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Sally, how do you show an unusual interest to admissions? Should you dedicate your essay to that, or is there another place to emphasize that interest?
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An essay is certainly a good way to highlight an atypical interest. This can be either the primary essay, an essay for a supplement, the mini-essay on the Common App (meaningful experience) or sometimes an extra, non-required essay (e.g., for the "Additional Info" section that's on the Common App and others.)
Sometimes, too, such interests lend themselves well to unsolicited show-and-tell submissions. Once, for instance, when I worked at Smith, we had an applicant who designed and created this cool marbled stationery. So she submitted a bunch of samples with her application. It was very eye-catching, and I'm sure it helped her stand out in the crowd. (In fact, a couple years later, when I was working with the now-acclaimed "Young at Heart Chorus," this girl--by then a Smith junior or senior--signed on as an intern and designed some fabulous costumes for one of the shows. As soon as I met her, I recognized her name and exclaimed, "Oh, you're the marble-paper person!" She got a big kick out of the fact that I remembered, and it just goes to show you how sometimes uncommon extra submissions can help a candidate get noticed.)
Interviews can be another way to mention atypical endeavors. I also urge my counseling clients to create an "annotated activities list" rather than a formal resume. These lists include a
brief blurb about any undertaking that is not self-explanatory.
One common admission mistake I've seen over the eons is that sometimes students don't realize that their most intriguing interests. hobbies, etc. really
are application fodder. They think that colleges are only interested in school activities, community service, sports et al. But I've seen some great stuff that doesn't fall under the traditional rubrics. For instance, there was the Pakistani girl who cleverly transformed her family's seemingly endless supply of empty burlap rice sacks into beautiful purses. And the boy from Kentucky whose sculptures made from discarded computer components ended up in a national design magazine.
So, the moral of the story is that students need to recognize that they may have talents and strengths that colleges want to know about, even if they're not the predictable ones, and then they have to figure out the best way to convey this information to admission committees.