<p>I have to agree with pentium. I don’t think Darthmouth is telling applicants to never use metaphors ever. It says, more broadly, don’t be metaphoricAL - the impression I immediately got from this was someone writing a whole essay about one subject and then at the very end revealing that it was really just a convoluted metaphor for something else.
Metaphors don’t have to be obfuscating. In fact, sometimes metaphors demonstrate points more clearly and more concisely than other methods are able to.</p>