I intern for a conservative presidential campaign; since a lot of good universities tend to be more liberal, will this be used to discriminate against me?
I talked about how I was a Democrat in one of my essays and so far I’ve been accepted to Johns Hopkins, Cornell, and Vanderbilt. So it hasn’t been working against me so far!
Although, I’m a liberal applying to liberal schools. I guess what I’m trying to say is that your political leaning doesn’t matter. If Princeton takes Ted Cruz, Yale takes the Bushes, and Harvard takes Bill O’Reilly, I’m sure you’ll be fine being a conservative.
Come on, now… Bush & OReilly were admitted 50-60 years ago. Jim Crow was the norm back. Girls wore poodle skirts, and telephone calls had to be connected by a switchboard operator. Airline travel was even pleasant.
College admissions staff & faculty are notorious for being left leaning and unsupportive of those not thinking like themselves.
Read “The Gatekeepers”. The Wesleyan AO admitted that had he known the girl he rejected had mentioned in her essay her pen pal on deathrow, he would have admitted her because of his own passion around being anti- death penalty.
It could work for you since you’d potentially bring diversity–I’ve seen it happen. Just don’t be abrasive in the way you describe it or in one of your essays. Also in doing so you bring potential bias to your app. You can be discriminated against as well. Say you talk about your love for the Red Sox and the AO is an avid Yankee fan? Well it may just not work in your favor. I’d still say put it on.
I think it is only a positive to be involved as a teen in a campaign internship.
Many I know were in Israel last summer in bomb shelters and what not. No one I know talked about in their essay except in passing, as in I studied at the music conservatory in Jerusalem last summer and improved my piano skills. If it had been in the Ukraine it would have been featured in the essay
That’s a grand statement – rather a bit of over reach IMHO. I went to a notoriously liberal school – a frequent scapegoat by right wing talking heads. By those rants, you’d think we were a campus of free-loving, marijuana infused, protesting against the whales, flag-burning, Wall St occupying, poets reading Marx and Nietzsche on the way to our free abortions, shouting down the white fraternites and returning veterans for good measure.
A third of my class lined up for those Wall St consulting/IB jobs. I guess in GMT’s logic, all the lefty admissions officers must have been on a latte break when the bulk of my classmates were being discussed and admitted in committee.
It’s mostly media-over hyped baloney. Colleges want independent minded thinkers – not lemmings who are driven to paranoia by the extremist commentator du jour. Unless you rant about being a Westboro Baptist church member or Aryan Nation recruit, you’ll be fine. Kudos on your willingness to be involved. Keep it up.
The conservatives kids in your class likely prudently did not elaborate about their political leanings in their admissions application, like the OP is asking about.
You also assume that all students who want to make money on wall street are politically conservative.
I am madly liberal, myself, but if I were an admissions officer, what I’d be looking for is someone who feels strongly enough about something to work for it. Assuming you took the job because you believed in your candidate (not because your mother was campaign chief, or something), think and write about what you learned, how it changed or strengthened you, what made it important enough to do. Might even make a good supplemental or CA essay. It doesn’t have to be about your opinions, per se, although it could be; if you do write about your convictions, get a good reader to make sure you don’t come off as ranty or closedminded (being ranty or closedminded is not limited to one political party; I’d give the same advice to a left-leaning intern).
On the other hand, if it wasn’t all that interesting or meaningful, I’d mention it in more general terms: interned for political candidate. Otherwise you’d have a hole in your resume, so to speak: what did she do that summer?
I don’t plan on writing about the experience in detail in my essay, but would it stand out in a negative way if I just mention it on my resume? (since it’s what I did during the summer)
I agree with others. Political engagement is an asset, unless it’s the KKK, ISIS, or a neo-Nazi group.
For berkeley it will definitely be a factor. Probably for Reed too.
It doesn’t matter, seriously. They like passion.
HOWEVER some people call “conservative” what others may call other hate groups (ie., Westboro Baptist, KKK, “militia” that think mcVeigh was a framed patriot, any kind of person or group that lives off hatred for others, either as individuals or as groups).
So, if you’re working on a legit conservative candidate, Cruz or Paul or whoever, you’re in the clear, but make sure you understand the difference between the two situations described above.
From what I have seen over time, no. But on an incidental, individual basis, yes, it could happen. But then it could also happen that your app is studied by an Admissions employee who is a conservative and would love it, or that you are a runner, and she hates runners due to an ex SO who was one, or anything that could strike a person wrong. Yes, it happens. But I don’t think it happens much. College tends to convert conservatives to liberals and then many become conservative again when they start paying the tax bills. It’s a trend from years to come.
Much of the application info is reduced to scores and summaries, by the way, and ECs unless they are of national level and impact are just summarized, sometimes with just a number of grade, usually a 3 out of 5 anyways. Most decisions are made in a 5 minute perusal.