Hi everyone. I am glad to be back on EssayForum again for my final application. Thanks to the help of EF, I have got two admissions including Brandeis MSF and Bosten University MSMF. Duke is the last university I am going to apply for and I appreciate your help very much. Please check if there are grammar mistakes and perhaps some advice on the content too. Thank you!
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When a new person joins the Admissions Team, we ask that person to share with everyone in the office a list of '25 Random Things About Yourself.' As an Admissions team, we already know the new hire's professional and academic background, so learning these '25 Random Things' helps us get to know someone's personality, background, special talents, and more.
In this spirit, the Admissions Committee also wants to get to know YOU - beyond the professional and academic achievements listed in your resume and transcript. You can share with us important life experiences, your likes/dislikes, hobbies, achievements, fun facts, or anything that helps us understand what makes you who you are.
Please present your response in list form, numbered 1 to 25. Some points may be only a few words, while others may be longer. Your complete list should not exceed 2 pages. Do not copy the essay question in the document you upload with your application.
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1. I was once a professional piano student and I did not attend primary school for two years to prepare for the entrance exam for the top musical middle school in China.
2. My mom wanted to me to be a professional tennis player when she was pregnant because my parents are both good tennis players. But I was originally estimated to be short-less than 160cm-so she was worried and gave this up. Now that I am 168cm, she would be kidding about how much she regretted her decision.
3. I learned seal cutting in middle school and I feel shame to tell you that my handwritten Chinese characters are worse than those I cut for seals.
4. I joined the national teenage club of badminton and competed with the Singapore Youth Team once. I lost by 1-2 to a boy 2 years younger than me.
5. I am a Buddhist and the maximum time I can stay still in meditation is one hour, although I literally cried at that time because of the pain in my legs for keeping that pose for so long.
6. After almost 10 years of classical music training, I was a little reluctant to listen to pop music. But I slowly developed interests for folk music and rock n roll.
7. I am a self-taught Ukulele player. It was not difficult to pick up a new instrument with my solid musical background.
8. I am the member of my university's badminton, swimming and tennis teams. But do not be too surprised because I actually stayed in each team in different years.
9. I am good at smashing the ball, both in playing badminton and tennis. It is my essential weapon.
10. In the last citywide badminton game I played, I was defeated spiritually by the shrill screaming of my opponent. That is why I believe competing in games can greatly improve one's ability to work under pressure.
11. I also love roller coaster. I think it has something to do with my mother's accident when she was pregnant with me. She was riding a bicycle and was unaware of the failing brakes. She almost lost control when she was riding down a long slope but she managed to save our lives by hitting into a giant pile of sand. That could be where my braveness came from.
12. During my professional piano training, I suffered from heavy pressure and could not sleep as I not only had to play the piano for up to 8 hours a day, but my family was facing financial difficulties because of the 2008 financial crisis.
13. I decided to give up on becoming a professional pianist because deep inside, I was not dramatic and emotional enough to be a great performer.
14. Although I am not a very good cook, I am sure I will a great one in the future because my parents are both very bad cooks and I have to keep improving my own skills to have a good meal.
15. When I was travelling on the Mongolian grassland, I thumbed for a lift ride just to see if I could make it. I was quite surprised that I succeeded within one minute.
16. I can conduct several traditional Chinese medical treatments including cupping therapy, Gua Sha (scrapping bruises) and Acupuncture. I have cured several persons who had a fever.
17. I enjoyed visiting museums and I have been to more than 50 museums in Beijing.
18. I kept a diary for almost seven years now.
19. All of my best friends share at least one common sport hobby with me.
20. I would like to watch the movies I have watched before when I want to relax because I do not want to be surprised or shocked by some unknown plots.
21. I did all the logo designs and introduction video editing in every group project I took part in.
22. I was not good at dancing so I enrolled in an elective class to learn pop dance. But I only got 66 in that class although I worked quite hard to keep up with its pace. I dare not to dance again since then.
23. I am quite popular among kids, leading to my success in my current job as an oral English teacher of seventh grade students. The secret is pretending to be their peer and share with them my stories when I am at their age.
24. I learned Support Vector Machines based on MATLAB by myself in a week because I was in desperate need to use it for my research.
25. I was once scared of marriage because I thought raising kids could ruin my career. But after I met my host family in the US, I was impressed by how they managed their family and career nicely at the same time and I no longer see marriage and career as contradiction.
Sounds to me like you really poured your heart into revising the 25 random things about you. However, I only read 24 facts. Where is the 25th? I'd really like to know what it was and if it needs any more polishing before you use it. So far, the whole list sounds very informative and doesn't leave stone unturned in terms of presenting your character, personal traits, and special abilities to the reviewer. Needless to say, you did a very good job with this.
All that is left for you to do is review the essay one more time and make sure that these are actually the 25 things you want the reviewer to know about you. I noticed that you changed some of the content in the list from the original. So you had some uncertainty regarding what you had written about yourself at a certain point of the revision process. Make sure that you are comfortable with this list of information before you hit the submit button. If there is anything you are not sure you want the reviewer to know about you, now is the best time to change it. You can't take it back once you submit it. Remember that.
if I were to change one piece of information in this essay, it would be the reference to the 2008 financial crisis. That topic sounds more like something that belongs to a full discussion common app prompt than a simple presentation of information about you. Frankly, I don't understand why the stress of the family financial situation got to you. As a child, your job is just to study and leave the financial concerns to your parents for as long as you are not being asked to help ease the financial burden. So that factoid seems to be hanging and is not self explanatory. You didn't really explain why the financial crisis weighed down on you as well. Also, that is a bit too personal for the reviewer to know about you. Learn to keep the family and personal aspect of your information a secret. The reviewer just wants general information from you. Not something that should be kept within the family :-)
Thanks Louisa. I didn't realize I didn't explain myself clear in the issue of "2008 financial crisis". The fact is that my family put a lot of money in the stock market, and learning piano was very expensive. So with a bad financial situation we were thinking of giving up a lot at that time. My mom actually quit her job to take me to another city to learn piano, seperated from my father. I guess you can imagine when an adult is under great pressure, she may reveal some anxiety to her kids. That's what happened with me at that time. This could be a little bit too personal but I did share this story with many of my friends and so I thought if I was going to consider the Admission Officer a friend, I would be okay to tell him this.
Shiyun, two points that I believe are too personal to be telling a stranger in this list are the reference to the 2008 financial crisis and your point of view about marriage. Those two bits of information fall under TMI (Too Much Information). While you can consider the admissions officer a friend, if that is what will help you become more comfortable in responding to the prompt, then consider him such. However, he is not your personal best friend, so there should be some super personal information that you should withhold from the list.
One of the reasons why I want you to hold back on these particular pieces of information is because it might create some sort of opinion in the mind of the reviewer regarding the kind of person that you might be. It may work counter to the image of the student that you wish to present to the admissions officer. So always make sure that you do not present any information that just might work against your application.
The rest of the essay is really informative and provides enough of an idea as to the kind of personality, traits, and character that you have which can help the reviewer better understand who you are and where you come from. You don't really need to present the more personal information in the list. These are the types of information that your friends in the university should get to know about you over time and as your relationship grows with them.
