Undergraduate / Columbia is cool, teaches, and aids foreigners - in 1500 letters [11]

I can't imagine *not* going to Columbia. Well, actually, I can imagine it. That's the problem.

I'll be the man going to a mediocre institution like PG Community College or Brown and then, four years later, standing on a subway station and holding up a sign saying, " Writer, homeless, Out of Work, in college debt. Will rhyme for food."

Columbia is cool, because, well, it's Columbia. It's part of a sports club of some renown and rhymes with Disturbia. It has one of the most interesting student populations on the planet and an u in the name, useful in case I apply to the Universidad Nacional de Colombia by accident. It has the Core Curriculum and Local Strawberry Jam. It graduated 101 Pulitzer Prize winners and the first half-black president and cut down its homicide rate by half, has wonderful rainforests and is located in the picturesque Andes-I might be looking at the wrong Wikipedia page here.

I understand that no college could really "teach" successful writing. But Columbia's Creative Writing program, with its Core Curriculum, intense workshops, small writing seminars and exposure to the vibrant community that is NYC(sure, I may not get the New Yorker internship that I've always wanted, but I'll probably get something just as good), comes pretty darn close.

I'm also applying to Columbia is because it's one of the very few colleges that gives need-based aid to foreigners. Because financial hardship should never impede the pursuit of excellence.

Undergraduate / "The Snake Head has affected me" - Yale Essay transformational book [8]

Hi, please edit ASAP(preferably in 10 mins since I still have to edit it, etc.)(This thread is closed in 30 mins, obviously)

Yale Essay-> The most transformational book

A common accusation among my friends is that I only read long fantasy novels. That is clearly not true. I read short fantasy novels as well. And fantasy stories. And fantasy gaming manuals. And fantasy graphic novels (eg. Sandman). On a really adventurous day, I might even read science-fiction! (*shocked face*)

Seriously though, I read other books as well, and in terms of effect a book had on me-ie, not how much I enjoyed a book, or an objective assessment of literary merit, but how much it actually impacted me and changed me for the better, then the winner, hands down, would be Patrick Radden Keefe's The Snake Head (not to be confused with Anthony Horowitz's YA thriller of a similar name).

A masterpiece of investigative journalism, wherein every single scene of the 342-page book is at least nominally factual and backed up by primary sources, Keefe's tale is about Chinese illegal immigrants and the snakeheads (illicit agents) used to smuggle them.

If this was an actual novel, it would be nothing short of wonderful. The creation of the many-layered character of black-widow mastermind would have been applauded, had Sister Ping not been a real person. One could almost taste the brilliant, coldly cunning, plots and plotlines, had one not paused to consider that all of them are factual. The story would have been beautiful, had the deaths not been all too real. And even if the immigrants are not real people, normal people with normal families and all-too-normal concerns, their tenacity to enter the sea-washed, sunset gates --- by any means necessary--- is nothing short of admirable.

But the novel is more than a nonfictional thriller or a longwinded report on immigration. It is a tale of the American dream, and what it means to be American. Because America, for all of her drawbacks, for all of her superficiality and decadence and materialism and hypocrisy, is still a shining beacon to Lazarus' "huddled masses yearning to breathe free," still mei guo, the beautiful country.

I want to be a writer like Keefe, albeit through a more fictional medium. Like Keefe, I'll dedicate my life to a variation of (fantasy author) Gaiman's quote: "These people need to know who we are and why we're here."

Because somebody has to tell our story, and theirs.
There is another reason why The Snake Head has affected me so much. I, too, am Chinese. I, too, came to America, albeit legally. And I, too, wish to one day take the test and the pledge and the passport change and call myself an American.

Undergraduate / "The Moral Obligations of a Democratic Society" - Harvard/Princeton-The Nobel Prize [2]

Prompt: (technically, this essay could fit in any of the first three essay topics for Princeton; but:)
Option 3 - Using the following quotation from "The Moral Obligations of Living in a Democratic Society" as a starting point, tell us about an event or experience that helped you define one of your values or changed how you approach the world:

"Empathy is not simply a matter of trying to imagine what others are going through, but having the will to muster enough courage to do something about it. In a way, empathy is predicated upon hope."

- Cornel West, Class of 1943 University Professor in the Center for African American Studies, Princeton University

It was the highest honor, bar none. On December 10th, 2010, in Oslo, Norway, the weather was particularly peaceful, the sky a pristine shade of blue that denizens of industrialized countries take for granted and those from nations in the throes of development remember only in distant memory. So naturally, few in the Oslo City Hall truly cared for the weather. No, the audience chamber was packed with diplomats and well-wishers from over 40 countries, intent on observing the award ceremony. Packed, that is, except for a single lone chair at near the center of the podium, forlorn. Empty. The winner's seat.

When I first read about the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, and his subsequent inability to receive it due to imprisonment, I was immediately intrigued, with a mixture of academic fascination and ethnocentric bias that my brain has long known as illogical but never truly suppressed. I followed all the events excitedly, scouring the internet for tangible sources, first in English, then in Chinese, researching it with an obsession that never once overcame me in my schoolwork, no matter how much of a perfectionist my teachers consider me to be.

The more I consulted the literature, the more I realized how unfair his eleven years' sentence is. Liu Xiaobo was above all a poet, and he advocated for change (in Charter 08, among others) through peaceful means. His focus was especially on human rights, with the suggestion that China's record in that regard is abysmal.

He was right. When my mother and I visited Changchun this summer (where most of my relatives are), I realized that my cousin (actually my mother's elder brother's son) was slow. "Slow", because no doctor was able to give a medical diagnosis for his illness. My aunt, who around her time of pregnancy worked with chemicals in the state-owned Jilin Petroleum Institute, tried her best to find a cure, or at least a proper diagnosis. She was unsuccessful, in no small part because the government had a "responsibility" to the mentally retarded, and the less people classified as such, the less it had to pay. My mother suggested that my cousin (who is 20 now) work at a novelty workplace designed for the handicapped, such as the "Sweet Home" I volunteered at in 2008, my aunt searched for one. In the entire city of Changchun, there were none.

China's facilities are rarely equipped to deal with the differently-abled. When my mother and I wanted to watch a movie, we had to go through the freight elevator to reach the theater on the fifth floor. A freight elevator that had to be opened manually, after a half hour's wait. And this was in no backwater village with a half-broken projector; this was the largest theater in Changchun, a city of over five million people.

These are not selective statistics, a few of the most extreme cases cherry-picked to showcase a point. Many other examples exist (such as the lack of access ramps in almost all forms of public transport anywhere or when went back to Beijing and my mother had a relapse and I realized that China's ambulances are not free). And this problem will only be exacerbated to families less fortunate than mine. What happens to people who can't afford ambulance fees, or down payment for the hospitals? What happens if a family won't, or can't take care of a retarded son? What happens if a construction worker goes jobless, or a penniless farmer gets amputated? Who will speak for them?

For much of my life, I have lived in a haze, rarely giving China much thought, secretly considering myself to be American. But ignoring a wrong does not make it go away, forgetting the past is a betrayal of sorts, and the inability of Liu Xiaobo to receive his Peace Prize finally shocked me into realizing that the CCP will not easily relinquish power, transition into an enlightened democracy with minority rights without prodding. For years, I had a general outline for my life: get into a decent college, become an economic analyst to support myself and pay my mother's medical bills, write as much as possible in my spare time. But there was no impetus to electrify me, no larger-than-life cause to fight for. Not anymore. I'll still keep the bare skeletons of my plan. But now, my economic analysis will be for a larger purpose, my stories will have a point.

This, then, is my cause: the peaceful democratization of China. And face it: only the education and opportunities from Princeton would be enough to let me achieve a millionth of this lofty goal.

Undergraduate / Williams Essay-Important Scene-Nobel Prize [2]

His, this essay needs some trimming(about 59 words). Also, this is essentially the same point(the first paragraph is identical) to my Harvard/Princeton essay, so if you think this one is better, please tell me and I'll use it for that too.

Imagine looking through a window at any environment that is particularly significant to you. Reflect on the scene, paying close attention to the relation between what you are seeing and why it is meaningful to you. Please limit your statement to 300 words.

It was the highest honor, bar none. On December 10th, 2010, in Oslo, Norway, the weather was particularly peaceful, the sky a pristine shade of blue that denizens of industrialized countries take for granted and those from nations in the throes of development remember only in distant memory. So naturally, few in the Oslo City Hall truly cared for the weather. No, the audience chamber was packed with diplomats and well-wishers from over 40 countries, intent on observing the award ceremony. Packed, that is, except for a single lone chair at near the center of the podium, forlorn. Empty. The winner's seat.

As a Chinese citizen who lives in America but whose entire family (including my mother) still resides in China, I have long turned blind eye, deaf ear, averted nose and silent lips to the horrors of the CCP's regime, occasionally even defending it to my classmates and teachers with excuses like "the improved economy" or "democracy does not equal net happiness". Still, everything has limits, even bystander apathy. So when I heard of the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to the imprisoned Liu Xiaobo, and the CCP preventing him or any of his family members from receiving it, something in me lit up like a "Duh" incandescent lightbulb.

This wasn't the only thing that made realize the evils of the CCP, of course. It was only the straw that broke the camel's complacency. In my most recent visit to China, there were many subtle (and not-so-subtle) cues that alerted me to China's treatment of the less fortunate. Despite Beijing's hypocritical overtures during the Olympics, now things have retained status quo, even regressed, and handicapped citizens have almost no rights. In fact, many people, not at all different from my mother except for being poorer, will be denied treatment. This must change.

Liu Xiaobo's struggle has become my struggle now. I will use everything at my disposal, including all the skills I'll gain in college, to further his cause. Peacefully, with the strength of my writing and the depth of my analytical inquiry, I will do my utmost to turn China into a democracy, with rights for minorities.

Undergraduate / Find X-The X Chromosome [2]

Find X.

My dress is too tight. My breasts jab. My lipstick feels contrived and my facial doesn't quite fit my complexion. My toes hurt from tiptoeing the last thirty minutes. My lips tinge. But I'm beautiful.

And more importantly, I'm really getting into the spirit of Crazy Day.

See, Crazy Day is a biannual event in my school where everybody competes to have the most excessively outrageous possible outfits. So this semester, I've decided to combine my thespian and philosophical ambitions into one: by dressing up like a girl, and moreover, by acting like one.

Finding the missing X chromosome has never been an easy task, but it's most certainly a worthwhile one. If everybody had two X chromosomes, then (stereotypically) we would all be less aggressive and pay more attention to our feelings. Outward bursts of rage will be frowned upon, car accidents would be rarer, bathrooms would be cleaner, the average lifespan would be longer, and military spending would be eradicated in favor of the nearest shopping mall. Of course, the NFL would go bankrupt and humanity would die off in about three quarters of a century, but such is a small enough price to pay for world peace.

First, some background: I'm Chinese, male, heterosexual and quite conservative, socially though not politically. As boring, in other words, as a bowl in a china shop. So for me at least, wearing a dress is quite out-of-character, even by the rather unrestrained standards of Crazy Day.

The actual day went pretty much as expected. My preparations have paid off: my depictions turned out to be amusingly realistic. So much so, in fact, that a few (they were a minority, however, I have to stress that. The vast majority of my school are tolerant people) individuals (in the hallways and the lunch lines especially) have taken to calling me a, and I quote: "*** ***," which was rather insulting for me even though it was obviously an act (On my part. They managed to act the part of bigots quite well).

See, I was not the first guy in my school to wear a dress for Crazy Day. I was not even the first to borrow make-up from a friend, or use paper balls to form pseudo-mammalian glands. I was, however, first in deliberately enforcing the "in-character" rule. Two days before, I've asked several of my (female, obviously) friends to teach me how to walk like a girl. A few of them were helpful enough to give, in addition to verbal instruction, an actual demonstration of the intricacies of feminine walking. (This is the part where me being a conservative socially becomes quite inconvenient, since the place I'm supposed to look at is the also the place I'm not supposed to look at, if you know what I mean. So I just kind of embarrassedly glanced in their general direction and took the cues from there.) But I digress.

All in all, it was really fun. Most of my friends and teachers thought that my impression was quite amusing, though my AP Lit teacher pointed out that my walking style would be greatly enhanced by high heels. I concurred, and started tiptoeing. For the entire day, I managed to not break character, careful to walk "like a girl" (one hand on waist, legs slightly bent, small steps, straight-line walking, tiptoe after tiptoe after tiptoe) with an especial focus on hip movement, to sit daintily and cross-legged, to talk with a high-pitched voice that imitated the shallowest characters I know on TV ("My full-length yellow dress is like, you know, so awesome?" "I thought of, like, wearing a polka-dotted skirt, but that, like, made me look like a cow, which was so last season." "I, like, think this poem could be totally improved if you use, you know, more varied vocabulary and stuff? and be, like, real careful about your iambic pentameter?"). This was especially amusing during Calculus.

There were many times where I was tempted to break character, but I persevered, whether the challenge be physical (it took me a while to figure out how to use the restroom), mental, emotional (more on that later) or nutritional (I was careful to eat a small, healthy lunch with small, dainty bites, and to ignore the hunger pangs that came with the gender). My greatest temptation came in the hallways between classes and in the lunch line, when I could have rationalized toning down my character significantly since "I don't know most of these people anyway." But I did not, in the end, and the repeated calls of *** *** only strengthened my resolve.

So what did I learn from all this? Well, I guess I learned to be more appreciative of America, the nation my family live in my choice rather than by birth. Even today, women in many other countries are denied the same (or in severe cases, any) educational opportunities that are granted to man. There are places even today where adulterers and homosexuals are stoned (often without trial), and America, with the 19th Amendment ratified nine decades ago and the recent repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, is certainly a shining beacon of tolerance and diversity.

Yet apparent equality is far from full equality, and advances already made are little excuse for complacency. Even today, the average woman makes 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, which is unacceptable for any so-called "enlightened" society. The discrimination against homosexuals is even more rampant, with same-sex marriages illegal in almost every state and a small, vocal minority constantly tramping on the rights of others.

Poetry / "Desire" - (imperfect sonnet) [2]

Quiet are the eyes of man seeking moon
Quenching starfire out of necessity
Look through the lips of an inside joke, soon
The playwright finds it better not to be

Gravity is seen as something inane
Diminishing all dreams of upward flight
Religion is wormfood; the scions of Cain
Rapture in ecstasies of self-made blight

September will not end on a cheerful note
Jingoists and taxmen by greed accost
'Crusade is final.' Heroic men devote
to ash, while rust marks astronomer's loss

by Hell, the Furies, or by Sandman's kiss
and in truth the moon perceives naught amiss

The ninth and eleventh line have eleven syllables. Can't seem to get around it. And of course accost/loss aren't real rhymes. And the stresses are probably off a bazillion places. But it's really for a class, so I guess content criticism will be the most useful. THANKS!