Stanford SCEA? Good stats, but not sure about ECs.

mathboy98
Sun, 02 Aug 2009 03:36:10 +0000

^^ Right, looks like you’re on the right track. Think about how you can contribute to the schools you’re applying to, why they’d want you. They get lots of talent, but ultimately HYPS schools, it seems, are especially strong in building a student body that gives back to them. One can pretty much accomplish roughly anything intellectual one desires to do at several other sites of learning in the US.

If you can write an essay about something you’ll do to better the community, firstly it probably shouldn’t have to do with your talent so much as inspiration – talent is best seen through tangible measures like awards, after all. But this is why the essay addresses something so different from anything awards or test scores or grades measure. Nevertheless, if you have an award demonstrating a particular knack for something you want to give to the school community, that can be a plus point, I’d only imagine.

As for what you should write on your essays, well just keep it real and feasible and earnest. It’s easy to tell when something is totally out of the blue. If you write about something you love, well you should have evidence as to having loved it I imagine. Use your common sense, basically.

The best advice on applications circulating on CC as of late is to take only our more general observations to heart, and to ignore specific suggestions at your whim, or accept them at your whim also.