About the Q&A portion of the Thematic Option application, are the responses meant to be essay-length or just a few sentences? There is a 2500 character limit (around 400 words), and there are five questions.
^^ I second this question!!
I’m going to bump this for OP because I’m also wondering about this. I’ve written some answers that I’m happy with, but many of them are under 2000 characters, making them seem inadequate.
Just a few sentences
Can anyone confirm? The TO info session at Explore made it seem like we needed to write more…
My daughter applied and was admitted two years ago. There were 5 questions and she wrote a few paragraphs for each one, developing each like a college application essay question. So I would guess this year that the directions of 2500 characters are for each question.
Can the TO app readers see your original Common App application essays?
All that matters is her SAT and GPA, seriously folks, don’t sweat this issue, please!
At the TO info session, they said that they don’t look at SAT and GPA, only your essays.
Really??? Rotflmfao. Okay, then hear this: do you really think that some prima donna prof wants or has the time to read long essays??? Be pithy and to the point, answer directly, BUT, tell them how TO will help you achieve your goals.
There’s something called the curve and it applies to all applicants, whether it’s TO or law review. We look for writing skills and persuasive arguments. If you fall in the middle, you’re in; if you’re on the right side, you’re in, and EVERYONE can tell if you’re on the left side. Again, don’t sweat it! Please.
This is why I dislike TO. At the end of the day, ALL that matters is your GPA. No grad school cares whether your Phi Beta Kappa was based on TO or regular GEs. Lol.
I don’t want to belabor this point, but in the early 1980s, USC had about 25 trustee scholars. Our admit rate was 70 percent + and our average SATs were around 1050! Stanford’s admit rate was over 20 percent then (higher than USC’s today). TO was designed to attract the trustees, and that’s why it existed. Today, USC is vastly different and you know this. Ergo, don’t obsess about TO. You’re at USC, a top school that is only getting better. Be grateful you’re there.
@literatimuffin They won’t be looking at your application essays, just seeing how well you write and your enthusiasm for learning. Also don’t be discouraged by a poster ^ relating how TO was way before you were even born,. I’m sure you heard about the program during Explore and I know actual current students who love it!
Current TO student here. I wrote mini-essays for my responses. I have posted them here for the benefit of the incoming class. If I’m not supposed to do that, I apologize and will remove them. However, I find that most people benefit from having examples. Cheers! (I removed the question about why I want to be in Thematic Option because that one needs to be based solely on your own thoughts and I removed one essay that’s too personal)
Tell us about either your favorite or least favorite course in high school._
In consideration of public schooling, I have never been overly fond of the system. I have on multiple occasions plotted against it, in fact, all the while grudgingly recognizing the sad necessity of such a skewed system in the first place. Would that we could take away from every course some lesson that might shape us, but I have instead faced four years saturated in the menial. I grew bitter, bemoaning a growing to-do list of irrelevance and burdened with desperation to find any meaningful message to combat the monotony. That being said, I’ve had an overabundance of least favorite classes. Math is my perpetual enemy, Calculus an arch nemesis, history a temperamental and conditional friend. I have played with theater and taken my bow.
It wasn’t until I enrolled in AP English Literature that I became acquainted with a man named Walt Whitman, the same man from whose pen these inspired words came forth, “…the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” The concept was not new to me, nor is it to anyone with the slightest artistic aspirations, but something about the poem was romantic beyond measure. Something about those words, aged a hundred years and yet as ageless as the human need for purpose, stuck. I scribble them on the backs of old math notes in my most elegant cursive to give them all the grandeur they deserve.
AP Literature has since become my favorite class, and often my most fulfilling hours of the day. I fell in love with Shelly’s “Ozymandias”, because the once great king’s stony remains challenge those who would contribute to the powerful play to add a verse that will endure the test of time. Is there any advice more relevant to give to young blood on the cusp of adulthood? Relevance is all I have ever craved from my studies; what is knowledge without application but clutter for the mind?
I find myself fiercely defending the value of canonical literature. The battle has drawn a bit of a harmless rift between my brother, father, and I. They, being the science oriented individuals they are, see little practicality in the study of classics. They accuse the dusty old pages of being “outdated”, but that is where our opinions so sharply differ and that is where I believe they could not be more wrong. Science, despite its importance, will always shift in the face of new discoveries. Great literature, however, grand prose and verse that speaks to the very soul of mankind, is immortal.
What do you feel ambiguous about?
Invictus is Latin for unconquered. Powerful and utterly fantastic, how can such a word be heard without envisioning great odds and great deeds? How can such a word be spoken without a prideful swelling of the chest? I savor the feeling of it sliding from my tongue; the way the Latin seems to linger in the air after my lips have long ceased forming it.
Invictus. This word of all words is among my favorites.
This poem of all poems leaves me rattled.
At first read, Henley’s “Invictus” is impossibly inspiring; at second, the stanzas become little more than pretentious and arrogant in their proclamations. I have a love-hate relationship with the world-renowned piece; I want the beautiful verses to be infallibly true, but I know they are undeniably a lie. The paradoxes within are numerous and notable, extending from the irony of being “bludgeon[ed]” by chance while being the alleged master of one’s soul to Henley thanking gods he may or may not believe in for a soul he may or may not have. But it’s not Henley’s destiny I wonder about. It is mine.
The future is always ambiguous; if it were not we would call it the past. What casts me under the shadow of doubt is not where I am going, but how I am meant to arrive. How can I be the master of my own fate when I can only blindly move forward, as all men must, into a future I cannot see? Henley’s illusion of control is tantalizing, and were I not the person of faith I am, I would have long ago succumbed to the siren-call. If I truly became the master of my fate, I’d be doomed. And if I proclaimed myself to be the captain of my soul, I would surely sink. No, I am not unconquerable. There is not an invincible bone in my body, and it takes strength to recognize that weakness.
I want to believe in “Invictus”, but the illusion of control is just that: an illusion born on the winds of humanistic fantasy and blown away just a quickly.
Name a book you’ve always wanted to read and discuss your interest in that work.
An ongoing debate rages between a friend and I over the relative merits of the fantasy genre. I, a devout “Tolkienist”, was practically raised on the stories of Middle Earth. When Peter Jackson put to screen the most marvelous interpretation of a fantasy epic ever seen, I was far too young to watch the heads of evil creatures roll and the general violence of the entire trilogy. My mother struck a deal with me, seeing as I was so eager. She said that if I could read the novels with her, I could watch the films. At seven years old, I was reading “The Fellowship of the Ring”.
The genre is very dear to my heart, obviously. Tolkien himself is counted among my most treasured literary geniuses, and even at seven, I marveled at how one man could create an entire world with its own history, races, languages developed in such great detail, and lineages. He is the founding father of fantasy to which recent successes such as George Martin owe a large portion of their success.
“The Silmarillion” has been on my reading list far too long. The collection of incomplete stories published posthumously is said to contain even more of the history of Middle Earth than that which is presented in “The Lords of the Rings”, “The Hobbit”, or their respective appendixes. I am particularly interested in his version of the creation story and the portrayal of the divine beings that govern the destiny of Middle Earth. All of Tolkien’s most popular works are known to contain doses of his personal theology, and there is no more effective way of learning a man’s character, in my opinion, than learning about the God (or gods) he claims to serve.
Tolkien’s extensive work in the creation of an entirely fantastical world should be an inspiration to any storyteller. His ability to synthesize a fictional reality is paradoxical and grand. As to whether or not my “more practical” friend will ever see the value of such rich works of literature, I can’t be sure. I only know that my appreciation has not wavered in a decade, and it won’t waver now.
On another note, the post a few above mine is WRONG about GPA and SATs being the only thing TO cares about. Couldn’t be more wrong, actually.
Yes, ignore someone with personal experience over helicopters…
I went to ExploreUSC and at the presentation for TO, they specifically said that they do not even have ACCESS to one’s application— only their TO essays. The essays are all that matters. GPA and SATs are not looked at, because they can’t be looked at, since access is not given.
FWIW, they mention that TO kids tend to be straight A students with SAT averages well above 2150, and this is misleading because it suggests that stats are looked at when they are most certainly NOT looked at. However, given that those who write the best essays and are accepted tend to be intelligent students, their stats are also high.
Correlation, not causation.