Undergraduate / Maplestory has become a central part of my life; Significant Experience/ Common App [22]

Hey guys, this is my common app significant experience and impact essay. I first wrote about new york and my vacation there, but I decided to change it to this, about maplestory.

Please provide suggestions! Also, is this risky? and how risky?

The room was dark and freezing cold. Fatigue sealed my eyes and soreness plagued my body. It was 3 AM on a school day. I pulled myself out of bed and walked over to my laptop. The bright screen pierced my eyes. I launched the game Maplestory and waited for the seller living in Australia to log on, and he did. A quick transaction followed, and I made a billion-meso profit. Unknowingly, Maplestory has become a central part of my life.

Dying to monsters or falling off a cliff, I initially struggled to connect with the game, perhaps because I have not identified my niche in the game yet; however, I found it in the free market where thousands of players gather and bargin. Thousands of items were traded, sold, and bought. When I entered the venue, my purpose in the game became clear: buy low, sell high.

I took it upon myself to memorize every item in the game and their price ranges. Risking ten dollars, I bought ten million in-game mesos for capital. Endless days and restless nights, I browsed the market and stocked my inventory with gems. Characterized with patience but filled with hunger and desperation, I then sold the gems to procure my first profit. The kill was both satisfying and addicting, and the desire for a second kill lurked in my mind. Moving from gems to godly equipment, my in-game wealth aggrandized. After five years, I emerged out of forty million players as one of the wealthiest players in Maplestory; my in-game-name became an iconic symbol for the populace.

Sensing an upcoming important game update, I predicted that the value of diamonds in the game could potentially surge by tenfold following the update. Confident in my prediction, I risked my entire wealth to monopolize all the diamonds in the game, buying them at above-equilibrium price, causing mass inflation in the game market. So much power, but at so much risk, and I was wrong. The value of diamond deflated severely. I lost everything; a king rises and falls.In love with the market, I decided to develop into the stock market. I assumed the responsibility to learn everything about investments. I joined virtual trading at MarketWatch, Marketocracy, and Stock Wars. Following hours of company analyses every day, I acquired an above-average return. Filled with confidence, I persuaded my mom to give me some capital for investment through Scottrade, and she did. Researching even harder now, I managed to bring about $70 monthly income as capital gains into the family.

Through Maplestory, I discovered my intrinsic love for finance. What started as a game matured into a way of life, luring out my innate desire for economic affairs. Every second, I cogitate on how the law of supply and demand wraps itself around the financial realm, how it bends itself to accommodate alterations and dynamics of other laws. These thoughts constitute my mind, a mind passionate for business.

Undergraduate / Have you ever been to the moon? / Harvard Supp/ Letter to roommate [7]

This is my harvard supplement writing. I decided to do a letter haha. provide any corrections please!
______________________________________________________________________ _________

Dear Roommate,

Have you ever been to the moon? I haven't either. But I have:

-Drawn eyes on snow-covered cars' front windows during Christmas so that they would look like characters from the movie Cars.
-Walked thirty minutes into a forest alone with two towels, which I hung on a thick tree branch to do pull-ups. (Why did you need the towels for that?)

-Went to the mall with a microphone and loudly complimented strangers on their looks: "May I say you that are the definition of beautiful."

-Had a three-day movie marathon with friends, a combination of Marvel, Harry Potter, and chick-flicks.
-Picked up a penny in the mall parking lot and donated it to Ronald McDonald House Charity at the food court. (This could be considered rude in terms of not taking monetary donations seriously.)

-Stayed up until four in the morning tutoring my friend on pulley-physics over the phone.
-Given a speech in Language Arts class on why everyone should lift weights.
-Done bicep curls every nightbefore bed, fearing that my biceps would shrink during sleep.
-Created a makeshift barbell out of four gallon-jugs filled with water tied to a broomstick for lifting at home.
-Spent three hours at Panera debating with with my friend on whether Newtonian mechanics or Einstein's theory of relativity had a greater impact on technological advancement.

-Derived a new equation for the area of any triangle by expanding the Pythagorean Theorem geometrically because Heron's formula took too long to calculate.

-Read the book Intelligent Investors three times while sipping hot chocolate on a cold rainy day.
-Spent an entire Thursday afternoon with Mr. DeWitt, founder and CEO of Resurgens Bank, discussing the beauty of fractional reserve banking and my ambition to build a banking empire on which the sun never sets.

-Built a four-foot long space shuttle out of construction paper and foam. I then attached a motor taken out of a RC toy car to the shuttle so that it could move.

-Spent four hours researching how a toilet works so that I could fix the leaking toilets at home.

Have you? If not, we can redo these together; I mean, who wouldn't want to fix overflowing toilets in our residence hall at Harvard! I look forward to our future adventures.

Your geeky, creative, outgoing, and ambitious roommate,

name.

Undergraduate / "Never had technology much'' / Common App Activity Writing [4]

Please help me with me. I really struggled writing this due to the limit on words. thank you!

Running around with sheep or getting water from a well, I never had much technology during my life, growing up on a farm in China. Coming to America at the age of ten, I entered a new world filled with technology. Eager to learn everything possible about technology, I applied to volunteer at Southeastern Railway Museum. In teams, working from repainting train surfaces and replacing interior wood floorings to torching engine elevation plates, or even lifting a 100-ton train car with a crane, my knowledge expanded greatly. My most challenging task was to replace the brake system in the car 8202. At first, I was clueless on how to do it; but rather than giving up, I sat back and analyzed the entire system for hours, soaking up every detail. Got it! I gathered the tools and spent the next three months taking apart the entire brake system only to reassemble it with new parts arriving from MARTA. Though I have learned so much, there is still so much more to learn.

Undergraduate / "What they don't know won't hurt them"; Stanford Supp/ Intellectual Vitality [20]

I am not the best writer, so I am really dependent on EssayForum to help me with my essays, and thank you guys for that! These are my stanford supplements, so please revise in anyway possible!! thank you!

INTELLECTUAL VITALITY: ONE IDEA/EXPERIENCE THAT IMPACTED YOUR INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT.

"What they don't know won't hurt them," said Mr. DeWitt, founder and CEO of Resurgens Bank, when we discussed banking operations at his newly opened bank branch. The words rang in my ear, and memories of joyful research on banking and investments coruscated in the back of my mind. I looked him in the eyes and smiled; I knew exactly what he implied: the beauty of fractional reserve banking.

What if I told you that the paycheck you received last month was just a paper, with no money behind it?
Have you ever heard the story of the goldsmith? As you know, in early Europe, gold was used as currency, but the people needed security over their gold, so a nearby goldsmith opened a vault for that purpose. He began loaning out the deposited gold as exchangeable notes while charging the borrowers interest. Villagers, seeing that the notes were much more convenient, traded using the notes rather than exchanging it for gold at the vault. Overtime, the goldsmith realized that the people rarely withdraw their gold from the vault, so he began loaning out notes with no gold backing them. The goldsmith aggrandized great wealth from the interest returns on these fraudulent notes. The populace, unaware of this, treated the notes with value, and the new monetary system stimulated European growth.

It is one of the most ingenious ideas in history, both Mr. DeWitt and I agreed. Yet I saw a flaw in the system: in my theory, as the sum of these virtual notes surpasses the actual value of all global money, it alters to unpayable debt, to which your paycheck may be part of. But I propose that as long as global supply increases, the system will continue to instigate growth.

Intrigued by its beauty and seeking to not only improve but perfect it, I intend to start a banking empire on which the sun never sets. This objective serves not to fulfill greed; rather, it intends to galvanize economic accretion and express concern for the ever growing issues facing society.

WRITE A LETTER TO YOUR STANFORD ROOMMATE SO WE COULD KNOW MORE ABOUT YOU.

Dear Bro,
In-and-Out Burger, hands down, is the best burger place in the world. If you like it as well, I am sure we will get along just fine! We can go there on weekends to enjoy the food while discussing the rivalry between Newtonian mechanics, Einstein's relativity, and quantum mechanics. Then we can head over to the mall with a microphone and loudly compliment everyone with pickups lines! My favorite line is: "if you were an item on the McDonald menu, you would be McGorgeous." Speaking of McDonalds, I always save up my changes in my pink piggy bank, and I would donate it to the Ronald McDonald House Charity when it fills up. If you have any spare changes, feel free to stick it in the pig. During Christmas, my friends and I would draw eyes on snow-covered cars' front windows so that they would look like characters from the movie Cars, then we would go to the mall and hand out candy canes to strangers to wish them a merry Christmas. I hope you can practice this tradition with me!

At the dorm, I will probably crowd the floor with various projects since I always like to build things. At home, I have built a four-foot long space shuttle out of construction paper and foam. I then attached a motor taken out of a RC toy car to the shuttle so that it could move. We could rebuild that, or we can build a "giant" Great Pyramid out of cards. Besides projects, you may see crumbled papers all over the floor from all the mathematics I do. In my free time, I try to come up with more efficient equations or prove certain conjectures. My greatest success is deriving a new equation for the area of any triangle by expanding the Pythagorean Theorem geometrically, replacing Heron's formula. Currently, I am attempting to prove Format's Theorem, with no end in sight. Yet, the shear difficulty brings joy to my intellectual curiosity. Despite the mess in the room, don't worry because I always clean after myself. Regardless, I hope we will have a great adventure at Stanford as roommates!

WHAT MATTERS THE MOST TO YOU?

"I am sorry; I just don't see you that way. I think we will be better off as friends," said my crush of three years when I asked her out. News of the rejection quickly spread among my friends, one of which jokingly commented, "ha-ha! All that working out and you got rejected!" The words seared my heart, and I looked at my biceps. Did I really spend half of my life at the gym just for a girl? The answer is no; it is something much bigger. Weight lifting has been a part of my life for as long as I could remember.

A day six years ago, I was jogging miles around the neighborhood with the sun scorching my skin and sweat dripping down my head, followed with an hour of pushups until my arms gave up and I was laying on a pool of sweat.

A day five years ago, I walked into a forest with two towels and a water jug, and I hung the towels off a thick tree branch to do pull-ups until my grip slipped from the towel. At home, I tied four water-filled-gallon-jugs to a broomstick and used it as a barbell to do endless sets of squats and bicep curls.

A day three years ago, my mom got me a gym membership at Gold's Gym; it was my first time stepping into a gym, first time touching the rusted dumbbell handles, first time feeling the grip of weight plates. Very soon, the gym became my second home.

A day two years ago, I was at Queen's Recreational Center in New York introducing nutrition plans and work out routines to people seeking to start a lifestyle around exercising and training people from 5:00 PM until 10:00 PM.

And today, I will be at Gold's Gym trying to break my personal record for benching, deadlift, and squatting.
It is hard to remember a day when I was not lifting weights; without a doubt, working out is what matters the most to me. I see it as my source of confidence; it gave me courage to ask out my crush. I see it as my source of inspiration; if I can work hard at the gym, I can work hard at anything else and succeed.

Undergraduate / Banking empire; Northwestern University supplement! [5]

Prompt: unique characteristics of Northwestern and the school youre applying to that attracts you to come here, and how you will take advantage of these characteristics. something like that.

______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________

Christmas is around the corner. I would lead my friends into the abyssal parking lot of the mall and draw eyes on snow-covered cars' front windows so that they would look like characters from the movie Cars. Afterwards, we would venture into the familiar halls of the mall and handout candy canes to strangers with bombs of pick-up lines dropped here and there; my favorite line of all time is "If you were an item on the McDonald menu, you would be McGorgeous." This is a tradition that my friends and I practice every Christmas, and it is one that I want to continue to practice throughout college, and that is one of the reasons on why Northwestern University is the perfect school for me. The school is composed of very sociable and outgoing students where I could easily fit in and be myself. Passionate about weight lifting, I would often hang towels off a thick tree branch to do pull ups or tie water-filled gallon-jugs to a broomstick and use it as a barbell at home. To others, this may seem strange, but at Northwestern University, I see myself starting a weight training class in the middle of a forest where everyone is doing pull-ups on tree branches or even climbing trees to get a whole body workout.

In addition to the cheerful student body, the school's location is another reason why I am irresistibly attracted to Northwestern University. The college town Evanston is filled with frequent festivals and events that keep the people of the town connected by providing a warm atmosphere. Even more, Evanston is surrounded by beautiful beaches where I see myself going surfing or even having a beach date with a girl. The college's proximity to the city of Chicago provides ample opportunities for joy and growth. Within minutes, I would be at Chicago cheering on the White Sox or be at navy pier having fun with my Northwestern peers. Lastly, the city provides many openings for potential internships that I would be applying for every summer break.

Besides the amazing setting, the school's academia is a perfect fit for my intellectual interests. Unlike other universities, Northwestern University uses the Quarter System, which will allow me to take more classes and further expand my knowledge than what is possible at other universities. Studying at the Weinberg School of Arts and Science, I plan to major in economics while studying mathematics.

Economics has always been at the center of my intellectual expansion. My passion for economics is driven by the ingenious clockwork of fractional reserve banking; in my opinion, this system of banking dominates modern economics. Complement to economics, mathematics is the sword and shield that economics wield. In my free time, I often try to invent more efficient equations or attempt to prove certain conjectures. For example, unsatisfied with Heron's formula, I derived a new equation to calculate the area of any triangle by expanding the Pythagorean Theorem geometrically. Currently, I am working to prove Fermat's Last Theorem with an end in sight; the sheer difficulty brings joy to my intellectual curiosity. At the Weinberg College, I plan to enroll in the MENU program and Northwestern's unique MMSS program to improve and discipline my mathematical skills, allowing me to successfully apply mathematics onto social sciences, thus opening many more career options. Equipped with strong math skills, I plan to pursue one of the Kellogg Certificate Programs in Financial Economics and Managerial Analytics. Doing so, I look forward to meeting Professor Mitchell Petersen and learning about venture capital and company growth. In addition, I plan to participate in the College Fed Challenge as a way to apply my learnings in economics and mathematics into use.

Overall, every aspect of Northwestern University, from its student life to its academia, will prepare me for success in the business world. It will be a key step in achieving my life's vision: to start a banking empire on which the sun never sets.