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I disagree with the purely "straightfoward" thing. Now, I am biased since I went for a combo of the straightfoward and creative route and am nervous about it since it did leave slightly less room for talking about my specific major. However, how many boring "straightfoward" essays do they really want to read. I bet that although each essay will have different topics, majors, interests, etc., they will all be pretty much structured in such a way that there will probably be the following:
I love _____. I've been interested in _____ since I was a kid. Here is a creative anecdote to show (not tell) why. I want to go to Cornell to study ____ with the greatest professors in the field, and I also like the diversity/large campus/beautiful campus/friendly people/great facilities. Cornell will help me on my path to greatness.
I think (well, more like hope) that even though the prompt is more specific than the Common App essay, you still have a lot of room to do what you want with the essays, and the fact that the largest group of people entering is "undecided" is proof enough, since their interests will tend to be more vague. Although I like biophysics, I wasn't going to spend valuable words in my essay BSing crap about how I've always loved science since it's interesting, challenging, and the Magic School Bus and Bill Nye changed my world.
I tried to explictly show my personality and how it relates to my broad interests both in the liberal arts and the hard sciences. Of course, creative is relative. I was creative in my point of view, but I was creative in the sense that I had a clear focus on exactly what I was talking about. If you're going to be creative, make sure you have a clear focal point, and make sure that the reader actually knows what you're talking about, especially if you use a metaphor. There is a fine line between creative and crazy (I'll admit that I almost crossed it, but changing the wording made it all work out for the creative device I used).
And I know this is a little late since ED passed already, but I'm nervous, so I like writing my thoughts out to validate my opinions, slightly easing my stress :P
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