<p>I don't expect you all to know the exact reason. But that is what Chicago is famous for in the application process. What do you think U Chicago thinks about an analyzes when reading the essays applicants sent in?</p>
<p>U Chicago values creativity and writing. You have to be able to be creative on the essay they give you. Also, U Chicago is where fun goes to die.</p>
<p>It’s one of the things they use to get the kind of students they want. The weirdness of the essay topics shows the school’s quirkiness. Basically, they read the essays and see if you will fit we’ll within the school’s community</p>
<p>Can you imagine how mind-numbingly boring it must be to read hundreds and hundreds of standard common app college essays? Twenty versions of what I learned when I lost the race for class president? Thirty of how my grandmother (who may or may not be alive) is the person I admire most (not to mention John Paul, Ron Paul, and Ru-Paul)? How many ways do you think there are of sneaking your resume into an essay? Plus, the advice many teachers and coaches give drains the life out of them, so that there’s almost no way to get a sense of the person behind the paragraph structure.</p>
<p>The UChicago essays are more like a party game, or maybe a first date. They are an opportunity to start a conversation, about something that might be profound or trivial in and of itself, that reveals something about who you are without being directly about you and your resume. They recognize that the most important thing you are going to bring with you to college is not the accumulated wisdom and experience of all your meaningful accomplishments between ages 10 and 17 but rather your intellectual energy and curiosity, and your cast of mind. Weird essay topics tend to bring those things to the fore. </p>
<p>Plus, I suspect it’s legitimately fun for the admissions staff to catalog the different takes applicants have on some of these questions. I wouldn’t go so far as to say no two are alike, but I believe they get a lot more essays that are legitimately unique than other colleges, and comparatively few that are similar to more than a tiny number of others.</p>
<p>Well, for one thing they also weed out some of the boring and uncreative applicants who otherwise would just be applying due to its status as a top 10 institution.</p>
<p>My sense is that it’s to maintain the appearance of quirkiness - regardless of that the essay prompts have been these past few years, each incoming class has progressively been more “normal”. This is a rational response to the change in culture this past decade - why give up what made UChicago unique? However, we should NOT equate the quirkiness of the essay prompts with the quirkiness of the admitted student. I think HS students are more creative than we give them credit for, and they HAVE the ability to write creatively, but most college essay prompts don’t require them to do so.</p>
<p>It is interesting that some years a LOT of students tend to gravitate toward one of the topics. Last year “Where’s Waldo?” seemed to be the question most people answered when you look at the results threads or just discussions among people who had applied and were waiting for results. My D picked the quote on silence, but hardly anyone else seems to have picked that one (she got in). I suspect admissions was heartily sick of “Where’s Waldo?” essays by the time they were done reading! By the way, her essay was not super creative or quirky. But it told a story about an experience she had in an academically intense environment where she learned some things about herself and how to think/speak/be silent in that environment. I think the essay reeked of “U of Chicago kid”.</p>
<p>University of Chicago alumni by and large tend to say that the College taught them to write. I didn’t really agree with that statement until I entered the real world and compared my college education to others’.</p>
<p>If the College is going to whip your writing into shape, why not start by asking for a lot of it? And if you don’t like to write, think, and play with ideas, is this really the best place for you?</p>
<p>And why not write on the topics? They’re challenging and fun and bring a sense of humor and levity to the college application experience.</p>
<p>These essays are pretty fun to write!</p>