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July 24, 2004

Northwestern University must believe in torture

To apply for admission to Northwestern University, students must write a 'personal statement'.

... essay questions -- we call them personal statements -- that will appear on the 2005-06 freshman application. You will be asked to respond to one of the four topics with an essay of 400-500 words.


Here is the 3rd question - you can go read the others on your own:

3. According to astronomer Carl Sagan, "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." What unknown would you like to see revealed in your lifetime? Why is this of personal importance?

Please, tell me - how on earth can anyone know what unknown thing can be known? I mean, if it is unknown - we just don't know.

If we don't know it exists, how can we possibly know that we don't know about it?

I found this link looking at one of Harvey's old posts about his bad experience with llamas, by the way.

Update: SuperSon says I'm thinking too much. He also said that is why he didn't apply for Northwestern.

Posted by Beth at July 24, 2004 9:20 AM

Comments

I'm with Andy in the fact I wouldn't have applied to Northwestern either. Blech. Too much thinking for me! :)

I guess they mean things like, "I hope they find out what causes 'such and such disease' in my lifetime because..." I don't know. I think it is suffering from inherently poor wording.

Posted by: Boudicca at July 24, 2004 12:55 PM

I cant believe you're serious. We dont know if there is intelligent life out in the universe. If aliens unambiguously announced there presence, then we'd know that other life existed. There's tons of other examples. Maybe just as well u are not applying to that school.

Posted by: john hearse at July 24, 2004 9:42 PM

John, I don't think you understood - I was trying to be funny.

I have already attended and graduated from college - probably before you were born.

I was looking at it from a philosophical point of view. Perhaps you were not required to take very many of those kind of courses where the wording of a question posed is of the utmost importance.

Or maybe you are just a grouch. :)

Posted by: Beth Donovan at July 25, 2004 5:15 AM