I'm not going to beat around the bush here: clichés really get my goat. When students take that trip down memory lane, telling admissions about the time they were movers and shakers putting their noses to the grindstone it makes my blood boil. I'm a stickler for content and grammar so I find cliches to be extra unappealing, but I also have enough confidence in students' creativity to know that they can do better. Admissions essay readers know it too, and expect students to think out of the box without using phrases like “think out of the box.” So students should strike those tired sentences from their essays and do it now. They should never put off tomorrow what they can do today. It actually hurt me to write that.
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