Offbeat Essays (back to contents)

Highly creative, off the wall, clever, even bizarre, the essays in this section use unusual material—from Oreos to flies to a friend named Sponge—to enliven the application and showcase the student’s wit. They’re risky, but they worked.

The playful mood and memorable images of the first example, David Bolognia’s “My Nightly Ritual,” are wonderful. Without getting repetitive, he explores all the possibilities of his topic, and he is smart enough to end the essay before the reader stops laughing.

Gail Lerner’s funny essay on thumbsucking shows a lot of bravery—the revelation that she continues to suck her thumb at age 18 is potentially embarrassing, after all. With a catchy lead paragraph, she pulls the reader into her essay and makes her story impossible to put down. You can bet admissions officers remembered her application.

Matt Weingarden’s “An Untitled One-Act Musical” has one of the most original formats for an application essay that we’ve seen. It’s a confident applicant who can submit a piece like this, because, as a Yale English professor remarked, “Not many application writers have the nerve to rhyme ‘accept’ with ‘adept,’ or admit they have a friend named ‘Sponge.’”

The “Move your ass!” essay by Barry Kaye is another very risky piece, but it also works well. One admissions officer said, “I can’t remember another essay in the past few months that has gotten so many genuine laughs. There is something about it that stops you dead in your tracks and makes you kick back for a minute and think about the entire process.” (Note also that the author wrote a longer, more serious piece for the second essay on his application.)

Joe Clifford’s “Metaphor for Life,” a clever satire on the often pretentious “thought essay” that students frequently submit, is just plain funny. Joe’s philosophy may not appeal to everyone, but his analysis of the word “the” stands above dispute.

Eve Berley concocted a humorous fantasy to satirize the admissions process. Her essay works, but barely. Though she shows a clever command of writing dialogue, she doesn’t really say anything about herself. Fortunately, the rest of her application gave the admissions officer a good picture of her, so the essay was refreshing. But she was lucky.

Finally, Alexis Speros, in an Early Decision application, reported with enthusiasm and humor her own 100th birthday, shrewdly including future donations to the university. She leaves no doubt about her sincere interest in her proposed major and her future intentions. Her “newspaper article,” written in terse, journalistic paragraphs, also offers the reader a refreshing stylistic break, describing how she will affect the world instead how one event affected her. (CLICK HERE FOR ALEXIS SPEROS’S ESSAY.)

Each essay in this section replies in a quirky, even flippant, tone to the application question. The writer’s wit becomes his selling point. But the offbeat essay can easily backfire. Admissions officers constantly warn that most “witty” essays are just not funny, and many view them as inappropriate or even obnoxious. Remember, what you and your friends find hilarious will often seem sophomoric to the non-teenager reading your application.

Submitting an offbeat essay is a big gamble, but it can pay off handsomely if it’s good. Our advice: let a lot of people, especially people over thirty, read your offbeat essay before you send it, and make sure everyone thinks it’s as clever and ingenious as you do.

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