What to write for a diversity essay if you are not diverse

RReaders in Stanford's admissions office suggested a particular frame for students who freeze on the diversity essay, one that is easy to start and hard to get badly wrong. Some students stall on this prompt because they feel their background is ordinary. Others would rather not make their family the subject of an essay read by strangers, and both groups tend to put the prompt off until it has to be written in a hurry.

The prompt is less narrow than it looks. It leaves more than one honest answer to the question of where you come from, and the answer these readers had in mind starts from a place most applicants never think to look.