Recently, I’ve had the idea of writing about a game that’s affected my entire childhood on my college application: Minecraft. I was hoping you guys could give me feedback on whether that is a good idea or not, as Minecraft does carry a sort-of “immature” connotation.
In the essay, I will talk about how I made 6 Minecraft servers total, with each carrying a different theme, and how I coded my own plugins and stuff to make the server unique. My top ones got hundreds of players on simultaneously with thousands of players joining total. I also worked as a developer for several medium-sized servers with hundreds of players as well and received compensation for some of the custom plugins I built with Java. I will mainly emphasize on the creative and inventive aspect of Minecraft, rather than just the fact that I played it.
However, a lot of this was back in my older years of middle school/underclassmen in high school, so I think it would be better in my supplementary essay and not in my personal statement.
What do you guys think?
Also, would this be a viable answer to Stanford Prompt #3 “What is meaningful to you, and why”, or should I write about something else?
Also, should I put this in my extracurriculars list as well? Or just essays?
Yes, you can write about that in an essay! This is an activity that you engaged in for quite some time, that you have learned a lot from participating in, and that has helped you develop some new skills. Given the amount of time you have devoted to it, you could include it as an extracurricular.
For the Stanford essay, you should dig a little deeper. If Minecraft were still meaningful to you, you would still be engaging at your previous level.
Having enough perspective to be able to distill out. the important parts is often a challenge with college essays. You invested a lot of yourself, for a long time, at a quite a high level and relatively young age. Can you see what things you took from that time? Skills / interests / abilities / goals that evolved from there? Drawing a connections from then to now to what you are looking for in and from college can make a great essay.
Hmmm… Curious what others think. It’s an EC basically. The theory is not to write about in your essay what’s already in your application per se. The essay isn’t about you making a server it’s about you and what you bring to the table to be an active participate of their school culture.
I don’t do Minecraft but maybe you can approach it from another angle. Like the theory of Minecraft and how it relates to your major. How it relates to actives you might do on-campus. Does the campus have mine craft club? Make it different.
Someone I know who played chess wrote about how each move related to her life and goals… By the time your done with the essay she played a game of chess and won. It was brilliant. She at MIT.
I’ve thought about it some more and I thought it could be a good theme for my personal statement actually. My jobs as server owner + developer + player really gave me an introduction to things like management and responsibility, some things which I had never encountered before. This introduction could lead and give way to other things I did, which used skills I attained in Minecraft, like creating my tutors business and making my own class curriculum. It also gave me valuable leadership skills like information distribution and planning, which helped me as a counselor for Camp Casey and also hopefully as a team captain for my tennis team next year. Then elegantly concluding with a reference back to Minecraft and how it was basically “my beginning,” as I have over 5,000 hours logged into that game I think.
I think this would be a good way of “Drawing a connections from then to now to what you are looking for in and from college”. And while Minecraft had to stop due to time stuff, I still use the skills today, which I could mention.
What do you guys think of this?
@Knowsstuff
I’ll be sure to add computer science aspects as well, which should be easy considering the inventive and creative nature of Minecraft, as both a game and a server creator.
I think it’s closer. My son’s essay was on his hobby that he did since 9 but it was sorta unique and he was able to connect it to engineering even though it had absolutely nothing to do with engineering… Lol.
Write an outline and go from there. There is a section on the common app for “tell me other stuff about you that you want us to know” of course worded better… Lol). If you have nothing else to put there then use it for a sentence on your minecraft quest. But I think your getting the idea. I want to learn about you and how you will be on campus. What do you bring to better the school. You already mentioned several things.
I agree with @Knowsstuff: it’s starting to take shape. Plan it taking multiple rounds to fine tune, find the words and threads that will show the connections. Take breaks between rounds- write an outline of the key points / let it sit / write a rough draft / let it sit / write a full draft / let it sit. Each time you come back to it you will see different things to fine tune.
IK THIS IS A YEAR LATE but, Im thinking of writing about minecraft as well. I personally am not very interesting of a person. Im trying to get into colleges with around 30-50% acceptance rates so nothing really too hard. For a while ive been interested in architecture for awhile especially bc of minecraft. Ive been building on the game since 3rd grade when I was first introduced to the game by my brother. I’ve been seriously building on it until now (now i build on pc). I want to write about how minecraft has impacted my thoughts on architecture and how ive been able to learn about architecture through the video game???
[quote=“collegemom3717, post:3, topic:2099380”]
Having enough perspective to be able to distill out. the important parts is often a challenge with college essays. You invested a lot of yourself, for a long time, at a quite a high level and relatively young age.
[/quote] Having enough perspective to be able to distill out. the important parts is often a challenge with college essays. You invested a lot of yourself, for a long time, at a quite a high level and relatively young age.