Poetic Justice: Being Too Risky
by Cliff
Not having been well advised on the college application process,
I had to learn some things the hard way. Namely, it is a good
thing to be creative when answering essay questions, but if
you let your essays stray too far from the norm, it’s
possible that they can hurt your application rather than help
it.
I had read about students with mediocre test scores who managed
to get into a competitive school by entertaining application
readers with an off the wall essay. One of these students
answered the question, “Who do you think has been the
greatest person of all time?” with a story about his
own life. Another answered the prompt, “Write about
the biggest risk you have taken,” with only three words:
“This is it.” But, as I was soon to find out,
those students who succeed with these daring “essays”
are the exceptions to the rule, not the norm.
After many hours of brainstorming, I decided that the most
creative way I could answer MIT’s essay question, “Why
will you succeed at MIT?” was in the form of a poem.
Looking back, it certainly was an original presentation for
that school. Unfortunately, it may have been a bit too original.
The problem with my stab at creativity is that poems are
by nature subtle and open to interpretation. I should have
been specifically telling the MIT application readers why
I would succeed there instead of hoping that they would infer
it from my poem. My application for early admission was soon
answered with a deference letter.
When it came time for me to apply to the University of Pennsylvania’s
Jerome Fisher Program, my top choice for the fall, I decided
to be a little less risky with my essays. It’s not that
my Penn essays lacked creativity; I spent hours making them
both entertaining and creative. The difference between my
MIT poem and my Penn essays was that I made sure my Penn essays
clearly demonstrated that I would make full use of the superior
education they offered and that I was serious about earning
a place in their distinguished institution. These were necessary,
expected details that I was simply unable to express succinctly
in poetic form.
In the spring I received my acceptance letter from top-choice
Penn and could breathe a sigh of relief about having possibly
blown my chances at MIT with a risk that didn’t quite
work to my advantage.
The whole experience taught me yet another valuable lesson:
Complete the application to your top-choice school last. In
fact, try to rank the schools you’re applying to by
preference, then complete the least desirable first and work
towards your top choice. Some may argue that filling out applications
in that order could make the process a bit routine by the
time you reach your top choice application. However, I argue
that if you’re passionate about getting in, you won’t
lose the “fire” of inspiration by the time you
get to that last application. In fact, by the time you get
that far, you’ll feel like a seasoned veteran of the
application process, allowing you to pull your favorite tips
and ideas from the applications you’ve already completed
in order to make your top-choice application your best attempt
yet.
A few months after I arrived at Penn, I became friends with
an employee in the admissions department. She once complained
to me with words I’ll never forget: “I don’t
know why all these prospective students keep sending in their
crappy poems. When I see someone has written a poem, their
application is already halfway rejected in my mind.”
I just smiled, kept my mouth shut and thanked myself for learning
from my own mistakes.
