Essay Prompt: Stanford students possess an intellectual vitality. Reflect on an idea or experience that has been important to your intellectual development.
I wanted to talk about a philosophical principle that’s basically the foundation for libertarianism. I’d focus on my issues with it but admissions might see it as trying to push my political views. I’m especially concerned since a lot of people in universities tend to be liberal so that might make it even worse.
Basically I’m wondering if this would this be okay or should I find another topic?
As a general rule, the answer will be “not worth the risk.” If it’s truly the only essay you can see yourself writing well for this prompt, send it, but I’d avoid clear allusions to political orientation.
FWIW, I listed my extensive political volunteering as "a major US political party. Some research could show that only one party has an official overseas presence, but I doubt any AO cares that much - as long as you don’t make your leanings obvious.
If colleges are out to admit only liberal students, they must be pretty bad at screening out the rest of the applicant pool. Any self-respecting university values a diversity of viewpoints on campus.
Zinhead believes that Stanford is solely loaded with liberal admissions officers. uh… OK – cuz no conservatives are at Stanford???
My advice is this: while a good essay CAN be made of your discovery/adoption of the philosophical underpinnings of Libertarianism – the emphasis of the essay values ALL intellectual discovery. Make sure you don’t sound preachy or intolerant of others’ or frankly, even your former views.
It’s one thing to write about an “aha” moment of discovery. It’s another to say that what you’ve discovered is superior to everything else. Do you see the subtle difference? It’s a fine line to walk.
T26E4 is tearing down straw men again. There are conservatives at Stanford, but they are heavily outnumbered by non-conservatives, and the donation records prove it.
I found plenty of people who shared my moderate to conservative viewpoints at my alma mater, a media favorite target for “liberal”. Found the same at Stanford too. Were we outnumbered? Sure. To this day as well. But the media narrative of these places being fortresses of liberalism is simply overblown. And your citing “dailycaller” doesn’t help your argument a single iota, zin.
When you resort to attacking the messenger and not the message, you have lost the debate. If the Daily Caller got their facts wrong regarding donations, prove it. Otherwise, the facts show that Stanford employees overwhelmingly donate to the Democrats.
@Zinhead Dan Sullivan (R-AK) attended Harvard, as did his Senate colleague Tim Kaine. Milton Friedman and Bernie Sanders both graduated from the University of Chicago. Since this post concerns Stanford, it should be noted that Herbert Hoover and Susan Rice are both alumni. That’s hardly indicative of ideological homogeneity.
College students, on the whole, are more liberal than the general population, for a number of reasons. This is even more true of academics - as a general rule, each degree a person has increases the likelihood that he/she votes Democratic, for a variety of reasons. One can argue that the more educated (and thus informed) someone is, the more liberal he/she will skew. One can also argue that universities are brainwashing students into holding liberal views. Either claim is a gross oversimplification.
I don’t see an argument for the belief that universities are monolithic liberal institutions where scarcely a conservative may be found. Although college graduates lean Democratic by about 7 points - 49% to 42% according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, IIRC - that still means 4 in 10 vote Republican. Even if we assume a fair number of the 42% went through a Marxist phase in college, we can reasonably infer that a minimum of 3 in 10 college students are conservative.
Yes, universities are more liberal than conservative, for a number of reasons. That doesn’t mean the universities in question aren’t willing to allow conservative viewpoints, and admit conservative students. Similarly, although Texas hasn’t voted for a Democratic president in 4 decades, the state doesn’t prevent liberals from moving there or expressing their opinions.
But @Notverysmart, your well thought out description veers from the popular notion of the elites (i.e. liberals and progressives) are ruining the country – an argument often posited by my fellow conservatives. Note how every ivy educated politician (red or blue) goes at length to be seen wearing blue jeans and chopping wood and eating at the local diner.
Again, your thorough examination feeds those who desire depth and understanding versus those who want confirmation bias. I’m a conservative with a Yale degree and I’m proud of it and my college in its entirety!
(although in this day and age, my self descriptor as “conservative” may not pass muster in the eyes of many… ho-hum!)
My daughter’s good friend from high school is a junior at Stanford. She is a conservative evangelical Christian (Stanford has a massive Christian fellowship, BTW) and has found plenty of like-minded people on campus. But they are not the majority.
Doesn’t Condoleezza Rice work at Stanford? She’s pretty hardcore conservative, I believe. Maybe I’m too liberal myself, but I don’t tend to think of campus administrations as screaming liberals, more like moderately left-leaning. Remember we’re talking about administration, not the students.
Anyway regarding the essay. I would only use that topic if you can relate it to yourself in terms of a personal experience or epiphany - some way that the notion of libertarianism has affected you personally. You want to craft a story, not an essay, if that makes any sense. Stories are interesting to read, essays are boring. Stories take us on a journey of emotional discovery and growth of a person in a way we can empathize with or relate to, which is why we find them interesting.
A dry essay about the foundations of libertarianism will be a yawner. A story about how your parent’s car was confiscated under civil asset forfeiture or their home forcibly taken away under eminent domain to build a shopping mall is a riveting story about why libertarian principles are important. This way the story is about your personal growth and experiences, not an essay designed to argue an opinion. That way even if the reader vehemently disagrees with your political opinion or conclusion, it would not occur to them to disagree with your story.
It’s no doubt true that a majority of Stanford’s faculty and administration leans more to the left than to the right, especially if “left” means the Democratic Party. At the same time, Stanford has a long and proud tradition of harboring conservative intellectuals, most visibly at the Hoover Institute, but really throughout the university. Few if any of the liberals among the faculty and administration would have any interest in abandoning that tradition. Stanford – very much like its closest peers – is a place where a wide range of ideological positions are represented.
There is an asterisk on that – I think it’s probably the case that there is very poor representation of social conservatism that is religiously based. You will have no trouble meeting libertarians and free-market economists – lots of 'em – or aggressive American exceptionalists, but people who believe the state should criminalize homosexuality or who oppose marriage equality may be hard to find. That said, there has always been a pretty significant Mormon community at Stanford, not only among the students (remember, Mitt Romney started at Stanford before transferring to BYU), but also faculty and administrators, and there has been a growing evangelical presence in the past few decades. But I don’t think either group is particularly vocal about those aspects of doctrine.
I wouldn’t be afraid about writing an essay about the philosophical foundations of libertarianism. It’s a topic that interests liberals as well as conservatives. The only real risks are: (a) You won’t be the only person writing such an essay; I’ll bet they get dozens, hundreds, maybe even hundreds of dozens of them. (b) It’s a topic much studied in college classes, which means the kind of person who reads admissions essays may actually know a fair amount about it. You may come off as less well informed than you think you are.
IMO Condi Rice is more of a centrist than her party as a whole, though she’s still somewhere to the right of where I’d place myself on the spectrum. Just as Bernie Sanders is to the left of my own views.
I’d agree that university administrations tend to be more conservative than the faculty and especially the students. I’d even call them center-right myself, although this will of course depend on the school.
I feel the best description of administrators could be to say they’re Rockefeller Republicans - moderate conservatives on economic issues (as most well-heeled voters are), liberal on social questions (like many college-educated voters), and likely to be political independents given the direction taken by both major parties over the last 20-30 years.
While the universities may not restrict conservative viewpoints, [the students certainly do in the form of attacks, threats, and public harassment](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB116130960571998544). When you are hated to the point of people attacking and threatening you for your beliefs, that’s just as bad as formally restricting different viewpoints…
Not trying to paint with a broad brush here, but I feel that recognizing the difference between between formal and informal restrictions on free-speech is important.
Some students certainly engage in such behavior, just as there may be towns where an openly gay resident is made to feel more than a little unwelcome.
I like to believe both groups are tiny minorities, gaining attention only because they stand out among a vastly more tolerant majority. We’re a more polarized nation than we have been in close to 150 years, but history suggests such passions will eventually be tempered, and in my view that can’t happen too soon.
OP, the hijacking of your thread is actually pretty illuminating in that you can see that an overly political essay may rub a reader the wrong way. I’d probably recommend a different topic.
@NotVerySmart - Despite the presence of non-liberals as students on campus, the vast majority of employees at Stanford who gave to a political party gave to the liberal one. To submit an application essay that disagrees with the political beliefs of 75 percent of the people who will be making the application is foolish, IMHO. There is little reason to take the risk unless your entire CV for college applications is based on political EC’s.
As for administrators being primarily Rockefeller Republicans, I am scratching my head on that one.
I would stay away from political or religious essays. No real good can come from it. There is a lot of real hate in this country. I was listening to CNN last nite and they said almost 70 per cent of Trumps supporters think Obama is a muslim. I would play it safe with your essay
Libertarian ideas and rational anarchy are VERY frequently discovered by adolescents who read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress or one of Ayn Rand’s novels. Adolescents tend to find them very appealing: there’s a mixture of idealism and rebellion against the status quo in the way they are presented. (This is also true of political ideas at the other end of the spectrum.)
As life becomes more complicated and one’s understanding and experience of living deepens and broadens, many people find both sets of views insufficiently nuanced. Very often this is described rather condescendingly as “growing up.” I disagree with that view: I think that while some people become more nuanced thinkers, others just sell out, for personal convenience and profit. Others maintain a degree of idealism for life. In any case, that is neither here nor there.
My main point is that the discovery of libertarianism is an incredibly common adolescent experience, intellectually. An essay burbling over with enthusiasm for John Galt would probably provoke more of an eyeroll than anything else. If your essay reveals a more sophisticated intellectual process, that’s another matter.