<p>By anti-essays, I mean essays that deliberately go against the prompt. Think, "I should be telling you about all my credentials, but I'm sure every candidate sounds the same after a while" and then insert creative twist here, like "what makes me different is that my qualifications can't fit within in this word limit, or any word limit for that matter because they are not simple qualities that can easily be turned into words." I know this is a really bad example, but this is the general concept. Obviously it would fit the word count or otherwise it wouldn't be submitted. So what is the general consensus on more articulate and eloquent anti-essays? Should they be avoided altogether? Do they come off as immature? Or does it show a sense of individuality and nonconformity?</p>
<p>If someone wants specifics on my anti-essay, please PM me or reply asking me to PM you. I don't want to post the whole idea on here because even if I don't use it as an anti-essay, I'll probably modify the same one to be my regular prompt-answering essay.</p>
<p>Its most likely been done before. Creative twists can be inferesting, but in your example if thats your whole stance, you are not really differentiating yourself or telling them anything ndw about yourself</p>
<p>don’t do it.
yes immature. The prompts from good schools (like Stanford) are designed to elicit actual positive qualities about you. They aren’t designed to screw you over. </p>
<p>If you do it in a certain way, it can be good. For example, for my main Common App essay, I wrote about how I changed from being focused on science and math to being focused on the humanities, but I didn’t really have on reason to provide. My main “here’s the moral of the story” sentence was a better-written version of “Now is the part of my essay where you probably expect me to sum up my various reasons for my change in interests into one pat thesis about my identity, but I can’t do that.” And I went on to talk about how the point of the humanities isn’t to find one single finite law or answer, etc etc. I got into my top choice school with that essay, and I really think it helped.</p>
<p>I think, if your personality, like mine, is that of someone who like to think about things in different ways and doesn’t like playing by some preset “rules”, then it’s okay to have a anti-essay sentence or two. But I think if you make your whole essay about it, it won’t work. Obviously, I haven’t read your essay, but the way you describe it sounds a bit narcissistic (not saying you are, but the way you describe your essay sounds like you may come across that way - “my qualifications transcend words/word limits”). If you have a true reason for writing an anti-essay, and it fits with your theme, then I think it’s okay to at least try, but if your theme IS that you’ve written an anti-essay, you probably shouldn’t stick with that essay.</p>
<p>Wow, that was a jumble of words. I hope that makes sense.</p>
Meta references are a bad idea. If you want to stand out, why would you write about the only quality (having to write this essay) you share with every other applicant?
<p>I just wanted to make it clear though that the first example was just to make sure you guys knew what I meant by anti-essay and it’s NOT what I’m writing about. To give you a general idea, the prompt is along the lines of “what trait will you bring to the campus to add to diversity” but I think diversity should be aspired on an individual scale and not a large scale i.e. everyone having diverse tastes vs. one person bringing something unique to make the whole community diverse. Again, I don’t want to go into too much detail because I wrote a second essay that clearly answered the prompt and it was based off of the first essay. </p>
<p>I think the very real danger in writing an “anti-essay” is that you come off as thumbing your nose at the school. I imagine the essay prompts are very carefully considered, and to have someone essentially say the school is asking the “wrong” question or that the prompt is silly or somehow beneath the applicant is taking an unnecessary risk. JMO.</p>
<p>I think some of us may have replied without really understanding your idea. From the additional information you gave, I think your anti-essay could work out really well. Definitely try it and have someone look at your two essays.</p>