<p>Our son is considering writing his "biggest challenge" or "obstacle you have overcome" essay on the concept that his biggest challenged was been not being challenged enough in high school.</p>
<p>He is the only "science/math geek/nerd" in a class of 425 in a smal city in Missouri and will graduate somewhere in the top three. The school RARELY places a student in highly competitive colleges. All subjects come easily to him, so to keep from being bored, he has put his efforts into making his "project" assignments as interesting as possible. He built a Roman seige weapon for Latin, a Tesla coil as part of the prom decorations, taught himself professional video editing software for a language arts project instead of doing a Powerpoint, etc.</p>
<p>What do you think of the "my challenge was I needed to create my own challenges" concept for an essay?</p>
<p>IMO, the top schools expect students to challenge themselves. You would know better than me as to whether these kinds of projects really were a significant challenge to think up and do. They strike me as creative and interesting, but hardly out of the ordinary. I also think it reflects badly to build up your accomplishments by denigrating your school. My advice would be to avoid it.</p>
<p>OlderWiser - The topic c-o-u-l-d make a winning essay … presuming your S could show how he overcame a pedestrian HS education by working “outside the box” to accomplish wonderful things. Or (as I think you suspect) it might end up being received poorly …</p>
<p>I’m very familiar with small-town Illinois/Missouri, and I think students who grow up there overlook their many abilities. JMHO of course. But if I’m right, perhaps a better approach would be to write about something the good folks at Carneige-Mellon have little exposure to. “Interesting kid … good scores too.”</p>
<p>It’s worth a try. Have him flesh out his essay by jotting down ideas or an outline. I think he’ll find that the whole “I challenged myself blah blah” is a little too much; focusing on one or two of the projects in more detail will allow him to get his point across without turning off his audience.</p>
<p>This could be a great essay or a terrible one. I’d suggest he start the essay with a lively description of making the Roman siege engine and then humorously explain that this wasn’t for an engineering class, it was for Latin. What you don’t want is to write is, “The biggest obstacle at my school is that the classes aren’t hard enough.” At least not as your first sentence.</p>
<p>Thanks, mathmom and others. We tossed this idea around for a few days and ended up writing it about just about designing and building the Tesla coil for prom. The supervising teachers were all language arts and theater teachers and they were scared to death by the idea. It’s a humorous story about safety requirements, electrical inspectors and a physics geek on a prom committee of literary and art kids.</p>
<p>I’m an editor, maried to a mechanical engineer, raising an aspiring nuclear engineer. I knew the first attempt was not quite right. Several versions later, it’s a go.</p>
<p>nightchef: yes, He definitely wrote it. Every time I would suggest something in a proof, he would say “but Mom, that doesn’t sound like me.” Guidance Counselor today told me that everyone in the office read it and laughed because they could just hear him telling the same story outloud. </p>
<p>No way, I could write about building a Tesla coil anyway. I’m still not certain what all went on in our garage during its construction.</p>