Can I refer to things that are more esoteric—e.g., technical terms that the people in the admissions committee may not be familiar with?
This is something I was wondering about when I was writing my essays. For instance, say you like sailing—if you know a lot of sailing terms, is it okay to put those terms in without defining each one? The answer is yes. As long as the person reading your essay can get the gist of what you’re doing and as long as your main point is understandable, it’s fine. For example, in my second Yale essay the first paragraph talks about Simpson’s Rule. I explain it briefly, but if you don’t have a math background you’re probably not going to pick up exactly what Simpson’s Rule is, let alone exactly what we’re doing with it. My English teacher read it and revised it during our college application project, and even though she said that she was sure it would mean more if she knew calculus, it was fine because what I was trying to say—my excitement about numbers—came across. She understood how enthusiastic I was about math, even though she couldn’t quite understand what math I was getting so enthusias
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