<p>Pardon my vague question, but I don't want to name the school. D is responding to a supplemental essay prompt for one of her reach schools. The prompt is, roughly: "We're interested in you as an individual, with all your idiosyncrasies. What makes you you? Be creative!" The idea of the essay is to express something not revealed in other parts of the application. One side of me feels that this is a great way for D to show her quirky side. But do colleges really want quirky kids? The more guarded part of me says that maybe D shouldn't even answer the prompt. (It's optional.) Suppose it's weed-out time! What do my fellow parents think? Am I being paranoid? (It wouldn't be the first time! :))</p>
<p>Go for it. Let it sing. Grip it and rip it. Swing for the fences. My D wrote a humdinger to Colgate and got in as an Alumni Memorial Scholar. Played it safe at Duke and got the WL. YMMV. (I used those two because they were the two most apart in showing her true self IMO. She might disagree. She obviously did at the time. :( )</p>
<p>I'm obviously not an admissions officer, but these always seem like the essays that they only use as a personal barometer, not actualy a point system aspect.</p>
<p>For instance, my brother-in-law when apply to UVA almost a decade ago was given a blank page as part of his application with the instructions to simply fill it up. Granted, most applicants write some sort of essay/personal statement on it, he, however, played tic-tac-toe on it with a HS friend of his. He then graduated in 5 years with a masters from UVA. If you're gonna get in, you're gonna get in. These things aren't meant to be back-breakers.</p>
<p>Just my opinion though.</p>
<p>636</p>
<p>Imagine being an admissions officer and reading a couple thousand of these applications.</p>
<p>Creativity, spark, something really different -- that's as rare as an oasis in the desert. The Sahara Desert.</p>
<p>If your daughter's quirky side includes animal sacrifice, heroin addiction, or Ku Klux Klan membership, I might urge her to softpedal it. Short of that, go for it.</p>
<p>If your D has a number of schools she could like, then she could use the opportunity that the essay question gives, to let some things "hang out", "let 'er rip". You will never know unless the adcom specifically address the issue, whether it got her in or not, but I do know kids where their accept letter did comment on an excellent ,unusual essay. One of the problems of using the same standard essay with tweaks to every school, is that if it is a boring old dog to seasoned adcoms, you've just presented it to everyone. Having some fresh material out there varies some of the elements of the admissions process. You can't change the grades, courses, test scores, ECs, recs, but the essays can change that app package just as a great tie can bring life to a suit. There are things that are in bad taste, however, and unless you have thå† kind of outrageous kid that can truly carry it off, there are things that you don't want to say in an essay,considering you do not know who is reading it. Also you don't want to force the outrageous. The essay should be "you", the writer.<br>
My son featured an essay that none of us wanted in his app. Counselors, teachers, parents. He did not put it in all of his apps, but where he really felt it answered the question, he put it there. He did get commentary on the essay, the only one that got any comments, and he was accepted. I think some of the adcoms are tired of the same old stuff, and refreshing material can bring life to an app, but no one, can predict how an essay is going to "fly". The advantage of the standard type of essay is that , at worst, it isn't going to hurt you much, and most kids essays are run of the mill or awful according to adcoms. Interesting since so many kids think they have "killer" essays. I guess they do in different sense from what they believe, heh, heh. So if the rest of the package is ok, a safe, run of the mill essay isn't going to hurt you, and the chances of nailing a great unusual essay are very tiny, but a bad essay or one in bad taste can put you in the reject pile just like that. But varying your essays, you are not putting all of your eggs in one essay basket, so to speak, and if a school says, it wants the real thing, it probably gets more over the top things than the standard essay topics that most colleges offer.</p>
<p>Showing a quirky side can be very good, but it needs to be done particularly well (i.e. get her English teacher to read the essay). I think it also depends on the school; writing a quirky essay for the University of Chicago is encouraged, but you may want to take a closer read before sending it to a very traditional school. Given that they asked this question on the application, though, I'd say she should write the essay. They asked, so they obviously are interested in the answer!</p>
<p>Make sure, though, that the essay is well written, tasteful, and not overly pretentious. Sometimes answers to questions like that are the hardest and turn out the worst.</p>
<p>The way I did my essays (or am doing them) is I have one college that is a huge reach. I am in the process of writing the essays, and am going all out in hopes that they may stand out enough to an adcom to overshadow my soso SAT and GPA (my stats are soso for this college). I have almost nothing to lose because my chances for acceptance are near 1%. I figure that I might as well throw a hail mary with my essays because I doubt I will get in unless they are amazing. </p>
<p>At most every other college, I am taking a more conservative approach because I do not want to throw away my chances with an eccentric essay that an adcom may find akward or tastless. </p>
<p>If the college is a very big reach, go for it, but if you daughter has the profile to get in, do not risk admissions with an essay that could be percieved poorly by an adcom.</p>
<p>"Make sure, though, that the essay is well written, tasteful, and not overly pretentious. Sometimes answers to questions like that are the hardest and turn out the worst."</p>
<p>I think this is great advice and would only add that as long as your D feels comfortable with what she is writing the end result should give the adcoms an important glimpse of her personality and character. I wouldn't push the envelope just to try to stand out or appear to be eccentric, but given the essay prompt there would be nothing amiss with embracing and even celebrating creative quirkiness.</p>
<p>My son is applying only to schools where the students self-describe as "quirky" or some similar adjective. Even so, when I read his quirky, dryly humorous essay, I was glad his GC ran it by 2 English teachers at the HS and an admissions person he knew from a local highly selective LAC (where S isn't applying, but probably would be if it was located farther from home). Then we ran it by a friend who used to read essays for a LAC. She's far more conservative than we are--dare I say, a Republican?--and when she gave it the stamp of approval, the essay went in. I didn't want him to risk sounding like a "wise guy", so it helped to have a bunch of readers. He used it on all 10 Common Aps and the same short answer too on all 10.</p>
<p>So my answer is, if a college doesn't love your S's quirky true nature, would he really be happy there? Let it rip, but run it by a few people before submitting.</p>
<p>I'm all for quirky kids writing quirky essays, but there are some areas that are truly risky to approach. It's good to have someone who knows what's out there read the essay and vet it. I cannot do that, as I am risk adverse and not very creative, and do not have the experience in assessing essays from kids that age. Many of us parents are in that boat. So it's great to have someone who knows make the assessment. </p>
<p>I don't agree that if an adcom does not like a kid's true nature, whatever it may be, that he is not going to like it at the school. I have heard it said about many things regarding the admissions office and adcoms. Once your kid is in a school, the contacts with that office is going to be minimal at most and inconsequential. I've known scads of families who hated the admissions offices for a number of good reasons, but the kids and families ended up loving the school, and vice versa. It's unfortunate that just because you are unlucky with who you have reading the essay, you don't have the option of going to a school. I would think, however, if the school population is filled with a certain type of student, it would be reflected in the essays written, and they would be used to it. I 've always been skeptical about the impact of essays, after reading some truly awful ones (and the class teacher, a friend who has this college essay writing work shop every summer for kids tells me this is typical and yes, they are terrible and unoriginal), the kids seemed to get into the the schools their other attributes would indicate. When I look at the school data I have that shows who got in where at various schools, there is a consistency. I don't see an invisible impact of something; it all seems to be there. The essays and the recs, if they have the impact they are supposed to on the decision, should be giving some invisible whallop with a visible effect. But then I am told that it is very, very rare that an essay or info in an essay is considered outstanding. Nearly all essays are rated acceptable, average, good with some poor. Very few are outstanding or unacceptable. For specific progams, I think that if you can tie a reason why you would be a great pick for it, an essay can be valuable but I don't think they have much impact.</p>
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If your daughter's quirky side includes animal sacrifice, heroin addiction, or Ku Klux Klan membership, I might urge her to softpedal it. Short of that, go for it.
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<p>This cracked me up! Thanks to all for the great answers. An update: After a false start and writing an essay that was very talky and flat, D decided to submit something she had written for a contest online. She wrote a short intro so that the adcom would know what was going on, and then she trimmed the contest entry a bit. I think it works because she loves to write parody. I hope it will be understandable even if the adcom isn't familiar with the particular book she's lampooning. I guess that's the chance she's taking.</p>
<p>For the other reach school she decided to submit a birthday card that she had drawn for her dad a few months ago. This is another parody, and I like it because it combines one of her obsessions with one of his. I think if she can give an adcom a laugh or a chuckle, she's ahead of the game. But most of all, I like her submissions because they reveal a lot about her. Thanks again for the help!</p>
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Grip it and rip it. Swing for the fences.
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<p>Couldn't agree more. The biggest mistake kids make with college essays is not allowing their personalities to show through by drawing the reader in to the life of a living, breathing, curious, teenager.</p>
<p>When you think about it, what's the worst that can happen? You get rejected? Well guess what? Submitting nice safe, boring, cookie-cutter essays is a sure fire recipe for rejection letters at most reach schools.</p>
<p>Having said that....there are essay topics that just drive me up the wall. No big cathartic life changing events. No family tragedies. No grandiose sweeping conclusions. Yadda Yadda. Just a nice simple story that draws the reader into a small slice of your life.</p>
<p>My older S filled out one such app--and really let it hang loose--at my idiot suggestion. No KKK or anything extreme but he treid to be funny where they asked for it. In retrospect, the school itself wasn't a 'hang loose' school--it was the antithesis of a 'hang loose' school like RISD. Maybe they meant 'hang loose' in the Animal House sense of the word, I dunno. I feel like he took the bait--and didn't get the prize.</p>
<p>S1 did not get in.</p>
<p>Assess what sort of school it is and write the essays from D's heart to their mission. That's my advice.</p>
<p>Cheers, maybe you did your son a favor and that school was not a good fit.</p>