<p>I without a doubt hated the intellectual vitality essay.</p>
<p>Really? That one was my favorite…! I hated the “What matters to you” question.</p>
<p>Intellectual vitality was my favorite essay as well. The roommate one was fun to write too! The “what matters” is currently in progress, and I’m enjoying writing that one as well. I love the Stanford app!</p>
<p>^ What a kiss ass. LOL j/k.</p>
<p>LOL! What do you think of Stanford getting rid of the “Why Stanford is right for you” question?</p>
<p>I would of rather have had the “Why Stanford?” essay rather than this “What matters to you, and why?” nonsense.</p>
<p>I thought roommate would be difficult, but it was fun. </p>
<p>Intellectual vitality was interesting, but probably my weakest.</p>
<p>What matters is definitely my favorite one of them all.</p>
<p>I think all 3 are awesome prompts though haha much better and more original than other schools</p>
<p>Yeah AznPride2012, I tend to agree. Many schools have some f’ing boring prompts.</p>
<p>My intellectual vitality one was a hard one but I had an “epiphany” and churned out a pretty unique essay for that one. I’m still working on the other two though.</p>
<p>alll the essays were difficult in their own ways… for the intellectual vitality one, i had trouble coming up with something that has affected my “intellectual development”, although there are a million ideas or experiences that have been intellectually exciting for me
for the “what matters” essay, my topic was kind of weird, so it was a struggle phrasing things clearly and getting my point across. i’m with stanfordcs, i would rather have written “Why Stanford”
the roommate essay, i wasn’t really sure what i should write about and i’m still not sure if mine is what they had in mind</p>
<p>oh well.</p>
<p>I am really struggling with the What Matters essay. So hard!</p>
<p>for the intellectual vitality essay, should i only write an experience or should i also write down the lesson i learnt according to the experience</p>
<p>Both the experience and the lesson.</p>
<p>The ’ intellectual vitality’ essay bothers me A LOT. For me,it’s really hard to define ‘intellectual’ development …and I have spent like 2 hours online today just to serach for tips on this essay, and a huge percent of those who got accepted wrote about very common ideas…ugh, I am so stressed!</p>
<p>I’m SO GLAD they got rid of the ‘why stanford’ essay. Not that I can’t come up with several unique not-surface-level reasons why I’d want to go, but I have so much difficulty organizing my thoughts coherently in that kinda of essay.</p>
<p>I thought the roomate one was the hardest. Am I really writing to my roommate? Or am I writing to an adcom? My writing kept sounding too cocky/arrogant, I had to do several drafts across many different topics before I settled -_-</p>
<p>I only did intellectual vitality essay (gasp! procrastinating…) I hated it, but once i got a good idea, it banged it out in 30 minutes.</p>
<p>For the intellectual vitality essay, is it really supposed to be about a specific experience? I have an idea of what to write for that one but I can’t connect to one particular working/service/life experience.</p>
<p>I think the intellectual vitality is a whole lot harder this year than in previous years. I could write dozens of essays on experiences I find intellectually exciting or engaging. Experiences that have affected my intellectual development is a lot harder.</p>
<p>intellectual vitality was pretty easy in terms of brainstorming the thesis but definitely organizing the whole thing coherently was hard. i couldn’t figure out right away whether I should expand on one big example or several since it’s “intellectual development”
it was kinda like a TOK question (theory of knowledge) and I just sat down defining each component</p>
<p>“Reflect” - so we con’t have to assess, evaluate or get to a processed conclusion, which was good. still had to have some sort of thesis
“idea or experience” - so it can be either or. but I personally think this is a trap. if you only choose idea, it gets way too abstract (I found myself philosophizing too much), if you only choose experience, you loose the actual content of that intellect part. so i just described the idea as succinctly as possible, the background of the idea, and how i expanded on it by giving three examples. two of the examples i drew from class discussion and assignments, one i drew from film
“important” - arbitrary component, so pointless that it kind of ****ed me off. i just went with seeing it as “important”=“affected”=“contributed”
“intellectual development” - i guess they just mean intellectual capacity. how much more did you learn how many more questions did you start asking how doubtful did it make you what independent thought did you have etc.</p>
<p>roommate note was fun and it was easy to be quirky with it, loved it</p>
<p>I ****IN HATE the what matters to you and why question
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH</p>
<p>I actually really liked the questions in all.</p>
<p>My roommate was very quirky… and very me… I hope I don’t weird them out with my “humor” haha.
What matters was my more serious essay, but it was about my passion of journalism and my relationships with subjects. Intellectual vitality was a bit hard at first. AND YEAH, I totally wanted to do a TOK topic for intellectual vitality but decided to write it about a econ/philanthropy internship. I think the intellectual one was the most difficult for me, since I was afraid of how they would look at my more “basic” topic :/</p>