So my extracurricular spike (what Allen Cheng refers to as the general category/field of your most impressive ECs) is mostly centered around astronomy and astrophysics. However, I wanted to write my essay about being a 2nd gen immigrant and growing up in America. I’ve let my AP Lang teacher and some CC members critique it, and I’ve surprisingly gotten very good feedback, so I decided to keep this topic.
I let a close friend read it, however, and he told me that colleges would prefer to see an essay that can convince them you’re the type of person who can change the world. He liked the essay, but he suggested that I talk about my passion for astronomy and the impressive discovery I made. I felt that he did have a point, that maybe colleges wouldn’t care about identity and culture issues and would rather be more concerned with my “passion”. His essay, for example, is centered around how he developed his love for medicine.
I really think the Common App essay should be something that shows who you are as a person. I think your culture essay sounds like it manages to do that nicely, and you have obviously received positive reviews about it. As such, replacing it with an entirely new essay just to discuss your extracurricular “spike” is unnecessary. (If you look around the essay forum, you’ll notice a lot of threads about “not writing about an extracurricular”. Replies are always that the essay doesn’t need to be remotely related to ECs, but to YOU.)
I have a similar spike, but am not writing about it in my personal statement; rather, I am allowing that to showcase certain personal traits that define who I am. I am writing about my spike in the additional information section, because it is uncommon and thus needs elaboration. Your astronomy fits this category, and I do not believe it is extraneous to explain your dedication further in the additional info. (Whereas one should not include ECs like school sports in additional info.) <That parenthetical not directed at you, but to others who may be curious.
The 2nd generation essay can be too cliche, and people tend to give your positive feedback on your essay, especially if the topic is your experience as 2nd generation. I am also not sure how much colleges read the additional information. If EC defines who you are, you should write about it. I also think you can have one version of essay for several schools, and another version for other schools based on your applied majors. D is also 2nd gen.
hi OP My opinion is that if you are smart enough to have this impressive “spike” then you are probably smart and self-aware enough to know when your essay is just right. If you have science cred, then as a typical scientist you would probably let that stand by itself rather than yammering on and on about how important your accomplishment is – just as you have proposed doing. let’s say you won a nobel prize…look at the speeches these people give, they are typically about the future and the next steps, not a re hash of that most significant of “spikes”.
and just to go further out on a limb, sure there may be many of these types of essays out there, but who’s to say that you won’t strike a chord with an Asian immigrant admissions rep…after all, not everyone in admissions is your typical white middle American, right? (edited to add: i notice that you didn’t say you were Asian but yeah, even so, there is likely to be a 2nd gen immigrant admissions person of whatever background out there that would really identify with your essay).
if you are genuine and you care about what you say, i think it’s probably going to be awesome. good luck to you
@PrimeMeridian@thingamajig LOL, I should have clarified in my original post. I’m not Asian-American. My parents are from East Africa, and it was pretty interesting growing up here with that kind of background.
You are not a one-note song, @thingamajig, and adcomms are trying to put a whole bunch of songs together. Your EC spike will show up in your application- other essays, LoR, etc. Write the most interesting essay that you can that says something about you as a person.
Then definitely write about your immigrant experience. It’s Asians who get dinged for it. According to the Princeton Review article, anything that draws attention to your URM status is a plus.