Undergraduate / "the Kingdom of Bhutan" - COMMON APP ESSAY, CHECK [7]

Hey guys, I was wondering if you could go through my common app essay. The prompt i chose was #6 (Topic of Your Choice)

Common App Essay
1. Topic of your choice.

I am from the Kingdom of Bhutan.

As a child, I was in love with the fact that our school contained so many people from around the world, but even from an early age I was bothered by something. Everyone in our school had at least one other person from their country. During our international week, there would be a parade where people would wear their national costumes and walk around carrying a sign indicating which country they were from. Every year of this event, I would be the only person holding up the Bhutan sign. Other children started to notice this fact and during class they would often drop snide remarks about how I was the only one from Bhutan in our school. They would ask me condescending things like whether or not my country had electricity, whether Bhutan was an actual nation and I was even asked if people ate each other because they were starving.

When I meet a new person, a common icebreaker will be something along the lines of "where are you from?" After I reply, "I'm from Bhutan," the person I'm talking with normally has an odd, blank expression usually occupies their face accompanied by a "Where?" Seldom do I ever have someone reply to me "Bhutan? What a coincidence, I just spent the past 2 weeks there, trekking and eating emma datshi" (a common Bhutanese curry).

Bhutan is a small Himalayan kingdom nestled between China and India. The country is mostly made up of mountains covered in lush green forests, towering over valleys that are home to rice fields and rivers. Traditional Bhutanese houses are sparsely distributed throughout the country and there are a few small cities. Out of the estimated 1,000,000 Bhutanese people, I'm proud to say that I am one of them.

I was born and raised in the Philippines, spending almost all of my childhood attending International School Manila. Growing up in an international community has allowed me to broaden my ideas, my beliefs and my perception of the world. I am friends with people from all over the globe who each bring a little bit of their own culture into our school's community and allow me to understand how beautifully diverse our planet really is. At the same time, my parents have helped me to retain my cultural views and beliefs. I visit Bhutan every year during my holidays and enjoy every moment that I spend with my extended family and learning more of my country's rich cultural heritage.

Being a young child, I wasn't able to properly handle these situations and would often get upset. I would shy away from questions concerning my nationality and wouldn't show an ounce of enthusiasm when talking about my country.

One evening during dinner, I was having a discussion with my parents about whether or not I could change my citizenship and passport to a better-known country. I saw no problem with it; I would still have the flesh and blood of a Bhutanese whilst changing only my legal nationality. My parents instantly exchanged looks of concern, slowly placing down their forks and spoons.

"Why would you ever want to change your nationality?" my father asked.

I explained the teasing in school and how I felt like an outsider with my peers.

"There's absolutely no reason for you to feel like that," my mother replied. "You may feel left out because you are the only Bhutanese person in your school, but that is also why you should feel special. Don't hang your head in shame because you're from a small country; raise it high because there's no one else like you."

That night, as I lay on my bed and reflected on my mother's advice, I felt a gentle smile emerge on my face when I realized that I had finally accepted my nationality.

It's been around nine years since that talk with my parents' regarding my heritage. Alongside the drums and oboe, I am now also able to play the dramnyen (a type of Bhutanese folk guitar). I have volunteered for a youth camp in Bhutan during the summer of 2008, I have become fluent in Dzongkha (the most commonly spoken dialect in Bhutan) and can even prepare certain Bhutanese dishes (which rely heavily on chilies). I visit Bhutan every year and enjoy immersing myself in my heritage, learning about my culture from grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins (all of whom I am very close with) I have learned how to embrace my heritage while still being able to preserve the knowledge gained from other cultures. I wish to return to my home country, after I have completed my studies abroad, and utilize my gained knowledge to benefit my country, Drukyul, The Land of the Thunder Dragon.

If anyone now were to drop those same, long-forgotten remarks of my childhood about how I was the only one from Bhutan, I would smile politely, hold my head high and respond, "Yes I am."

Undergraduate / CORNELL SUPPLEMENT, GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS [5]

College of Arts and Sciences:
Describe your intellectual interests, their evolution, and what makes them exciting to you. Tell us how you will utilize the academic programs in the College of Arts and Sciences to further explore your interests, intended major, or field of study. (500 Words)

I was born and raised in the Philippines, taking a trip to my home country of Bhutan at least once a year. What is the common ground between these two places? They are both third world countries. This means that throughout my life I have witnessed poverty first hand. This environment has lead to my firm belief that the financially stable have responsibilities to help people living below the poverty line. But how could I live up to my obligation?

As a child, I always assumed that economics was the study of "those boring numbers that Daddy read about in the newspaper". But I soon learned that economics dealt with the allocation of resources and, in time, understood the importance of this. Through good economic policies and management, the ideal world could be established. I wished to see the day where there would be nobody living in a dismal situation. This was my dream but I felt infinitesimal in my ability to do anything about it.

So what could I do to help?

One day, my parents told me about an economic policy called Gross National Happiness. I was curious as to what it meant seeing as I had only learned about Gross Domestic Product and Gross National Product. I learned that Gross National Happiness takes a more holistic approach to the living conditions within a country. There are four pillars that support Gross National Happiness. These are: sustainable development, preservation of culture, and conservation of the environment and good governance.

Since learning of it, I have become an advocate for Bhutan's economic policy of Gross National Happiness, developed by the 4th king of Bhutan, Jigmey Singye Wangchuck.

Given the opportunity to avail the education of Cornell's prestigious College of Arts and Sciences, I could use that knowledge to help develop Gross National Happiness. My interest to study economics at Cornell was initially stimulated by the alumni Robert F. Engle who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2003). I had come across his "methods of analyzing economic time series with time-varying volatility" while researching volatility for an economics project. I was impressed that Engle was able to establish a means by which unpredictable activity in the general market price and interest rates could be analyzed and predicted. This method has applicability in preventing things such as depressions within an economy, thus being a contribution to one of the four pillars of Gross National Happiness: sustainable development.

My dream to have an economic policy that benefits everyone is something that many would scoff at. I mean, that's what every economist up to date has attempted at doing and none of them have been able to develop a policy that helps everybody. But this is because most of them have not put enough emphasis on other aspects of a nation such as the culture or natural environment. I hope that if given a chance to study at Cornell University's College of Arts and Studies, I can develop my knowledge of economics to a point where I can help polish the rough policy of Gross National Happiness and pursue my dream of the perfect economic policy.

Do you guys think the material is too corny? There are times when I discuss my 'dream economic policy' and (after re-reading the essay) I sound frighteningly similar to a young boy discussing his dreams of becoming Superman.