Topic of your choice?

fireandrain
Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:39:17 +0000

I am not going to read that whole website, but I think the point is that many students feel they need to write an essay about the amazing trip they took to India, their volunteer work on an Indian reservation, the piano piece they played at Carnegie Hall or the life they saved as a paramedic. It’s not that the admissions people prefer reading about mundane moments – it’s that you can take a mundane moment and turn it into a good essay, one that reveals a lot about you.

They don’t want to read an academic paper or a treatise on why you believe in libertarianism – they want to learn about you. Don’t be pretentious, don’t use too many six-syllable words, don’t sound like a philosophy grad student. Write about what you know – which for most students, will be about an aspect of their life. The value of the anecdote is that it highlights your descriptive powers and gives the admissions office a taste of your life in a small, delicious bite. So it’s OK to describe your groundskeeping job at a golf course, explain why you enjoy doing the crossword puzzle every Sunday, describe why tutoring that fifth grader is so challenging or ruminate on how important your collection of sea glass is.

Hope that helps.

(That sea glass essay, btw, was one of the best I ever read.)