Virtually all of Stanford's undergraduates live on campus. What would you want your future roommate to know about you? Tell us something about you that will help your future roommate -- and us -- know you better.
One unique thing about me is how much I value time. As someone who has spent the past nine years in the motorsports world as a kart racer I have learned to see the value in even the tiniest fraction of a second. The importance that even a thousandth of a second can have was unimaginable to me until I began racing and saw that often it was the difference between winning and losing. At a race track engineers, mechanics, and drivers will spend hours analyzing the setup of the race car, determined to find a fraction of a second in their lap times that no other team has. As my career in racing progressed I became obsessed with gaining every ounce of time I could on the competition and by doing so I began to see the value of analyzing the details. As I strived to perfect the minute details of my driving style and chassis setup I began to see success. This unique obsession has carried over into every aspect of my daily life. I now see that every moment offers a new opportunity. This can sometimes become problematic as I find just relaxing extremely difficult. School, work, extracurricular activities, and spending time with friends are essential to me and always come before taking time out of my day to just relax. Although many of my friends believe that I need to spend less time "doing", it has been this very "problem" that has lead to what I feel are my greatest successes in both school and community service projects. My obsession with time has led me to be a very driven and focused person, something that I would definitely want my roommate to know and understand.
Any comments would be beneficial!
I like it. It really does talk about you passion for racing and ties it into your personality.
I like how you used the aspect of time.
It is well written, but I do feel like you could add more about yourself and your habits.
I am writing the same essay, with the same deadline right now.
"it has been this very "problem" that has lead to what I feel are my greatest successes in both school and community service projects."
"Lead" should be "led".
"My obsession with time has led me to be a very driven and focused person, something that I would definitely want my roommate to know and understand."
Get rid of the phrase "something I would want my roommate to know and understand". Given the prompt that you are writing to, it is entirely unnecessary, and it weakens the conclusion of your essay.
Otherwise, nice work. You have a clear focus throughout the essay, and a great story to tell.
This can sometimes become problematic, as I find just relaxing extremely difficult.
Lots of people find relaxing difficult. It is important to practice! Possibly the most important thing is the ability to mitigate restlessness and get into rhythm with life.
Your focus on time, motor sports, and difficulty relaxing all give this essay a feeling of hyper, scattered energy. It might be good to BALANCE the "racing" relationship to time with another use of time... one that helps you to slow down and study. Demonstrate to them that you have gained some insight into the way to manage your relationship to time. Maybe the reader will learn something important! :-)
