EA on College Applications

DiracFan

[Question]

EA on College Applications

DiracFan

1 min readAug 30, 2023

I'm sorry that this isn't explicitly related to EA but as the college I go to will almost certainly have a huge impact on my career I thought it'd be ok. I live in the US and am in the act of applying to colleges right now (almost all of which are in the US). I was wondering if I should mention EA in my college application essays. I don't have anything explicitly related to it but I know some about it and it fits in with the identity I'm trying to present to colleges. I'm worried that it might turn off colleges even if I talk about a pretty mild brand of EA. I'm definitely going to "hedge my bets" and only discuss it for some colleges but I was wondering if even that would be stupid. I would really appreciate any feedback. Thanks.

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Kirsten

Instead of mentioning effective altruism, can you talk about something specific you've done? "I volunteered for the Good Food Institute" or "I donated to the Against Malaria Institute" or "I lobbied my congressperson on pandemic preparedness", anything like that

DiracFan

I'm definitely going to talk about things I've done but with the way that a lot of essay questions are worded it wouldn't work very well. In addition, just saying "I volunteered for X charity because I think they do good work" is unlikely to make me stand out at all, and standing out is really important when it comes to getting into top colleges.

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