<p>QM could riff on being an over thinker! </p>
<p>Not inauthentic- that follows the idea our kids have to conform to the nth degree, lose themselves. </p>
<p>I tell hs kids all the time, âFirst, you take a breath.â It represents leaving the confusion behind and/or being in the moment. Some of us can thrive on multi-faceted thinking, but it can both enrich and deplete- and make the road to the goal longer and more complicated. </p>
<p>This is about a whole new challenge: communicating with others. Forming oneâs thoughts with the goal of clearly communicating something to someone we want something from. </p>
<p>Personally, that sort of challenge, editing, the more precise thinking, can be just as intriguing as the far flung thoughts and the rationales for them. Iâm sure grown up QM does it for proposals, weâve all done it, one way or another. CC is a different sort of indulgence.</p>
<p>QMC should find an essay topic that piques her interest and write to the audience reading it, in her own voice. The end goal is to write an essay of interest and not make the readerâs eyes glaze over. It can be done while still staying true to oneself.</p>
<p>Does one have to demonstrate âlikeabilityâ for a grant proposal to be successful?</p>
<p>More like competent thinking. Adcoms want that, too. Itâs neither a philosophical treatise, nor a simple âoff the top of your head.â Competent thinking does stay on the topic of value to whatever reader. </p>
<p>@texaspg, when I initially got in I thought I wasnât good enough to be admitted to Penn. Not that I couldnât do well there, I just didnât think my application was that good (I liked my essays though). I was very well rounded academically, which continued when I got there and took several literature and history classes along with my major. However, the high school I went to was so competitive and gave such a heavy load of homework, I just didnât have any energy to try new things. I really did try to think about it freshman year, but it was really hard. Even if I did, pretty much everything cut students. You could be cut from a sports team before starting freshman year (even if you were an okay athlete) without even having a few months to develop skills and prove yourself. So I just stayed in my comfort zone and counted the days until graduation.</p>
<p>When I got to Penn, my opinion gradually changed as I met a lot of very superficial students (many legacies or had a sibling at/who attended Penn actually, or kids from fancy NYC/LA private schools). Yes, you can dress well and have a vibrant social life while being intellectual at the same time (I have met several people like that and they are very fun to hang out with), but there were a lot of students who were just concerned about getting into banking or med school. The later was pretty bad, because you can tell a lot of premeds are very unconsciously unhappy with their choice and probably are not suited to be doctors. One girl even told me she got sick of speech and debate because everyone was obsessed with putting it on their resume.</p>
<p>Again, itâs good to have a diverse array of personalities at schools, but many kids at Penn (and other elite schools I am sure) have very bad attitudes that in my opinion, negatively affect the school and personal development.</p>
<p>I am hoping QM, collegealum and others will comment on the grant proposal/admissions essay comparison. Fretfulmother?</p>
<p>adding: as I wrote pages back, hoops that make sense are okay with me. I donât personally see learning to write a successful college admissions essay as a skill that is useful in many other contexts. Creative writing? Marketing? What kind of gate keeping are we really talking about?</p>
<p>My understanding of grant proposals is you only get them if youâve done 3/4 of the work already. I donât think thereâs much opportunity to come across as likable, but many, many grants involved collaborations between labs so you have to be able to play well with others. (At least in Dhâs field which is cancer research.)</p>
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<p>@poeme - but what has any of this got to do with how admissions is making decisions? As far as they are concerned, they are recruiting students first and foremost that can hack it at Penn and move onto greater things (selecting you turned out fine for them). I know a few other current and past students who are all doing quite well as far as I know. </p>
<p>Penn is ensuring their 4 schools are filled up with the right people (business, arts and science, engineering, nursing) with the type of people who are interested in those schools and you are liable to encounter many interested in medicine or banking because that is the vibe for Penn. Personally, I would be worried for a premed kid if they are not worried about getting into med school at any college, let alone Penn. It takes a lot of effort and the stress is pretty high to get a lot of things accomplished before their med app is due. </p>
<p>Most top schools also average 40-50% students from private schools, given that they are the ones who can afford it or have great resumes or great test scores and or a variety of other factors involved in picking students. They also average just over 10% legacy (how else are they going to get scholarships funded and beautiful buildings built without generous alums?) although I would be surprised that Penn will admit a sibling based legacy. I also wouldnât not be surprised if there is a large overlap between the privates and legacies. I know someone locally who was the president of local chapter with 4 or 5 kids in private schools and 2 or 3 attended Penn and others went onto other Ivies.</p>
<p>Personally I donât think debate gets anyone into Penn. The service essay OTOH may make a difference, especially if there was a great service EC. </p>
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<p>Does it help if people like you? Yes. It also helps if the people reading your app respect you and your work.</p>
<p>Do you need to âdemonstrateâ likeability on your grant proposal? No. For instance, you donât get points for saying that you love watching movies and eating popcorn in your spare time.</p>
<p>âDo you need to âdemonstrateâ likeability on your grant proposal? No. For instance, you donât get points for saying that you love watching movies and eating popcorn in your spare time.â</p>
<p>You donât get points in college admission either for saying you like to do those things, collegealum314. You may want to think so, so you can think derogatorily about the âsuperficialâ kind of people who simply watch movies and eat popcorn, but thereâs more to it than that. Itâs what your hobby of watching movies and eating popcorn says about you â maybe youâre particularly interested in films that demonstrate X and why that is, or movies have helped you contextualize Y or Z, or the way in which you watch movies and your approach to the ones you pick says something about what goes on in your head, or you find watching movies ties you back to your heritage or something. It requires a kind of conceptual thinking, however, that seems to be lost on some. But no, no elite college is impressed by merely âwatching movies and eating popcorn.â</p>
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<p>This was an explicit example of a good answer to the MIT prompt, âWhat do you do with your spare time?â, according to the former admissions director. Your speculation about how the response should be some analysis of film and what interests you about it is decidedly not what they were looking for. Itâs not an ultra-literal reading either; its a conclusion based on reading quite a few posts on the MIT forum and the MIT blogs.</p>
<p>It should be said that part of the motivation about this prompt was undoubtedly as a response to the suicide problem in the 90âs. They wanted proof that you had an escape valve. I think they went a bit overboard with this. I do think also these types of answers were also meant to show âlikeabilityâ and the ability to be a team player.</p>
<p>I donât think MIT is quite like the other elite schools, but I do think there is a different sort of superficiality involved in the essays for other schools. </p>
<p>Honestly, pg, on what are you basing your strident conclusions? When you went to NU, you could basically get in by being a good student alone. Youâve already said you donât pay attention to other peopleâs kids, so clearly you arenât observing trends in admissions even if there were enough people applying to elite schools from your kidsâ high school to do so.
It seems what you are doing is what everybody does, which is to fill in the gaps in knowledge with what you assume adcoms would do if they are being reasonable. </p>
<p>The issue of what constitutes a great essay remains open for debates. All of us have opinions on this, and not necessarily the same! Only think how the (in)famous Chicago essays have prompted plenty of spirited discussions.</p>
<p>Then, you have the theory that the essay should directed at its targeted audience and tailored to their purported âwhimsâ and âpreferencesâ Well, when we âthinkâ to be able to define a consensus (such as in the case of Chicago) we are forced to change our opinion. A few years ago, an adcomboss decided he should weigh in and publish on his favorite essays. The result? The essay was highly questionable in its approach but seemingly struck the right chord in Chicago. I thought it was nothing but tripe and downright juvenile. </p>
<p>What does that mean? That the essay might please one adcom and irritate another! And that WE will never know if a student is admitted because of great essays or ⊠in spite of them! </p>
<p>This said, to step away from generalities, I remain convinced that a certain type of essays works better than others. And especially on the âirritatingâ scale! My scale is tipping towards disliking the âpoor meâ essays to a certain degree, and absolutely disliking the convoluted essays that are meant to impress an adcom with âdeepâ intellectual discoveries of âhow the worldâ really works. To be clear, 500 words written by a 17 years old pseudo-intellectuals will never fool anyone! </p>
<p>Obviously, my (profound) dislike for the prompts suggested by âpeersâ at Chicago is showing through my posts! And, I DO understand that an aspiring Chicago student might embrace the challenges and write essays that fit the âhouse.â </p>
<p>Yet, I continue to believe that the âslices of lifeâ essays that lift the veil to a VERY different angle that is shown in the rest of the application should work better. Adcoms must get tired of reading about students shadowing doctors, building houses in far away and exotic places, or wanting to feed millions of Africans. </p>
<p>What good does it do if one can write about the world but not pen 500 words about himself? </p>
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<p>Fwiw, one could write something memorable about movies and popcorn. How does this sound?</p>
<p>"There is a very old chair in our living room. It does not match the rest of the decor. Its only saving grace is that it has been in our family for many generations. The best part of my day was to open the front door. drop my backpack --homework could wait a bit-- and run to the living room. I could hear the sounds of Edith Piaf or Jacques Brel, or other unknown troubadours from the Old World. And there was my grandpa. âTzirty zeconds for the popcorn, Princessâ was all he needed to say, and I was ready to be transported to a world of film noir and unintelligible french dialogues. Along the way, I learned to look at destroyed landscapes through a different lens, and understand the eternal desire that fuels people to rebuild from ashes. /insert more details</p>
<p>One day, my cheerful entrance was met with the roomâs deafening silence. The old turntable sat there. The chair was empty. And so was my heart! </p>
<p>++ Follows how the student continues to listen to music and watch foreign movies he/she finally understands! </p>
<p>The essay is NOT about the grandpa, but about the student. </p>
<p>The challenge prompt was great. Kids can still morph one of the new ones to this angle, but they tend to take the current prompts quite literally and donât get that itâs not for a hs teacher. </p>
<p>QM, if QMC were writing about herself, some experience, to some other trusted adult she didnât know well, wouldnât she attempt to tame and focus her thoughts to match her need or purpose- and the other personâs? Ie, try to show the relevant attributes? </p>
<p>Xiggiâs example on the student loving to watch movies with the grandpa is a nice demonstration of what weâre talking about here. Itâs not about the movies, or the popcorn. Itâs about using things symbolically to demonstrate other concepts - in this case, the desire to rebuild from ashes (which could morph into a lot of different things).</p>
<p>I think we talk at cross purposes here because there is a symbolic use of language and metaphor that isnât always apparent to those who are more math-y / science-y. </p>
<p>bangs head against nearest wall</p>
<p>If you think QM and collegealum donât understand symbolism and metaphor, you really arenât understanding their posts⊠and probably missing the jokes (which is mainly why Iâm still reading)</p>
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<p>Or those with language/cultural barriers* which may make symbolic metaphorical writing exceedingly difficult. </p>
<p>Also, being able to use symbolism and metaphors in oneâs writing requires a high degree of proficiency in writing in a given language well-beyond mere literacy. Something not guaranteed if one attended K-12 schools where writing instruction was haphazard or worse, effectively non-existent. </p>
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<li>I.e. Growing up in a home where symbolic metaphorical writing was considered negatively by parents/older relatives. There was a scene from a long ago film of an American working-class family where the father lambasted his son for his strong interests in writing poetry and insisted his son drop plans to attend summer poetry camp in favor of working a factory job to âlearn how to work with your handsâ and ânot spend time on frivolous mattersâ. Another example was how Yukio Mishima had to hide his written works to prevent his father from finding and destroying them because his father felt being a writer/poet was âtoo effeminateâ in an era when Japanese males were expected to enjoy militaristic pursuits. Writing literary works filled with symbolic metaphorical language wasnât one of those âacceptableâ pursuits.<br></li>
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<p>I have not had the time nor place to watch the video that collegealum314 linked in #1232, but I am looking forward to it.</p>
<p>Where QMC is headed, there is no such thing as âover-thinking.â</p>
<p>Umm.
What does the essay tell us about the student for that college, Lord Xiggi? or are we takling some specific supplement question?</p>