I’m applying to the Honors College at U of SC and one of the essay topics (500 word min, 1000 word max) is “Tell us about your intellectual life - what have you read, what do you read regularly or typically, what do you like to think about, what bothers you, or excites you. Who are you as a thinker, researcher, intellectual explorer?”
It’s just so ambiguous, and I’m having trouble talking about these things (like what bothers me for example) while keeping the focus on ME, which is what I feel the main point of the essay should be… any tips on how to answer/write an essay like this? Also, should I try and hit everything they ask in the prompt in one paragraph, or try and focus my whole essay on just one point?
Thanks!
It’s so open ended because they want you to be creative with it. They don’t want to hear the same things from different people, they want to know what makes YOU think, and what YOU think about.
Focus the essay on a single point. Never try to capture multiple points in a college essay, since there’s just not enough words to do that.
Ideas:
Talk about a hobby that has forced you to learn a lot of new things.
Talk about an interesting book/movie/play/artwork that changed your view on something
Talk about a subject you love and why you love it
Talk about some problem in the world and how you one day hope to solve it
There are tons more things you can talk about, these are just some ideas.