Undergraduate / "Art provides self-impression" - Common app short answer [8]

about art: is the message clear enough?

At two o'clock in the morning, I am still drowned in fluorescent studio light, my fingers paint-tinged and my eyes coffee-stained red. Sleep murmurs to be from the southern tip of my bed but I ignore it. I am not a runner, a singer, or a musician. Instead, I haphazardly throw acrylics across a canvas in just the right spot, twirling my paintbrush around my chalky thumb. To me, art is not the free GPA boost or the blow-off period you use for homework. It is how I open myself up to the world; it is a way of submerging into an alternate universe where I can control the way that light falls or the way that music should look. Art provides an outlet for self-expression, enabling me to embrace other artists' perspectives and values, learning from them to make myself a better artist and person. Art is not just an elective; it is an emotion. Instead of screaming to the world, I paint. Both turn you inside out.

it's also 19 words too long..

Undergraduate / "My ba ngoai" - Common app essay: Personal essay [11]

this is my personal essay for common app. any feedback is greatly appreciated!! is there too abrupt a transition between my descriptions and my main points?

My ba ngoai sits in a cracked wooden chair, sipping on chai. I watch as the warmth of the tea fills the room, floating from the smooth rim of the porcelain mug to the deep-set wrinkles engraved in her face. They are a catalog of her life, reflecting every experience, every loss, every joy. The house opens into an old alley, and she gazes past the mosquito netting into a sea of brown-roads, air, skin. Her deep brown eyes squint pensively through panes of glass; these eyes were hardened by things like war, like scarcity, like sending children across the ocean, but softened by peace and unconditional love. These eyes are deep brown, just like mine. Her hand reaches out to grab a small lychee, wavering as she plucks it from the vine. With that hand, she carries the weight of eternity; such is the consequence of having sacrificed your family in hopes of a better future. Her seventy-two-year-old palms are eroded from the splatters of cooking oil, the handles of shovels, and the grips of thirteen children.

We arrive at Cho Ben Thanh and a wave of scents envelopes us. All at once come the tides of cooled lobster and pungent durian, colliding with the aromas of ambrosial yet fiery curry spices that all but mask a hidden whiff of ripe jackfruit. The market is one body, oscillating with the movement of brown skin against weathered shops. In an endless throng of tanned skin and black hair, I wade three-quarters deep, a giant, a foreigner, an outsider overcome with awe. My ba ngoai takes my hand, saying more with a gentle squeeze than she could have with a thousand words. Pointing to a Vietnamese girl my age examining a palm-sized, antique brass bicycle, she whispers in broken tongue, "Look. She likes old things. Just like you." She then motions to a young boy eating warm soup. "Look. He puts mint leaves in his food. Just like you." I am more similar to these people than I think. My ba ngoai knows. She smiles as she tells me that I have the same penchant for hard work, I have the same moral standards, I eat the same foods. Suddenly, I do not feel so misplaced.

The family farm lies a few miles away, separated from the neighbors' land by a trickling stream and a thin-wired fence. As we walk through the pineapple bushes and the banana trees, I see the hard work my ba ngoai has put into raising a farm, a family, and a legacy. She reaches down to weed the overgrown cabbage patch; her seventy-two-year-old palms do not mind. The air smells of cleanliness and must, of ocean and earth, of new and old, of life and death. Vietnam is a soft reminder of a oneness inherent in the winding earthen roads. But as I look at my ba ngoai and the toil that she has put into her accomplishments, I realize that underneath the façade of simplicity is a tradition-built character in not only my grandmother but also in the people of Vietnam as a whole. The pride my ba ngoai has in her work and the success of her family is familiar to me. That cultural dignity has been passed down to my mother, and I now find traces of it within myself. Her travails have been far from fruitless; she has bestowed a piece of Vietnam onto me, and because of her, I realize that even though I was born an American, I was raised by Vietnamese, and that part of me will remain forever. Even though I dress differently and my broken tongue immediately pinpoints me as a foreigner in an ocean of brown, I still have black hair and I still have tan skin. Intrinsic in my upbringing is my sense of cultural identity, the stamp of distinctiveness that makes Vietnam, a tropical, underdeveloped, alien land that I have only visited once, feel like home. By showing me both external and personal views of Vietnam, my ba ngoai teaches me that in Vietnam there is a unity of purpose, which creates a tolerance for one another. There is a subtle acceptance of status and a respect for hard work, even at little profit. The earthen roads are a symbol of a less developed world, but also of the strong moral fiber that comes from threshing endless rice fields and polishing the amaranthine layer of dust collecting on unused china; they are a symbol of the strong character that has flourished for generations and has now been bequeathed to me. My ba ngoai knows.

Undergraduate / "Traces of my diffidence" - letter to roommate [3]

any comments/suggestions will be helpful! please criticize!

Virtually all of Stanford's undergraduates live on campus. Write a note to your future roommate that reveals something about you or that will help your roommate - and us - know you better.

Hey ROOMIE,

I'll admit, when I found out that you were coming from abroad, I was scared. It's just that you're a treasure trove of cultural awareness, and I'm, well, some random girl from the suburbs of Texas.

I guess I've always been pretty self-conscious. I remember when I won the spelling bee in fourth grade (yes, that's right; I beat out those elitist fifth graders). I probably should've been basking in my glory, but instead, as the principal prepared to present my award, tiny cocoons were hatching exponentially in my stomach. The only thing running through my head was, "What will the crowd think when he tries to pronounce my middle name?" It's Y'Tram, pronounced [ee-tchum], for future reference. I get a lot of different reactions from it, mainly questions about whether it's supposed to by "yttrium" or if it's pronounced "why-tram." I used to curse my parents for giving me a middle name that sounded more like the Latin word for that one bug you couldn't identify in science class, but though I used to be particularly insecure, people as diverse as you are remind me that my middle name is my own stamp of cultural identity. Through humiliation I learned self-respect and modesty, and I learned to gain an appreciation for the personal uniqueness my name gives me.

Traces of my diffidence may show through sometimes, but don't worry, because I'm sure that once I learn about your diverse background and once you get to know about mine, you'll find that we can bridge the barrier between our cultural differences to forge an everlasting friendship. Speaking of, we should go fountain hopping. Or we could just hang around Oval Park. Your call. See you Saturday?

Sincerely,

Your future roommate

Undergraduate / "science and art" - stanford intellectual vitality [5]

Stanford students are widely known to possess a sense of intellectual vitality. Tell us about an idea or an experience you have had that you find intellectually engaging.

i'm very unsure about this one. did i address the prompt? please give feedback! criticize away, the due date is in a few days!!!

All of the science and math teachers that I have had throughout my schooling have made it clear to me that they have "never been artists." One biology teacher in particular claimed that art was a holistically distinct sphere of knowledge, one intangible and so abstract in its depictions of emotion that it could not be compared to the cut and dry, dissectible facets of scientific inquiry. This statement led me to question the two realms of my personal interests: the intricacy of the sciences and self-expression through art. Why can they not coexist in the minds of my teachers? As for myself, I find solace in the beauty of the black widow's intricate weave as well as enlightenment in the study of Kandinsky's use of shape and line.

Although science and art seem to lie on opposite ends of the intellectual spectrum, I discovered an innate relationship between the two. How else would the science of psychology be depicted but through art? Whether it is through Shakespeare's soliloquies or Van Gogh's impressionism, the arts depict human nature in subtle but often astonishing ways. This sparks the link between the two subjects: both scientists and artists are the "noticers" of society as they bring to light the aspects of nature that other people have either failed to see or learned to overlook. One ultimately cannot exist without the other. So why is it so rare that the two are reconciled? Artists are the progenitors of technology and the minds behind innovation, and I only hope that in the future I can further bridge the gap between the two.