Is this essay too wild?

College Essays
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<p>I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.</p>

<p>I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.</p>

<p>Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I’m bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of
charge.</p>

<p>I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie.
Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don’t perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat .400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me.</p>

<p>I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.</p>

<p>I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On
weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami.
Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.</p>

<p>But I have not yet gone to college.</p>

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<p>That was hilarious. But for a college admissions essay, probably a bit too wild.
More context is probably needed for a proper judgement. </p>

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<p>–</p>

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<p>Pretty sure this is a knockoff of another essay. I remember seeing something like it in one of those “essays that worked” compilations posted by college admissions blogs.</p>

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<p>@megmayumi‌: it is. I never said that it was my essay. I was just asking if writing something like this would be appropriate.</p>

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<p>Bump</p>

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<p>This essay is an old one that has been published before. It worked because at the time, that idea was original, but now, it’s not, and I suspect that this idea has been copied so many times that another one like this would be immediately tossed in the trash. A while back, a student made a clever music video for a college that went viral on Youtube. I also suspect that the following year, colleges saw a lot more of them.
Essays are the one place you get to be original - grades and scores don’t show your personality. I suspect that this essay worked because this reflected who the author is- witty, original, humorous, and somewhat of a risk taker. Anyone who copies him is none of these descriptions. </p>

<p>To answer the question- it was appropriate for that one student at a particular school, with the person(s) who read it, at a particular time, but now it probably is not. </p>

1 Like
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<p>This sounds like one of those The Most Interesting Man in the World commercials…</p>

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<p>Dude, this is from the 90’s</p>

<p>This satirical essay (or a version of it) was written in 1990 by high school student Hugh Gallagher, who entered it in the humor category of the Scholastic Writing Awards and won first prize. The text was then published in Literary Calvalcade, a magazine of contemporary student writing, and reprinted in Harper’s and The Guardian before taking off as one of the most forwarded “viral” emails of the 1990s.</p>

<p>Though it was not Gallagher’s actual college application essay, he did submit it as a sample of his work to college writing programs and was accepted, with scholarship, to New York University, from which he graduated in 1994.</p>