One of the essay questions for NYU is, “The best writing is often very personal. All kinds of experiences—serious, funny, unexplained, fleeting—can influence our lives and help make us who we are. Tell us about a person, place, or event in your life that has particular meaning for you, and why it is important to you. We’d especially like to hear about someone or something that has affected your life that may not have been noticed by other people.”
I was planning to write about how participating in my school’s debate team has changed me. My question is, can I call my participation in the debate team an “event?” Is it too much of a stretch to write about my debate experience in general?
If you want to do that, focus on a single event (a pivitol debate or something) that makes a good story. Set it up by telling the begining of the event, then venture into the backstory. Tell about yourself, how you came to be on the debate team, previous experiences, etc. Then wrap it up by telling the end of the story, and how it changed you and all that.
If you really want my honest opinion, however, I wouldn’t write about the debate team. I’d write about the time a stranger gave me a quarter on the street. Or the time that I was on the bus and met a homeless poet. Or the time that I ran away from home when I was seven and spent two hours hiding behind a rock before I gave up and went home.
I did did write about when I started a 'zine about cheap clothing, and my adventures handing it out to random people on the street.
They are not looking to about your acheivements. Those are detailed elsewhere. They are probably looking at about three hundred other people that swear the debate team is the most life-changeing exprience in their life. They don’t want to hear it.
What they are looking for is you. They want to know what makes you different than those three hundred people. This is your one chance to tell them who you are, what makes you tick, why you are a unique and wonderful person and an asset to their campus. Unless something really really wierd happened, chances are that the debate team isn’t the most interesting story you have to tell about yourself. Find the interesting one.
Don’t worry about making yourself look good- that is what the rest of the application is for. Try to make yourself look real. Try writing about something you failed at. A time that you were wrong. Anything you can to make yourself stand out- short of admitting to commiting crimes. Write the story that will make them perk up when they are trudgeing through their five-millionth cookie cutter essays and say to their co-workers “Hey- read this…this kid is pretty cool”.
I have a lot of experience with this sort of thing, and a secret desire to be a writing tutor. I am sure if you post what you’ve written, the teeming millions would be happy to offer plenty of advice. If you don’t want to publisize it, feel free to email me (my address is in my profile) and I’ll mark it up and tell you what I think.
I say go for it. Toss in a few sentences about a particularily important debate to cover yourself on that ‘event’ point if you want to be safe. When I read this sort of essay I’m usually looking for how the author handles higher order thinkin’ stuff, and will generally forgive (if I even notice) not being scrupulously on target for every point of the writing prompt. Have your English teacher read the finished product, just to be sure.
You must present yourself as a unique individual. IMO, this is not done by talking about engaging in an activity that many tens of thousands of other students your age do as well. The only thing (again IMO) that would change this is if some life-changing event helped you to win an important debate and understand something about life from it. Or something like that.
Your essay is your chance to tell a college application reader why they would be fools to deny you admission. To do this you must present yourself as an interesting, unique individual, not someone who merely participates in an activity many thousands of other people do (the exception to this rule, IIRC, is some sort of volunteer work).
Listen to EvenSven. I think the essay for the school I went to was something about a world-view-changing moment and I wrote about being with an exchange student friend who got one of the old 1976 commemorative quarters as change at 7-11 and how excited he was about it, never having seen one. This is your chance to appear as an individual person in the world, and to show how interesting you are, which will not come out in the oft-cited volunteer work, debate team, or yearbook committee. I think a fantasic learning-experience failure is a great idea, or learning from a very surprising source (like an 8 year old on the bus).