Should you start a college essay with a quote?

RReaders in admissions offices like Stanford's mostly dislike quotations in college essays, and applicants mostly love them. A famous line dropped at the top of an essay takes up space that should hold the student's own thinking, and the common ones have been seen so often that they register as filler. Many students choose one anyway, because a quotation feels like a safe way to sound thoughtful.

Some quotations do work, and readers credit the students who use them well. The difference lies less in which line a student picks than in what happens on the page around it, and one essay about a move from Shanghai shows it clearly.