<p>I’m planning on applying to UPenn and I have some history with the college…</p>
<p>I’ve recently been involved with a summer program at UPenn (Model UN) and had a life altering experience, I was raped by another participant.
Should I mention this in the common app., or keep it to myself. I don’t want them to think that I’m looking for sympathy, but it is a large part of who I am.</p>
<p>The decision to write about an extremely personal experience like that will be an extremely personal decision that you are going to have to make on your own.</p>
<p>But keep in mind that the college application is not a confessional or a form of self expression. It’s a way of persuading an anonymous committee that you are a wonderful person who they would love to have at their school.</p>
<p>If what you say is true you should be contacting the authorities, not worrying about whether you should include it in the application. </p>
<p>Are you considering talking about it just because it happened at Penn? If it had happened somewhere else would you still be thinking about including it?</p>
<p>i’m very sorry to hear that, being a member of penn’s model un club (the iaa)</p>
<p>i’d like to point out that as the relationship between the club, which runs the conference (i assume it occurred at ilmunc), and the school administration is very limited - your history is not exactly with our school, but with the club event.</p>
<p>–</p>
<p>generally speaking, the inclusion of any very personal and meaningful story in an application needs to show the depth of positive growth in light of what happened.</p>
<p>consider incorporating it only if you can do that.</p>
<p>If it was in the summer, it wasn’t at ILMUNC, which is in January. Don’t confuse the issue. This has nothing to do with IAA.</p>
<p>There is some Model UN program unaffiliated with Penn that uses Penn space for its summer event.</p>
<p>oh true, totally missed the summer part</p>
<p>though iaa staff do help out with the julian krinsky program</p>
<p>A rape was recently reported in the paper, pertaining to two students in the summer program.</p>
<p>It depends on how you have changed from that terrible experience. Have you grown into a tougher person with the newfound confidence to attempt to fend off other potential attackers? Or have you become nervous and secluded? If it’s the former, it could make for an excellent essay if you come at it from the right angle. If it’s the latter, it would be more of a sob story than anything else (not to belittle what happened to you).</p>