talk about. I suppose I could make the essay more catholic centered and sprinkle in the lesbianism to make it different, but I feel like alot of people would write about their religion - wouldn’t they? I don’t know.

If I could get some thoughts I"d really appreciate it!
To cliche and/or controversial - or does the Catholic spin make it interesting enough to pass?

2

I also worry about coming off sort of “Jesus freak” ya know?

3

First, remember that 100-300 words is really short: it’s very hard to get more than 1 idea across, nevermind subtlety or nuance!

Second, remember that this essay is in effect a job application. They will be reading 55,000 of these essays, and accepting about 30% of them. They say upfront that they care more about the rigor of your course load and your GPA than the essays, so really your goal is simply to not to write a bad essay :slight_smile:

Finally, it’s not an essay about being a something- Catholic, lesbian, Serbian, a gymnast, whatever- it’s a picture of a community and how you fit into it. If things go your way, next year you could answer the prompt by writing about fitting into the UMi community :slight_smile: You should nearly be able to switch the label for a different one. So, if you want to pick your Catholic community and write about finding acceptance there, go for it. Try to ‘show’ the story (perhaps through an anecdote- painting a picture of a moment, for example), rather than spelling it all out.

4

NO!

5

I would say no, it may be a little bit too senstiive