How to Write the Stanford Roommate Note “Essay”

Who should read this post: anybody applying to Stanford in 2019-2020. I will look at the writing situation of this oddly tricky prompt and summarize the approaches taken by three successful applicants as I wrap up this post. Read on for more.

Ah, the Stanford Roommate letter, excuse me, note, back for another year. It’s one of the three Stanford prompts, and it’s framed as an informal self-introduction to your roommate. But it’s still a supplemental “essay.” Go figure.

When you compare all of the other things Stanford wants you to explain, introducing yourself to your future roommate seems kind of lightweight, particularly given that it is one of three key supplemental essays Stanford requires. So why is this roommate prompt back for yet another year? Because somehow it works. For Stanford.

As the most difficult college application in the country, with an acceptance rate that will drop below 4% within three years, based on current trends, Stanford, has a big problem: tens of thousands of applications with grades in the solidly 3.9 and 4.0 range, unweighted, most with stellar test scores and a thicket of activities. The Letter to Your Roommate clearly helps them separate applicants, from one simple fact–this prompt has been on the docket at Stanford for over a decade. And it is a particularly tricky kind of “essay.”

It’s so good in fact that they have barely even changed the wording on this prompt since it launched, way before Barack Obama started a run for President. Here it is:

2. Virtually all of Stanford’s undergraduates live on campus. Write a note to your future roommate that reveals something about you or that will help your roommate—and us—know you better.

Your Audience and Writing Situation for the Stanford Roommate Essay

Let’s get one thing out of the way now: While Stanford does suggest that you can swap letters to your roommate when you first show up at your dorm to see who you will be sharing your living space with, your real audience is obviously not your roommate. It’s your application readers.

So a big challenge is how “formal” to be. Trying to write as if this really were just to a fellow student who by happenstance becomes your roommate is a mistake. But so is writing as if you are practicing a speech in front of a middle-aged judge.

To clarify your audience, most of my clients who have gotten into Stanford have had the opportunity to read their roommate’s letter, and they have also universally treated this as a bit of a joke, a slightly embarrassing moment that they quickly leave behind. For the obvious reason that one of the first things your roomie sees is part of your ploy to get Stanford admissions. It’s a “So that’s how you pulled it off” moment. They, like you, were casting about for some kind of “humanizing” details and some humor that would help them pick the lock to Stanford admissions. And then you maybe have to laugh off some personal quirk you decided to put upfront in your letter.

The best essays have some serious ideas in them, but framed and carried by some level of humor. A recent winner ended with a promise to have a My Little Pony decorative party. No doubt this was laughed off when the letter was read. And of course you can be too informal. For example, the language itself is not really the place to put to much informality, Dude. You get my drift, Bro?

So instead of thinking about this as really being to your roommate, think about it being to a hipster landlord who perhaps middle-aged but still sort of with it, and this landlord tis trying to find the smartest and most interesting people to pair up as roommates. In addition to offering some sense that you have an interesting personality and are maybe going places in a hurry, you also need to remember that part of this is what you want to share about yourself as a (prospective) roommate. If you want to discuss your frequent bouts of inspiration and in the process explain that these times tend to come late at night and that they simply must be accompanied by blasting music to drive your manic creativity, you may come across more as a self-absorbed jerk with no respect for your roommate’s peace, quiet or sleep than as a quirky and interesting artistic savant.

Seriously. I get this look at how enthusiastic/quirky stuff all the time in Stanford Roommate Letters, then have to ask the young author, Hey, how would you feel if your roommate blasted, say, some Bach organ music at 110 decibels at any hour of the day or night? Of course, I also see these very serious letters. Some are good, but few are great. After all, the performance here is about writing to somebody your age (with a chaperone) and that really, really serious take may not work out. You don’t want to come across as Stuart Smalley, for reals, folks. So if you are not someone like Greta Thunberg, with street cred like hers, try at least a bit of humor.

Feeling stumped? Let’s look at some successful examples, summarized.

Essay Ideas that Worked

So what kind of Roommate Letter does get one into Stanford? These three worked:

Essay Number One: Breakfast Cereal

I am not posting these essays in full, but here is a summary of each–please keep in mind that copying these ideas is a bad idea. These are just a representative examples of the range of ideas that I have seen be successful. Your own ideas need to be germane to you, but these may give you permission to write about things you had not considered . . . You can and should share these essays with a range of people, and dial it back, or pump it up, as necessary.

Stanford Roommate Essay 1–This successful applicant decided to write on his approach to breakfast, specifically, his experimental approach to breakfast cereal, for which he uses two bowls. He alluded to his friends’ view that his cereal obsession is truly eccentric by offering a somewhat tongue-in-cheek explanation of his drive to constantly experiment. Why should be accept cereal that is too mushy or too crunchy, and what happens if you combine a constantly evolving range of cereals? Into this approach, he was also able to drop references to digitizing information for a student-run organization at school to improve it, and doing lab experiments on polymers . . . which were successful. His refusal to accept mediocre cereal became a platform to suggest he experiments to improve everything. Obviously, this could become just a little too cute, but the applicant had a sense of seriousness as well as a sense of humor in this only slightly tongue-in-cheek essay.

Stanford Roommate Essay 2–This essay started with a homage to the refresh button on a web browser; by the end of the opening paragraph, this opening discussion of the refresh button had expanded to a kind of philosophy for life itself–his motto: refresh, renew and start over with a new perspective whenever you face a roadblock or feel a lack of inspiration in life. In paragraph two, he segued to his passion for scheduling and calendaring software. By now you are perhaps thinking, as you read this, that this is too mundane and, indeed, lame for a Roommate essay, but this applicant went on to explain how he runs a calendar for real events that are fixed to specific dates, which allows him to get tasks done on time, but that he also has an aspirational calendar, in which he imagines things he will do, and by doing so, and putting them on the calendar, makes them happen. That he in fact has several hundred calendars devoted to dreams and aspirations.

And some of these had already become successful at the time he wrote his Stanford essays, and he was able to name-drop things, like the a nonprofit he launched, bringing sports to underprivileged youth, and the trip he pulled off, solo, to Peru and the internship he landed at a financial advising firm for which he continued to work for years. And all of these activities were the subjects of other essays, so he was able to reinforce some of his activities and parts of the Common App main essay he wrote . . . gentle reminders for the reader are always a good thing. Imagine your poor college application reader in, say, hour 8 of reading data, activities, essays . . . and assigning a ranking, all in about 15 minutes. Or ten. You never want to repeat activities verbatim on your essays, but a bit of a reminder never hurts.

Stanford Roommate Essay 3–This applicant wrote about . . .rapping. And this for a prospective business major and entrepreneur who has no plans to go into the music industry. At this point.

Interestingly, rapping is very much a minor activity for this applicant, who has not really composed all that many raps. But the essay had authenticity, because this applicant had done some rapping, genuinely loves the genre, and got together with a friend to write a rap aimed at deflating tension between the applicant’s school and a cross-town rival, then made a video in which the applicant and friend visited the cross-town rival “sharing the love” as they rapped about making peace. They posted it and got some support online.

This is the background of the essay, which talks more about liking to rap and the process of creativity. This applies to the roommate essay because of rap as a private-hours activity, engaged with at home, and the activity in this case was altered on my advice from blasting rap at all hours to having a set of Beats headphones constantly on the applicant’s ears or around the applicant’s neck, ready to use at any time. . . in the dorm room. It also quoted from that peace rap in a couple of places, and the focus overall was on an interest in creative engagement with social justice topics, which allowed the applicant to bring in a mixed-race background.

You don’t have to be constantly engaged with an activity for it to work in an essay; you just need some level of authenticity, which this had. And as a person whose identity is not totally tied up in Rap or Hip-Hop, this essay also skirted the kind of insider-war about who’s the best, what is legit and what is not in the realm of Hip Hop and Rap. . .Passion is welcome, but avoid editorial content that is not lightened with humor and a sense of perspective.

And don’t forget, for high octane and battle–tested essay development and editing, Contact Me.

The Stanford Supplement for 2012-2013: It’s Deja Vu All Over Again

In this post, after an opening discussion on how to approach any supplement with both short answer and essay responses, including advice on dealing with electronic submissions, I will begin analyzing the individual prompts in Stanford’s supplement for 2012-2013.  I will include all of the Stanford prompts, both for short responses and essays.  Keep in mind that this post applies to this year’s prompts, since they are not changed, but some details in this and other linked posts are aimed at what was happening last year.

My links to more in-depth discussions include protected material which is  only available in full to my subscribers and clients.  My client services include everything from a full range of college advising and application support to editing on  a single essay.  Contact me for more information at:  wordguild@gmail.com.  I will book up rapidly from mid-August into September so don’t wait too long to contact me–I offer inspirational help to those dealing with writer’s block, as well as editorial help on existing app essays.

The  Stanford supplement requires a series of short answers–a couple of lines, in most cases–followed by a series of short essays.  When I say short, the range will be from at least 250 words up to 2,000 characters.  I would suggest writing rough drafts of 300 to 350 words.  You could possibly fit in as many as 380-390 words and be under the 2,000 character limit, but I always advise  having a safe margin–one of the most difficult editing tasks is to take a tightly written essay and knock fifty words off of it.

There is a saying, attributed variously to Faulkner and other writers, that,  In writing, you must kill your darlings.  This applies to you insofar as you need to step back to look at each essay as a unit and to look at that unit as part of the larger package you will hand over to the application readers. Anything that doesn’t help the whole package needs to go.  You have to be prepared to throw out even the greatest sentence you’ve ever written if it doesn’t fit the essay, or if it somehow contradicts something you’ve said elsewhere.  And you may need to throw out even some great sentences that do fit the essay if you are over the word or character count.  (Do what I do and write the poor, discarded sentence down in a notebook for possible use elsewhere before deleting it from your essay–limbo is better than annihilation and you may be able to reincarnate it in another essay.)

I also advise–nay, remonstrate–that you should write, rewrite and further revise all of your responses to the questions ahead of time, not just the essays,  and that, when you have typed in a response (typing from one of your already polished drafts)  you then take the extra step of printing and reading a hard copy before submitting.

If you have a problem with the preview function, simply copy  the text into a new document, then print it and reread  the hard copy carefully and make any necessary changes before submitting it.   I ask my clients to do this with all responses, from a sentence in length to an essay.  It is generally easier to see mistakes on a piece of paper than it is on a screen.  Of course this also takes more time than simply sitting down and banging out your answers, which may seem awful given the amount of time you are going to be spending on college apps, but you will find that a response that seemed brilliant yesterday may seem ho-hum or even ill advised today.  You should have spent days or weeks polishing your responses before finally you sit down to fill in those boxes and submit.  Think of it as two years of English class  compressed into a few months, and keep in mind the potential payoff if you feel like screaming.

Need I say that you also need to check that all of your short answers and your essays present a consistent picture that coincides with everything else you present to the university?  You may come up with something witty or interesting to say in a short answer, but it needs to be thrown away if it contradicts the rest of your material or otherwise may cause you trouble, by being offensive, for example, or simply. . . not fitting in well.  When using humor, check yourself to see if you are  coming off as flippant or sarcastic.    If in doubt, show your answers to at least two other people you trust to get their opinions.  Remind them to think like an admissions officer.  Be sure at least one of them is an adult who is not afraid to be critical.

And now, on to Stanford, beginning with the short answer responses:

Stanford Short Answer Prompts for 2012-2013

Please respond to the following questions so we can get to know you better. Respond in two lines or less, and do not feel compelled to answer using complete sentences.  300 characters each.

  • Name your favorite books, authors, films, and/or musical artists.
  • What newspapers, magazines, and/or websites do you enjoy?
  • What is the most significant challenge that society faces today?
  • How did you spend your last two summers?
  • What were your favorite events (e.g., performances, exhibits, sporting events, etc.) this past year?
  • What historical moment or event do you wish you could have witnessed?
  • What five words best describe you? (My note:  you have some characters left after the five words.  Find a pithy way to elaborate.  X because of y, for example.

——————————————————————————————————————————–

Essay Responses

Please respond to the following essay topics using at least 250 words, but not exceeding the space provided. (I would shoot for around 350 words here; this will put you under 2,000 characters, which is their limit.)

Please print preview before submitting to make sure your responses fit into the space provided.

  • Stanford students possess an intellectual vitality. Reflect on an idea or experience that has been important to your intellectual development.
  • Virtually all of Stanford’s undergraduates live on campus. Write a note to your future roommate that reveals something about you or that will help your roommate – and us – know you better.
  • What matters to you, and why?

Prompt Analysis and Advice

I begin with caveats and advisories.  As I pointed out in recent posts, Stanford, like many other schools,  is using much of the same material they used last year.  An overhaul of the Common Application site is planned for next year, which may explain why so many schools are using retread prompts this year–I assume that they are waiting to roll out a bunch of new stuff with the new app portal, or maybe they just think they’ve found the perfect prompts.  I’ll know more about that next year, though you won’t have to worry about it, having already written brilliant essays and gained admissions to multiple excellent universities.

What you do have to worry about is coming up with good ideas for your essays.  And since there is all this material just lying around from last year, and in some cases from the last several years, it seems like  a no-brainer to approach older friends or siblings who still have app essays, or to look online.  And I do encourage looking around so long as you are simply picking up good ideas. If you do know people who applied in the last couple of years, surveying them for their opinions is a good idea.  In particular, I would ask them what they would throw away or do differently as well as asking what ideas or essays they thought worked best for them.

The caveat here is that you should be seeking inspiration rather than direct imitation.  While there is a long and colorful history of authors “borrowing” from each other, directly copying or barely reshuffling somebody else’s app essay is a bad idea,  in a number of ways.  I would say that first among these is your own knowledge that somehow you cheated; within the exultation you might feel when you got that acceptance e-mail or envelope would be a grain of regret, a sense that somehow you are a phony.  And that sense may never go away, may still pop into your mind years later.  Who needs that?

A second problem in relying on close imitation is what I would call the cul-de-sac problem.  If you focus on specific examples, you can end up in a mental dead-end.  If you are too specifically inspired by somebody else’s essay, you may find yourself stuck, unable to find a new direction when the idea–their idea–goes nowhere for you.  So if you are going to look at examples, look at many examples before you start to write.  And don’t look for ideas by simply searching for successful application essays to Stanford or to any other university you want to attend.  Figure out how to create categories for different approaches to the questions and search–and think– along those lines.

For example, when looking at the intellectual experience prompt,  instead of starting by typing “intellectual experience, Stanford,” into a browser and spending hours going through page after page looking for examples online, switch off the machine for awhile and spend some time thinking of all the things you’ve read and done in school or elsewhere that represent an intellectual experience.  And don’t limit yourself to experiences with teachers or books or experiments.   Especially remember things that truly sparked your interest instead of things that simply seem stereotypically “intellectual.”  I’ll get into this in more detail below, when I address the intellectual experience prompt directly.

A third problem with imitating too closely is the fact that data won’t die until civilization collapses.  That essay your friend Jimmy sent to Stanford last year is still out there somewhere, and electronic submissions have made it easy to check essays for plagiarism.  So if you borrow an idea, reshape it so that you own it.  Entire genres of literature and drama are based on loving mockery or sincere imitation that moves into new territory (and this isn’t limited to parody and burlesque).  Write in that spirit.  When imitating, you want to be like that artist who finds a bunch of junk and makes a brilliant new sculpture which incorporates old stuff made by others,  but which is at the same time one-of-a-kind. If you cheat,  Big Brother is likely to catch you.

So let’s move on to the intellectual vitality prompt.  As I pointed out last year, this overlaps with the Common App prompt about an intellectual experience.  The possible range of topics here is wide, but whatever your choice, do not forget that you are the real topic and the hidden form of the essay is that of the argument–your argument being that you should be admitted to the university.

Let’s start with classes, which could include anything from science and lab classes through your humanities and arts classes.  But don’t limit your brainstorming to school or classes.  Einstein found inspiration as a child by looking closely at the structure of individual leaves.  Think broadly as you start brainstorming.  Maybe you started studying strategy because of your interest in a team sport . . . or for a game . . .  sounds intellectual to me.

While an entire area of study may inspire you, you will want to identify a single experience or episode or unit in order to create a focus,  a source of specific, descriptive detail.    Being able to show the reader some of your experience through specific detail is almost always a good idea.

But it is not enough simply to describe an experiment or a poem or a chapter on Gettysburg or a technique for moving up a level in a challenging game or for finding a weakness in an opposing defense.   Imagine your reader constantly asking the question “Why is this important? And what does this show about this kid?”  You need to show them that, which means you need to show your passion or show why the topic is more generally important.

This means you need to give some thought to the whole idea of intellectual experience and growth.  I would suggest that a sense of  wonder, of excitement is necessary to all real intellectual growth and achievement.  Maybe a particular moment in a chemistry class, watching the seemingly magical transformation of matter,  gave you that sense of wonder.  If it did, then show it.  Maybe a biology or geography unit suddenly transformed your sense of time as you learned to look underfoot for that ocean that no longer exists.  Maybe it was the time the fourth grade teacher gave different kids different objects from peas to marbles to a basketball and taught you about the vast distances in the solar system by having kids run further and further apart across the practice fields, Neptune or Pluto way out there across the campus, an invisible  pea held up by an arm that seemed tiny from where you stood holding the basketball that was the sun . . . If you start with an early experience, go on to show how the experience amplified and echoed through your life, is still visible in your pursuits and interests.

Also consider the  examples offered by the greats in the sciences and the arts.  Inspiration or growth which may seem sudden most often comes from long labor, repetition, tedium, failure.  As you start thinking about this topic, don’t be afraid to consider the role of failure and the importance of determination and discipline.  Fiddling with tubes and beakers or reading and rereading to figure out meaning are part of the deal and you should not be afraid to talk about these things.  Your essay isn’t a movie trailer full of explosions and leaps from tall buildings, nor does it need to be about awards received and competitions won. Try to keep coming back to those things that made and make you feel wonder.

It’s wonder and joy that kept Kepler, Newton, Einstein, Leonardo, Beethoven and Matisse going, the desire to capture what is seen, to know more deeply.  The intellect isn’t some stuffy dude with patches on the elbows of his jackets. You are an embodied mind and anything requiring thought may be considered intellectual.  I’ll come back to the intellectual experience essay again, but for now let’s cut to a few links.

First, to get the synapses going and to help you broaden your thinking, here is a post I wrote earlier this year on an interesting intellectual experience essay that is on a topic that seems anything but intellectual:  comic books.

See this post:  Secret Skin.

As you read this, look at how the author engages intellectually with the questions posed to him, how he works out his own way of seeing things.  Whether it is in an experiment in biology or an argument if favor of graphic novels, you need to own the experience you describe.  You need to be able to make and stand behind your own judgements.

Next, have a look at my entry on Stanford for last year, where I discuss and link information on the essay topics:

Stanford 2011-2012.

Then get out a piece of paper and start scribbling down times you were both learning and excited by what you were learning.  Work from these to describe single incidents or experiences, including  periods of trial and error.  You can work out how to frame an essay and create a complete narration later.  Start with topic ideas and scenes.

I will return to the Stanford supplement and its essay prompts again soon.  Check my site again in the next week.  I also expect to post soon on some of the Ivies who have yet to put up their supplements.  I guess they’ve extended their vacations over there at Dartmouth, et al.

Starting A Book Or Intellectual Experience Essay: An Example Of How To Look Deeper

I have previously put up posts with detailed information on  intellectual and book essays–see the links and table of contents in the first column/post of this website.  These posts will also appear under categories and tags  for Harvard, Princeton and other University names, as well as under the essay about books,   the essay about an intellectual experience and under a couple of the Common Application prompt topics.

In this post, I will be looking specifically at one area of genre literature and even more specifically at one series of books as an example of how to go about addressing the book or intellectual experience essay.  The first lesson is this:  don’t just read the novel(s).  You will need to find give the novel(s) a wider context and meaning.   The way to do this is to gain a wider perspective and put it to use to express something about yourself as well as about the books that are the stated subject of your essay–as I will show in this post.

Writing About Books

The genres of literature which I will discuss here include Dystopian, Near Future and Science Fiction.  See this link for more information on those.  You might also want to see my entry last year in which I established a system for categorizing novels and gave specific suggestions for writing about the novel categories. (This link is a protected sample, available in full to subscribers and clients)

Let’s start with this assumption:  an essay about well-written genre fiction  can be every bit as good an essay about so-called serious or literary fiction.  For many of you, an essay about a supposedly pop novel will actually be better because you won’t feel trapped by the need to be as serious and weighty as you would in writing about, say, Crime and Punishment or Middlemarch.  It can be very difficult to write about greatness, especially when it takes the form of classic novels.

I enjoy reading the serious literary fiction of both Dostoevsky and Mary Anne Evans, but I equally enjoy reading a work of genre lit like Michael Chabon’s Yiddish Policeman’s Union or Jonathan Letham’s Gun, With Occasional Music, and  if you understand how to frame novels like these last two, you can write an essay that is effective and interesting.  These aren’t  highbrow works of realism–the  Yiddish Policeman’s Union is set in a parallel-universe Alaska and features a detective investigating the death of a possible Messiah, while Gun is set  in a near future Bay Area with a detective following a trail of criminality through a world populated by genetically manipulated creatures, including an evolved kangaroo-thug named Joey–but these novels have a lot to say about what we are now and where we are going.

Let me explain by way of example and provide further arguments for genre lit as a subject of a good application essay.  It’s all about the context and the archetypes, people.

Fantasy literature in its various guises has become the best-selling narrative form in the world.  In fact, the last two decades have seen half a  dozen trilogies or series that have been extremely popular.  I have little expertise on strigoi or other of the blood-seeking living dead, so I will skip the vampire stuff to focus on near-future dystopian lit.   One of the best written and most popular examples is  Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy.

The Hunger Games is interesting in many ways–it features a nightmarish, near-future setting, it is a cautionary tale, and it is an archetypal forbidden romance.  You can find elements of The Hunger Games in literature ranging from Norse epics up through Shakespeare’s plays and Orwell’s 1984,  and on through American culture, in novels like The Great Gatsby and in movies like Rebel Without A Cause.

Due its popularity, there are rich resources and conversations available for The Hunger Games,  many of them by  journalists and academics who provide detailed and well-written analyses of different aspects of HG and of the genres into which Collins’ series fits. I will give you a set of annotated links as we move on in this post, where you can find everything from character analysis to social commentary–these links often discuss more than just HG .  Some of them are excellent examples of what an intellectual experience essay can be, albeit at much greater length than your typical college app essay.

First up is an excellent piece analyzing recent “young adult”  dystopian lit, by Laura Miller, Salon’s book editor, who has been a heavy hitter in the book world for years.  She compares  The Hunger Games to similar works past and present, and she makes the kinds of connections you will want to make in an intellectual experience or book essay.  Miller provides  fine-grained analysis based on specific quotes from HG and other novels, and she uses this to support a broader set of arguments about both HG and some of the other recently popular dystopian “Young Adult” lit; here is an example from Miller’s article:

. . .  dystopian stories for adults and children have essentially the same purpose—to warn us about the dangers of some current trend. That’s certainly true of books like “1984” and “Brave New World”; they detail the consequences of political authoritarianism and feckless hedonism. This is what will happen if we don’t turn back now, they scold, and scolding makes sense when your readers have a shot at getting their hands on the wheel.

Children, however, don’t run the world, and teen-agers, especially, feel the sting of this. “The Hunger Games” could be taken as an indictment of reality TV, but only someone insensitive to the emotional tenor of the story could regard social criticism as the real point of Collins’s novel. “The Hunger Games” is not an argument. It operates like a fable or a myth, a story in which outlandish and extravagant figures and events serve as conduits for universal experiences. Dystopian fiction may be the only genre written for children that’s routinely less didactic than its adult counterpart. It’s not about persuading the reader to stop something terrible from happening—it’s about what’s happening, right this minute, in the stormy psyche of the adolescent reader. “The success of ‘Uglies,’ ” Westerfeld once wrote in his blog, “is partly thanks to high school being a dystopia.

 Of course, this is only one way to look at The Hunger Games, but it’s persuasive, and it doesn’t exclude other readings–you can read HG as an analogue for the competitive viciousness to be found in(at least some) American high schools, or you could read it as a warning to today’s increasingly oligarchical America  about the dangers of powerful elites.  Or it could be about the dangers and seductions of consumer culture–Katniss seems to get a real kick out of some of the perks of the Games, while claiming to hate all of it . . . or HG could be read as a more traditional, science fiction cautionary tale about the dangers of the technologies we already possess.  After all, something ugly happens to America on the way to Panem.

Even if you have not read any of the The Hunger Games, I would strongly recommend that you read the rest of this analysis by Miller, in the New Yorker’s  Critic At Large feature  here.

I’m going to be writing more specifically about the Archetypal Criticism of literature soon, but as another example of how to analyze characters and meaning, I offer a link to an article a  New York Times article which is also focused on Hunger Games, but which gives you another set of ideas about what an archetypal analysis can offer as you grapple with an essay on a book or series of books.  So go here for an archetypal discussion of dystopian film,centered on Suzanne Collins’ characters  (this post is specifically about film, but you can “read” a film in much the same way you can read a novel, and similar themes can be developed in each form–which is one reason why so many films are adapted from novels.  Need I mention that a good film is an intellectual experience?).

Lest I give you the impression that the NY Times isn’t giving the written word adequate attention, also have a look at this link, in which John Green also points out how a number of  futuristic tales are really about the here and now.

Part of the requirement for the genre of literature called Realism is that it be an imitation of real life, that it hold up a mirror to the world; in contrast, a widely held view of fantasy holds that it is simply a form of make-believe, and so it is often thought not to reflect much about the “real” world, much less to be “serious.”  However, if you’ve read much fantasy or even if you’ve only read the material I’ve linked so far, you should be reaching the conclusion that, while science fiction and fantasy by definition are not “realistic,” they do indeed hold up a critical mirror to the here and now.

Let me offer another example, a New York Times opinion piece looking at the current rage for dystopian lit as a phenomenon that is linked to much of the “Tiger Mother” style self-help lit  out there, the idea being that economic competition and the ferocious struggle for the admission to the right schools  lies behind everything from the Hunger Games to Bringing Up Bébé.  (This could also be a good subject for the Common Application’s  essay on an issue of national importance, if you think about it–have a look at the NY Times article Hunger Games Parenting to see what I mean.  It’s a pretty persuasive take on where we are as a nation and what this kind of  lit is really about though, as with the links above, there is more than one way to interpret any of this stuff–which is why it makes such a great essay topic.)

And finally, I’d like to recommend this blog post by Stanley Fish, one or our great literary and cultural critics, in which he links The Hunger Games to the ancient literary form known as The Pastoral and its beautiful but melancholy momento mori.

What I am hoping you realize at this point is that it is legitimate to develop your understanding of whatever you are reading by looking at what other people have to say, especially if those other people have some expertise and genuine insight.  You can, indeed, access rich and diverse discussions of literature online, as well as cute kitten pictures, and looking to sources like those I cited above can be helpful to you as you set about creating a book or intellectual experience essay.  The idea is to read critically in order to  shape your own views, sometimes with the help of and sometimes by resisting what other readers and critics say.  Just be sure to use my examples and anything else you find as inspiration only, though a short quote won’t hurt if you give it context and it makes sense in your essay.

In addition to blogging about archetypal readings of books in upcoming posts, I will also be discussing further the role of form, of genre, in shaping meaning.  Stay tuned and come back soon (a word of warning, however:  some of my upcoming posts will only be fully available to subscribers and clients.)

How To Write A 500 Word College Application Essay–An Exercise In Editing

One of the greatest challenges in writing an application essay is the length demanded by the Common App and most universities:  500 words  (or less).  For many applicants, this is akin to writing a perfect Italian sonnet about their lives–or boiling their lives down to a haiku.  But if your initial essay has “good bones,” meaning a good central narrative or description and good structure, you should be able to  pare down your language to come up with an excellent final draft.

The 500 word limit is not like a deadly force field, of course–your essay won’t be obliterated or cast aside if you are a few words over –but the fundamental rule is clear: the more words over the limit, the more you risk irritating the reader and the more they will expect from the essay.  As one app officer has said, it really “raises the bar” if the essay is too long, and the longer it is, the higher the leap, so to speak.

So don’t get hung up on every word as if there were only one possible version of your essay in the entire universe.  If you start your essays early, you will have plenty of time to play with them.  Once you have a good draft, good editing is paramount.  You want to create clean sentences, use the most precise vocabulary possible and cut out repetition.  One well-chose word can replace a phrase or even a sentence.

To show you what I mean, I will edit and vastly cut down the much longer essay we discussed in my last post.  It will be helpful to see the last post and read the essay before continuing.

To continue,  I will take that (very) long and brilliant essay linked and discussed in the last post and distill from it a small excerpt; this excerpt will be a mini-version of the original, but will still be hundreds of words too long (874 words, to be precise) so I will edit it again, showing my editing marks, and then end with a third version of 500 words.  This final essay could be used equally as well for an intellectual experience essay or a personal influence essay.

Tearing down and rebuilding a long and brilliant essay by a real pro may seem like a kind of party trick, but in reality this is what good editors do all the time for journalists,  essayists and novelists.

Version 1, below, is an excerpt from the original, longer essay; version 2 is the edited example of that excerpt; and version 3 is the result, in which the excerpt has been editing down to become a 500 word application essay.

Version 1

An excerpt from a much longer essay on the comic book superhero

This is a cut-down version of the original,  with no other editing changes.

When I was a boy, I had a religious-school teacher named Mr. Spector, whose job was to confront us with the peril we presented to ourselves. Jewish Ethics was the name of the class. We must have been eight or nine.

Mr. Spector used a workbook to guide the discussion; every Sunday, we began by reading a kind of modern parable or cautionary tale, and then contended with a series of imponderable questions. One day, for example, we discussed the temptations of shoplifting; another class was devoted to all the harm to oneself and to others that could be caused by the telling of lies. Mr. Spector was a gently acerbic young man with a black beard and black Roentgen-ray eyes. He seemed to take our moral failings for granted and, perhaps as a result, favored lively argument over reproach or condemnation. I enjoyed our discussions, while remaining perfectly aloof at my core from the issues they raised. I was, at the time, an awful liar, and quite a few times had stolen chewing gum and baseball cards from the neighborhood Wawa. None of that seemed to have anything to do with Mr. Spector or the cases we studied in Jewish Ethics. All nine-year-olds are sophists and hypocrites; I found it no more difficult than any other kid to withhold my own conduct from consideration in passing measured judgment on the human race.

The one time I felt my soul to be in danger was the Sunday Mr. Spector raised the ethical problem of escapism, particularly as it was experienced in the form of comic books. That day, we started off with a fine story about a boy who loved Superman so much that he tied a red towel around his neck, climbed up to the roof of his house, and, with a cry of “Up, up, and away,” leaped to his death. There was known to have been such a boy, Mr. Spector informed us—at least one verifiable boy, so enraptured and so betrayed by the false dream of Superman that it killed him.

The explicit lesson of the story was that what was found between the covers of a comic book was fantasy, and “fantasy” meant pretty lies, the consumption of which failed to prepare you for what lay outside those covers. Fantasy rendered you unfit to face “reality” and its hard pavement. Fantasy betrayed you, and thus, by implication, your wishes, your dreams and longings, everything you carried around inside your head that only you and Superman and Elliot S! Maggin (exclamation point and all, the principal Superman writer circa 1971) could understand—all these would betray you, too. There were ancillary arguments to be made as well, about the culpability of those who produced such fare, sold it to minors, or permitted their children to bring it into the house.

These arguments were mostly lost on me, a boy who consumed a dozen comic books a week, all of them cheerfully provided to him by his (apparently iniquitous) father. Sure, I might not be prepared for reality—point granted—but, on the other hand, if I ever found myself in the Bottle City of Kandor, under the bell jar in the Fortress of Solitude, I would know not to confuse Superman’s Kryptonian double (Van-Zee) with Clark Kent’s (Vol-Don). Rather, what struck me, with the force of a blow, was recognition, a profound moral recognition of the implicit, indeed the secret, premise of the behavior of the boy on the roof. For that fool of a boy had not been doomed by the deceitful power of comic books, which after all were only bundles of paper, staples, and ink, and couldn’t hurt anybody. That boy had been killed by the irresistible syllogism of Superman’s cape.

One knew, of course, that it was not the red cape any more than it was the boots, the tights, the trunks, or the trademark “S” that gave Superman the ability to fly. That ability derived from the effects of the rays of our yellow sun on Superman’s alien anatomy, which had evolved under the red sun of Krypton. And yet you had only to tie a towel around your shoulders to feel the strange vibratory pulse of flight stirring in the red sun of your heart.

I, too, had climbed to a dangerous height, with my face to the breeze, and felt magically alone of my kind. I had imagined the streak of my passage like a red-and-blue smear on the windowpane of vision. I had been Batman, too, and the Mighty Thor. I had stood cloaked in the existential agonies of the Vision, son of a robot and grandson of a lord of the ants. A few years after that Sunday in Mr. Spector’s class, at the pinnacle of my career as a hero of the imagination, I briefly transformed myself (more about this later) into a superpowered warrior-knight known as Aztec. And all that I needed to effect the change was to fasten a terry-cloth beach towel around my neck.

It was not about escape, I wanted to tell Mr. Spector, thus unwittingly plagiarizing in advance the well-known formula of a (fictitious) pioneer and theorist of superhero comics, Sam Clay. It was about transformation.

Version 2

An Edited Version–You can see the version above under the editing marks, and you can see the 500-word version emerging.  

When I was a boy, I had a religious-school teacher named Mr. Spector, whose job was to confront us with the peril we presented to ourselves. Jewish Ethics was the name of the class. We must have been eight or nine.

Mr. Spector used a workbook to guide the discussion; every Sunday, we began by reading a kind of modern parable or cautionary tale, and then contended with a series of imponderable questions. One day, for example, we discussed the temptations of shoplifting; another class was devoted to all the harm to oneself and to others that could be caused by of the telling of lies lying. Mr. Spector was a gently acerbic young man with a black beard and black Roentgen-ray eyes. He seemed to take our took our moral failings for grantedand, perhaps as a result, favored favoring lively argument over reproach or condemnation. I enjoyed our discussions, while remaining perfectly aloof at my core from the issues they raised. though I was, at the time, an awful liar, and quite a few times had stolen chewing gum and baseball cards. from the neighborhood Wawa. None of that seemed to have anything to do with Mr. Spector or the cases we studied in Jewish Ethicsfor all nine-year-olds are sophists and hypocrites; I found it no more difficult than any other kid to withhold my own conduct from consideration in passing measured judgment on the human race.

The one time I felt my soul to be in danger was the Sunday Mr. Spector raised the ethical problem of escapism, particularly as it was experienced in the form of comic books. That day, we started off with a fine story about a boy who loved Superman so much that, he tied  with a red towel around his neck, he climbed up to the roof of his house, and, with a cry of “Up, up, and away,” leaped to his death. There was known to have been   —at least one verifiable such a boy,boy, Mr. Spector informed usso enraptured and so betrayed by the false dream of Superman that it killed him.

The explicit lesson of the story was that what was found between the covers of a comic books was were fantasies, and “fantasy” meant pretty lies., the consumption of which failed to prepare you for what lay outside those covers. Fantasy rendered you unfit to face “reality” and its hard pavement. Fantasy betrayed you, and thus, by implication, your wishes, and your dreams and longings, everything you carried around inside your head that only you and Superman and Elliot S! Maggin (exclamation point and all, the principal Superman writer circa 1971) could understand—all these would betray you, too. There were ancillary arguments to be made as well, about the culpability of those who produced such fare, sold it to minors, or permitted their children to bring it into the house. These arguments were mostly lost on me, a boy who consumed a dozen comic books a week, all of them cheerfully provided to him by his (apparently iniquitous) father. Sure, I might not be prepared for reality—point granted—but, on the other hand, if I ever found myself in the Bottle City of Kandor, under the bell jar in the Fortress of Solitude, I would know not to confuse Superman’s Kryptonian double (Van-Zee) with Clark Kent’s (Vol-Don). Rather, What struck me, with the force of a blow, was recognition, a profound moral recognition of the implicit, indeed the secret, premise of the behavior of the boy on the roof:  . For that fool of a boy had not been doomed by the deceitful power of comics books, which after all were only bundles of paper, staples, and ink, and couldn’t hurt anybody. That boy had been killed by the irresistible syllogism of Superman’s cape.

One knew, Of course, that it was not the red cape any more than it was the boots, or the tights  the trunks, or the trademark “S” that gave allowed Superman the ability to fly. That ability derived from the effects of the rays of our yellow sun on Superman’s alien anatomy, which had evolved under the red sun of Krypton. And yet you had only to tie a towel around your shoulders to feel the strange vibratory pulse of flight stirring in the red sun of your heart. I, too, had climbed to a dangerous height, with my face to the breeze, and felt magically alone of my kind. I had imagined the streak of my passage, like a red-and-blue smear on the windowpane of vision. I had been Batman, too, and the Mighty ThorI had stood cloaked in the existential agonies of the Vision, son of a robot and grandson of a lord of the ants. A few years after that Sunday in Mr. Spector’s class, at the pinnacle of my career as a hero of the imagination, I briefly transformed myself (more about this later) into a superpowered warrior-knight known as Aztec. And all that I needed to effect the change was to fasten a terry-cloth beach towel around my neck.  It was not about escape, I wanted to tell Mr. Spector, thus unwittingly plagiarizing in advance the well-known formula of a (fictitious) pioneer and theorist of superhero comics, Sam Clay. It was about transformation through imagination.

Version 3:  A 500-Word Intellectual Experience or Personal Influence essay.

When I was a boy, I had a religious-school teacher named Mr. Spector, whose job was to confront us with the peril we presented to ourselves. Jewish Ethics was the name of the class. We must have been eight or nine.

Mr. Spector used a workbook to guide the discussion; every Sunday, we read a kind of modern parable and then contended with a series of imponderable questions. One day, for example, we discussed the temptations of shoplifting; another class was devoted to all the harm of lying. Mr. Spector took our moral failings for granted, favoring lively argument over condemnation. I enjoyed our discussions, though I was, at the time, an awful liar, and had stolen chewing gum and baseball cards. None of that seemed to have anything to do with the cases we studied in Jewish Ethics, for all nine-year-olds are sophists.

The one time I felt my soul to be in danger was the Sunday Mr. Spector raised the ethical problem of escapism, particularly in the form of comic books. That day, we started off with a story about a boy who loved Superman so much that, with a red towel around his neck, he climbed up to the roof of his house, and, with a cry of “Up, up, and away,” leaped to his death. There was such a boy, Mr. Spector informed usso enraptured by the false dream of Superman that it killed him.

The explicit lesson of the story was that comic books were fantasies, and “fantasy” meant pretty lies.  Fantasy rendered you unfit to face “reality” and its hard pavement. Fantasy betrayed you  and your dreams. These arguments were mostly lost on me, a boy who consumed a dozen comic books a week, all of them cheerfully provided to him by his (apparently iniquitous) father. Sure, I might not be prepared for reality——but if I ever found myself in the Bottle City of Kandor, under the bell jar in the Fortress of Solitude, I would know not to confuse Superman’s Kryptonian double (Van-Zee) with Clark Kent’s (Vol-Don). What struck me was a profound recognition of the implicit premise of  the boy on the roof:   that fool of a boy had not been doomed by the deceitful power of comics which after all were only paper, staples, and ink. That boy had been killed by the irresistible syllogism of Superman’s cape.

Of course, it was not the red cape any more than the boots or the tights  that allowed Superman to fly. And yet you had only to tie a towel around your shoulders to feel the strange vibratory pulse of flight stirring in your heart. I, too, had climbed to a dangerous height, and felt magically alone. I had imagined the streak of my passage, a red-and-blue smear on the windowpane of vision. I had been Batman, too. And all that I needed to effect the change was to fasten a terry-cloth beach towel around my neck.  It was not about escape, I wanted to tell Mr. Spector: it was about personal transformation through imagination.

Writing About An Intellectual Experience Or Personal Influence: Post #1 on College Application Essays For 2012-2013

This is the inaugural post on the topic of books and intellectual development for the 2012-2013 application year.  I have previously written about this topic in a number of posts; for writing about books specifically, you should start at The Harvard Supplement; Or, How To Write About Books Part 1 , a post from last year.  I will add, however, that the essay we will examine in this post could equally be used for an essay on an influential person or experience.  Read on to see what I mean.

One of the problems common for my clients last year was making an essay about a book or intellectual experience a vehicle of personal expression.  If you are passionate about the topic, your passion will make your essay come alive, but some of those who worked with me on their essays were so enthused about the minutiae of the intellectual experience or books that they forgot about themselves.  Remember that your audience is an admissions officer and that you are really writing about yourself when you write about an intellectual experience or a book that is important to you.  I have discussed audience and purpose in this post from last year, and if you haven’t read it yet, I recommend reading it now: So You Want To Write A College Essay.

The remainder of this post will be aimed at an analysis of  a specific essay  one of our prominent contemporary authors, a man of wide-ranging curiosity who  has promoted the artistic and cultural value of such “nonliterary” forms as the comic book–make that the graphic novel.  He has written about the influence of comics and other pop art forms on his life.  While it may seem unorthodox or event totally inappropriate for me to start me series on intellectual experiences with an analysis of an essay on comic books, I think that you will find this post both informative and invaluable in opening up possibilities for the intellectual experience essay.

This is a sample of a much longer post with links to an excellent essay and detailed analysis of it.  To access this post in full, you may either pay the minimal subscription fee, receiving full reading rights to all of my college app and essay posts, or you may retain me for college application advising and editing.  This blog is a mixture of  free information, particularly for general analysis and advice, and protected posts which offer very specific advice and analysis.  See “Welcome To The Jungle” in the first column of this blog and the table of contents included in it  for more information, as well as the “About” window.