<p>Even though I've already applied, I figured I'd kill time and feed my paranoia about the Why NU? statement...</p>
<p>I've heard several people mention to make it creative, and read the previous statement submitted in the form of a newspaper article.</p>
<p>My concern now falls on my own, in comparison. I unknowingly avoided the creative, choosing to add tasteful humor to the beginning and end of my statement. I filled most of it with what I loved about NU, my overnight, how I hope to take advantage of NU and what I felt NU would gain from admitting me. Point blank. </p>
<p>I'm worried now that my statement might be considered boring?</p>
<p>i don't think you should worry.. if northwestern would expect to see something creative in your essay, why would they ask such a boring question as Why NU ?</p>
<p>btw in my essay i also kept it plain and simple and it worked</p>
<p>Mine is plain and simple. Just specific on why I want to go and my experience visiting, staying overnight, sitting in on a class, sitting in on a mock trial meeting, and having a piano lesson with a professor there. Also talked about my dad's affiliation with the school and such. No big.</p>
<p>I tried a creative approach but I'm not sure if I got my reasons out as clearly through it. I think a straightforward approach might have made my reasons for wanting to attend clearer.</p>
<p>If one's first thought (independent of seeing someone else's "why NU" statement) is to write a creative non-traditional essay then that would probably be a good thing to consider. However, I think with the publication of that creative newspaper-article-style statement, people have gotten the impression something like that is a ticket to get noticed. A creative essay also runs an extraordinary risk of coming off as "cute" and half-hearted and could be a huge turn off. The "why NU" essay does not have to be creative (at all) in order to get the attention of the people reading it, its just an option. If they published the essays of other people who were admitted along with the newspaper-style person, then you would probably be reading a LOT of very well written captivating "regular" essays.</p>
<p>Thank you, that definately helps my perspective. I took a risk making my statement funny as an opener, but I'm hoping the rest is as convincing as I hoped it would be. I guess I kind of freaked a little bit with the publicity of the one statement... Thanks for your thoughts, I definately feel more comfortable with what I submitted.</p>
<p>I agree with Coldwind though, I actually found my 'why NU' statement more fun to write than the common app narrative.</p>
<p>Yeah, I agree with Coldwind too. The meat of the "Why NU" essay should be really strait-forward and fun. Its something that no one else can tell you how to write convincingly - people should just look at professors, research, facilities, community, and all the other good stuff and get enthusiastic. All thats left after that is making it appeal to to someone else's senses....</p>
<p>1) smart students 2)challenging academics, great faculty 3) good for career 4)i didn't get into any school where 1,2,3 were better</p>
<p>however, in the essay you have to romantically highlight the remaining 5% as if they were actually really important. like seriously, nobody applies to NU because they want to meet willy the wildcat or paint the rock... and you cant accurately judge community,professors,research,clubs until you're enrolled anyway.</p>
<p>that's why i think this question is kinda stupid and sorry this has nothing to do with the question posed in this thread.</p>
<p>Research is very easy to accurately judge: nearly every PI has his or her own website with their respective publications and research interests. Judging community, teaching, and clubs may be a little harder because, as you said, one doesn't have experience with them. Through a bit of reading though, one can fish out stuff that Northwestern has done to enhance these types of things (and others) and then use that as evidence for "why NU," without having any first hand experience at all. I doubt anyone at Northwestern admissions wants to hear someone is applying to "paint the rock" (or anything else like that) any more than they want to hear that a persons favorite color is purple. That's quite a stretch IMHO.</p>
<p>I hear you on frustrating essay prompts though. As a transfer student, I had to write an essay for "why do you want to transfer" and then another, "why do you want to transfer to Northwestern?" Those two were a little hard to sort out at first but then it made sense, as things tend to do....</p>
<p>"Research is very easy to accurately judge" Have you actually tried to read the publications? For example, I claim most high school students or freshman cannot understand any of the economics papers on NUs website. like check out: faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~lchrist/research.htm </p>
<p>If you just mention the general area of interest, for instance "I want to study financial markets", you might as well do that at any other school.</p>
<p>And I do think mentioning traditions is important for the Why Us essay, even though no applicant really cares about them.</p>
<p>I think at least mentioning traditions is important for the statement. It shows you've haven't just looked at the academics, you've looked at the culture that you would be living in.</p>
<p>Drizzl:
I've read many publications through the course of doing research and class work, including several from NU PIs. At least in my field of interest, primary literature can be very painful and time consuming to get through, even for PhDs. Economics is not my field, so I can't hang with your link. I can tell you though that the abstracts in those articles are somewhat readable, even to me. Although I'm not going to take the time to do it, I don't think that it would take very long for an aspiring economist (high school or not) to go through the abstracts and come up with a good idea of what Dr. Christiano is all about and how much they're interested (or not). I guarantee you PLENTY of applicants have done something similar to this. It is one of the easiest ways to differentiate one school from another. This is only one of many things that someone could do to highlight "why NU" of course, I'm just saying it is an approach thats not to difficult and highlights some major uniqueness. </p>
<p>As far a traditions go, I think people are right - they are important. Traditions help to define a place and bring a lot to the campus. I just meant one has to be tasteful talking about it because I bet its a pretty cliche and often repeated thing that people put in applications. Besides, research is a huge tradition at NU:)</p>