Just a random thought, is it too cliche to cite JFK’s “We Choose to Go to the Moon” speech in a Rice supplemental essay?
Honestly… probably.
Depends on the context, but probably…
I’m not sure I would be spending any of those precious words quoting someone ELSE.
Quoting it is a bad idea. Invoking the spirit of it, however, could work.
The supplemental essay is to explain why you’re interested in Rice and not JFK.
I totally talked about JFK’s moon speech… and quoted the “not because it is easy but because it is hard” part in my “how did you first hear of rice speech.” But it was true! first time I heard of Rice was from that speech.
In hindsight, probably a cliche. in the end though, it comes to down feel. If JFK feels like it fits, then use it!
In that context, it’s probably fine to refer to JFK’s speech if indeed you can claim (or or without some degree of literary license or revisionist history) that that is where you first heard of Rice. At least you didn’t wait until Neil DeGrass Tyson spoke there in 2013, although I’m sure that was many people’s first exposure to Rice.
Agreed, probably cliched and probably comes up a lot for the ad coms at Rice!