Reply to PSA: Don't write your essay about building huts in Africa!

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sorry, but if you believe that one's college essay topic has any effect on admissions, you are misinformed.

So much misinformation in this thread !

Private schools love "rich and privileged"--that is why they have development offices/officers. (Not sure about the status after the admissions scandal involving celebrity parents.)[/quote]

+1 Just look at the thread about which schools have the highest percentage of students going to top schools -- dripping with wealth and privilege. They could write about toenail fungus ruining their choice of prom shoes and get in.[/quote]

You don't get it at all. Schools don't mind wealthy applicants. But they do mind applicants who seem to have learned nothing from their life experience, or applicants who seem to write a canned response that looks as though it didn't come from them. The writing needs to be very personal. If you read thousands of essays during college admissions season, you develop a knack for identifying canned essays. The voice of the student has to be apparent. And if they write without self-awareness or maturity, then that's a ding on their profile.

The topic can be very minor (the prom shoes). But if that hook of prom shoes leads the reader to a discussion on inclusion or self-acceptance, or some deep realization of the author about themselves and society, than that's GREAT, and absolutely what the admission officer wants to see. 
The kids don't need wealthy parents to pay for special experiences. Not at all. But the essay needs to have an original treatment of a possibly unoriginal theme. So a kid who has never traveled anywhere or done any special activity can still pick something from their life and present it under a particular lens just to highlight a deep reflection that is associated with that event or object.

It's Proust's madeleine, if you will.

[/quote]

My kid wrote a deeply personal essay about completing all the Zelda video games. He's now at a T10.[/quote]

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