Fodder for Admissions

What do universities want? That is the question that millions of students ask themselves as they hurl all their energies at the daunting applications process. One of the many tips to woo your Ivy League lies in the all-encompassing personal statement. In those 500 words, you are expected to impart all of who you are: your hopes, dreams, weaknesses, habits, desires, hates, achievements, goals, awards, plans, and anything else that might make up your entire being.
But in the desire to stand out from the thousands of people writing about their chinchilla-saving club in high school or their favorite third-world organization, you may opt to be more personal in your essay. Revealing tragedy in your past makes you seem real and shows your perseverance in being able to live through crippling pain, and still manage some extra-curricular activities on the side.
It's a difficult line to straddle: on one side, deep pain usually always affects who you are, but on the other side, is it exploitation to use a tragedy, a loss, a heartbreak, for anyone's benefit? Who gave a group of admissions officers in a room with an abnormal amount of mahogany furniture the right to judge personal pain? But, when talking about what made you the person you are today, how do you leave out the fact that your father died in your arms or your childhood home burned down or your sister was killed by a surgeon's mistake? Our losses as well as our blessings define who we are today. The past, with all of its pain, does reflect on our future and this, many colleges like to take into account. However, for most people, these shattering events remain in their own personal privacy. What makes us cry at night usually is not broadcast in order to gain something.
Prospective students faced with a life-altering tragedy are also faced with a decision about whether or not to include it in that boxof the application. Increased competition within academia has forced many to try to stand out, even if it means explaining your deepest pain to a group of strangers to receive admittance to a school. The title reads "Personal Statement" but does any piece of paper, however prestigious the school, deserve to be that personal?