How to show independent thinking in a college essay

RReaders in Stanford's admissions office drew a line between two kinds of applicant who have both done the reading: the competitive and the compelling. Competitive students discuss an academic idea and explain why it fascinates them, often with real knowledge and good prose. That essay keeps a file in contention, and it is what most strong applicants write. The compelling student does one more thing with the same idea, and in doing it shows a mind at work in real time rather than one reporting what it read. That is the student a professor would rather sit across from in a seminar, and the distance between the two essays is often no more than a paragraph.