<p>Remember your audience though… you MIGHT get a Stanford admissions officer reading your app who plays halo in their free time but if you don’t, odds are whatever you mention gaming in conjunction with will not be properly appreciated because of the preconceptions older people typically have about gaming (juvenile, brain-killing, intellectually vacant, ect…) and, unfortunately—for I am an avid gamer and strongly resent those caricatures of gaming—a lot of people have trouble looking past the stereotypes and I would be afraid that gaming stigmas would mar your essay and subsequently cripple your app.</p>
<p>My advice for essays is to be conservative on content but liberal on concept. Definitely a refreshing/unique concept, but just be careful about shooting yourself in the foot with content. Ultimately you will be policing your essays content and you can decide what crosses the line, so if you truly think that your essay is something that is universally insightful/meaningful then by all means submit it…</p>
<p>Just be careful!</p>
<p>I will say that I wrote an essay for my Cornell application about how I wanted to use World of Warcraft’s database to analyze the human psyche and I thought that it was something that could be universally appreciated and avoided something that could be lost in translation if the admissions officer didnt happen to be a gamer.</p>