Undergraduate / 'I saw Duke University in the top ten' - TRINITY SUPPLEMENTAL [6]

Prompt: Please discuss why you consider Duke a good match for you. Is there something in particular at Duke that attracts you? Please limit your response to one or two paragraphs.

I felt that my essay looks like I have inadvertently abused my thesaurus and that it is slightly generic. However, I can't think of any way to remove that and maintain the effect. Can there be a better and more potent way to end this? All suggestions and critique are welcome :)

Wading through some 50+ US colleges that featured on the US News website, I felt despondent. With tears of anger and frustration I saw Duke University in the top ten. "Sounds familiar", I thought to myself as I clicked on the link, only to fall through the rabbit hole straight to Wonderland, where everything is possible.

Coming across Duke University incited the childish feeling of fitting the last piece of a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle; this is it. The lush green campus and picturesque Gothic buildings, the city of Durham with its unpretentious suburban culture, the smiling faces of the students and the faculty, and most of all the brilliant and positive take for the development of tomorrow's leaders really made me feel like I have found my niche. This feeling was empowered strongly when I read about the variety of topics that research was conducted on. The prominence of research work at Duke University was obvious when I came across several articles on different websites and journals about the breakthroughs made by the faculty and students at Duke University on an almost daily basis. A deep-rooted desire for answers to just about every question that may pop in my head made me deeply appreciative of the emphasis that Duke placed on developing today's solutions to yesterday's problems, to make a better tomorrow. To conduct progress, not for the sake of progress, but for the meaningful purpose of enhanced education and stronger, increasingly polymathic people in the next generation is an educational philosophy at Duke, clearly embodied in its stress on interdisciplinary courses. Duke University clearly mentions in its website that it requires students who are curious, funny, enthusiastic and stubbornly resilient about their cause. I appreciate, propound and revere that. I have craved for a place where I am stimulated to grow in every way, where I can open my mind and not be afraid of crossing manmade boundaries, where I can really push myself beyond "the limit" and let myself be. And I believe Duke can be all that, and much more.

Undergraduate / 'MISSION ACCOMPLISHED' - SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCE AND IMPACT ON YOU [6]

Prompt: Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you. 250-500 words
I have focused on the "experience" part of the prompt. Every word in this essay is true, and it also one of my UC essays. The essay has 484 words, including the title. Please tell me how to work on improving the essay! Thank you :)

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
The day I was honored the post of the School Counselor- a position the School Government that is loaded with intense responsibility- I actually realized how much my life had changed, and how much I had changed as a person. My epaulettes inspired me to shoulder my responsibilities with tact and grace as well as respect for my colleagues in the Captain Body, along with the students of Delhi Public School. The day the Investiture Ceremony was held, I truly understood the depth in the famous Spiderman catchphrase, "With great power comes great responsibility."

My school is a rather good representative of India's population- it promises education to over 3000 students, from Nursery to 12th grade. With over 250 students in one batch, and the only student School Counselor, my post has been a full-time job. It often required missing classes (and getting ticked off for missing classes), but it was so emotionally fulfilling that although people suggested resigning, I never quit. This was something I loved doing- solving problems. When a 6th grader would come to me for something like "she hit me!" or when a 12th grader would come to me to ask for, say, drug-quitting advice, I knew that the time I was going to give the person in front of me was going to be time well utilized. There are a lot of issues that students cannot take to parents or teachers, and I understood that even before I took up the post. There have been instances where I made slip-ups, judged people from what they told me, even behaved unprofessionally, but I never refused to help. Which is what, I've been told, made people think of me as approachable and trustworthy, an opinion that I take as a gigantic compliment.

Being the School Counselor had often been misjudged as being a "spy" for the teachers. I am proud to say that I broke that assumption, to such an extent that even a few teachers came to me for counseling. There was a time when a teacher told me that he was having marital problems, which were affecting his temper and teaching, because of which he was on probation. That was one of the most satisfying experiences I have had, because, after talking to him and pushing him during the course of several sessions, he managed to sew his personal life together and detach it from his professional front.

I learnt a lot about human behavior and child psychology from this position. It gave me a bird's eye view of what a person faces inside and outside of school, and a worm's eye view of what the "big bad world" could be like. I learnt perception, sensitivity, initiative, involvement, leadership and management at close quarters, and I know that even after several years, I would remember a fellow student's shining eyes after the "mission accomplished" with a smile.

Undergraduate / 'the part we choose to act on' - BROWN: MOMENT WHEN PERSPECTIVE CHANGED [7]

Sculptor Jacques Lipchitz once said, "Cubism is like standing at a certain point on a mountain and looking around. If you go higher, things will look different; if you go lower, again they will look different. It is a point of view." With this in mind, describe a moment when your perspective changed.2000 characters

Since June 30, 1997, the world has been divided into two equal and opposing Newtonian crusaders: those who love Harry Potter and those who don't. There are people whose eyes light up, mouth drools and spirits lift at the very mention of the beauty, and then there are those cynics who believe that this series is the sole reason for psychedelic-advancement and mental putrefaction, heresy, and "Magick Moste Evile" (written by Godelot; imparts depravity about the Darkest magic). The evening I finished reading the last sentence in the last chapter in the last Harry Potter book ("All was well."), with tears streaming down my cheeks, when a batch-mate piped, "How on earth can you stand that?" I stared at her, and I realized that after reading this, I would never be the same person. I had changed, and Potter did it.

Formerly I was a devoted believer in the singularity of psyches. Everyone wants to be loved, everyone wants peace, and everyone wants to be rich/famous/brilliant/unopposed/an overall achiever. However, my friend's impulsive statement made me rethink. Are all people really the same? Does everyone really have the same dreams and ambitions? Doesn't everyone work for nothing more than having means of getting to everlasting happiness? Harry Potter, and the impulsiveness of my friend's comment made me wonder. Apparently life is about a lot more than being "happy" or "successful" or "rich". It is about the psyche we choose for ourselves. As Sirius says so beautifully, "...the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters. We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are."

I am worried that it's too generic, or maybe that it doesn't answer the question. Please help! Thank you (in advance!)