<p>Do any of these essays stand out when kids write them? What else can you put besides quality of education, research opportunities, alignment w/ goals, etc.? All the essays seems like they'd be pretty much the same.</p>
<p>*Sorry if this is already a thread, which it probably is - I couldn't find any. Link me?</p>
<p>My “Why X College” essays were pretty unique. Talk about the time you visited the campus and “___” stood out to you. I find talking about specifics to be much more effective than the general “It’s an Ivy, lots prestige, my dad went there, etc”.</p>
<p>You can be creative, I heard that makes essays stand out.</p>
<p>When I get my essays next year… I guarantee I’m gonna make them into power rangers. Just for lulz.</p>
<p>All of mine had at least some small thing to make them stand out. I tried to make the formats and analogies more creative for the Why essays, but most of the messages were pretty typical (intellectual, nice community, etc).</p>
<p>Just remember that we’re all special, one-of-a-kind snowflakes.</p>
<p>^Just like everyone else.</p>
<p>Try to talk about a very specific program no other school has.
Or even if other schools have similar things, if you want to join the newspaper or something at least mention it by name, maybe say a specific column you’d like to write or something.</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://despair.com/individuality.html]Individuality[/url”>Individuality - Despair, Inc.]Individuality[/url</a>]</p>
<p>^I love Despair, Inc. I have their calendar (er, for about 2 more hours).</p>
<p>I love Despair, Inc.</p>
<p>oh god, me too.</p>
<p>sometimes i go there just to make sense of my life.</p>
<p>I have both informative yet sarcastic humor throughout mine. I just ended my carnegie mellon one with Stay classy pittsburgh, stay classy. I want to show my personality. If they don’t like it, I probably wont like it there anyways</p>
<p>In my college apps, my essays were creative by my standards for the first 6 schools I applied to. By the time I got to the last 6, I just didn’t give a **** and wrote some generic crap. The schools were all about equally selective, and I got a good mix of accept/not accept from both groups. Generic was a lot less effort to write though…</p>
<p>The problem is that “Why X” essays always advantage people who have visited. If you haven’t, you can only talk about facts, not personal feelings. So it’s kind of hard for West Coasters applying to East Coast colleges (and anyone else who can’t afford a trip for some reason). But I guess they understand that.</p>
<p>Google and a few lies can level the playing field</p>
<p>Oh yes, I’ve definitely used and abused the Google :)</p>
<p>I wrote about south indian food in one of mine. It wasn’t for a college known to be particularly quirky but wth. I wrote what came to be naturaly.</p>