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Misha comments on Open Thread: September 2011 - LessWrong
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In general, honesty is the best policy. If you really were influenced to great things by HJPEV, explain it well and it should go over well. If the admissions folks are going to say "This well-written and inspiring essay is about fanfiction" and thus throw it in the garbage, it could just as well have been thrown away for the room's lighting or what they had for breakfast.
The other way to look at the situation is that the admissions folks are looking for a very specific essay. That essay requires you to identify yourself with a character from some postmodern South American novel (or possibly Elie Wiesel in "Night") and certainly has no place in it for fan fiction.
Nope. Admissions folks are looking to be entertained.
I think if you were to choose a character from a conventionally literary work, it should be something generally well-regarded in English departments, but which is very rarely assigned reading in high school. Maybe Middlemarch?