Stanford: Five things
50 words
List five things that are important to you.
What it’s really asking
A personality test disguised as a list. The mix matters: range, specificity, and a little surprise beat five noble abstractions.
Why they ask it
It is a fast read of who you are. Concrete beats lofty, and variety beats a theme.
My grandfather's untranslatable word for the smell of rain on dust. 1Being the second-best person in any room, so I keep learning. The exact weight of a well-balanced chef's knife. 2Friends who tell me when I am wrong before I have finished being it. Silence that someone chose to share with me 3instead of leaving.
- 1Leading with a hyper-specific, sensory item instead of an abstraction (family, honesty) signals a writer who notices the world precisely. Stanford reads lists for specificity.
- 2Mixing the concrete (a knife's weight) with the philosophical (choosing not to be the smartest) builds a fuller portrait than five virtues would.
- 3Ending on a quiet, relational item lands warmth without sentimentality, leaving the reader with a person rather than a list of values.
Stuck? Start here
- Can you mix scales, an object, a value, a person, a sensation?
- Is at least one of the five a surprise?
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