Undergraduate / Amherst Supplementary Essay: stereotyped beliefs; power to dictate who you are [2]

Please respond to one of the following quotations in an essay of not more than 300 words. It is not necessary to research, read, or refer to the texts from which these quotations are taken; we are looking for original, personal responses to these short excerpts. Remember that your essay should be personal in nature and not simply an argumentative essay.

"Stereotyped beliefs have the power to become self-fulfilling prophesies for behavior."
Elizabeth Aries, Professor of Psychology, Amherst College. From her book Men and Women in Interaction, Reconsidering the Difference.

My response:

Others' beliefs have the power to dictate who you are.
Being a homosexual in a country of strict Confucius ideals and conservative traditions, I fully understand what this implies.
Long before I became aware of my sexuality, thanks to the stereotype held by the society, I had come to know the homosexuals as 'perverts' and 'pedophiles', who raped and recruited children by turning them gay, and to whom relationships were just pure sex, for no love can bud between two men.

I grew up to such beliefs and was terrified when I gradually learned that I was gay and someday I, too, would become a pervert. I tried to deny and conceal this 'gayness', hoping, by suppressing myself, to steer away from the ghastly fate that I was unfortunately born with.

Nevertheless, as I mature, understanding more about myself and my society, it occurs to me that homosexuals are left with little choice.
I do not condone the repulsive acts of some but I can't help but ask myself: how can they hope to find love, when their own society denies its very existence? What option do they have but to become criminals when those around them have already considered them as such just for being themselves? What can they possibly do when they've grown up seeing their bleak future has already been created for them by their stereotypical society? Because when one don't have the power to alter how the world sees them, they might easily surrender to those stereotypes, letting them become the self-fulfilling prophesies for their actions. They stop trying to prove themselves because their faith and will are crushed by the gruesome and conservative opinions being imposed on them.

But I believe that the future holds more for me and many others than just hollowness those stereotypes assume. I have faith in the happiness that I, just like everyone else, deserve to have.

So I'm breaking away to prove my worth and to live true to who I am. And hopefully one day my efforts, together with others', might change the way we are perceived.

It is still a draft and I'm 49 words over the limit of 300. Hope you guys can tell me how you think of the essay and cut it down if possible.

Thank you.

Undergraduate / Why Yale? What influenced your decision to apply? [4]

The question obviously is what particular about Yale that influenced your decision to apply?

I have written 2 responses for it:

1. I want to go to Yale because I wish to achieve both academically and socially. Yale has a long-standing reputation of education quality, offering its students profound knowledge in a diverse range of subjects. But what makes Yale unique is the sense of community and the scope of personal growth that students here achieve. As a Yalie, I wish to immerse myself in social experiences at the residential colleges, amongst extraordinary and diverse yet like-minded and embracing student body. The extracurricular activities including A Capella and science societies, which enrich my university life, are those I look forward to explore.

or

2. There are many reason for my desire to get to Yale. But what lies above all is the level of both academic excellence and personal growth, the two most important life aspects, I hope to achieve. Yale, with erudite professors and its extensive resources will provide me with profound knowledge and understanding in Chemistry, my desired major. Moreover, I want to immerse myself in the great social circle that Yale will provide. The social experience of living in the residential college and finding myself surrounded by extraordinary yet like-minded peers is something I wish attain in my academic pursuit.

I hope you guys maybe can tell me which one you like better as a response for this question, or neither is good and make any suggestions, they'll be of great help.

Thank you very much.

Undergraduate / 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' - Yale supplementary essay [3]

I wrote a draft for the supplementary essay for Yale where I get to write about anything that I wish to let the admission committee to know.

I wonder if it's good enough for Yale or still needs more substance or anything.

What do you want to be when you grow up? For me, that dream has always been to become a doctor.
But why? I'm lucky enough being born into a family of medical background. As a child I would simply say it was because I wanted to be like my father, whom I had looked up to all my life, because I admired the way he put his patients' mind at ease and treated them with his skilful hands.

But as I grow up, I know - far beyond a dream to follow my father's footsteps - I aspire to become a doctor to quench my thirst of knowledge inside.

Since I was little, curiosity, the yearning to know how everything in the world works, has always been my signature. At age 3, I would riddle my parents with questions like why 'the sun shines' 'oranges are orange'.

It soon turned out that my 'study' interests started inclining towards the human body and the mechanisms behind one of the greatest creations of nature. Knowing my father's profession, I would approach him to ask about it, about any insane thing a child's mind could wonder: how our eyes work, where our food goes or why we grow.

Getting to school, I study Human Biology in absolute fascination. For the first time in my life, I am captivated by the intricacy of our amazing system. It is far beyond anything that I could have imagined as a child. I learn, now, the beauty of the human body: every detail, down to each invisible molecule, that composes what we are, is there for a reason. I've realised ours are not simply individual organs stacked together. Rather, like a Swiss watch, our body is a sophisticated machine created with numerous seemingly separate components, working in incredible harmony, like tiny cogwheels, to bring about a functioning 'us'.

Nevertheless, delving into the depth of human biology, it appears to me that intricate as it might be, our body is also very fragile. Like how one rusted cogwheel can dismantle a watch, just one faulty component can disrupt our well-being. Unlike a watch though, this causes much more fear and the damage comes at a much greater price.

I have always thought I want to be a doctor. But now I utterly know for sure I want to be one. I want to see to the fullest details of how our body works. I yearn to know about what might go wrong in the beautiful yet delicate work of creation and learn about the cause of those diseases.

But more than anything, I yearn for the day I am able to treat them. Because I don't simply want to learn: I want to use my knowledge to save lives, to alleviate people's pain from both their mind and body, because being told by my father is not enough, because I want to be engrossed in the ineffable beauty of the human body, witnessing and conserving it myself.

Any suggestions would help immensely

Thank you very much.