How STEM and business students write an intellectual essay

RReaders in Stanford's admissions office choose students on behalf of the faculty, and applicants headed for engineering, economics or biology often forget that their own fields are full of material those professors would recognize. They assume the intellectual essay belongs to the English majors. Then they write about a robotics competition in purely personal terms and wonder why it reads flat, while a classmate bound for the humanities quotes a philosopher and sounds like a scholar. The imbalance costs science and business students more than they realize, because their essays end up proving effort when the reader is looking for a mind. The fix is sitting in their own field, and it arrives with something every essay needs: a plot with a surprising turn.