Undergraduate / Williams Supplement -- Brazil. Was it that obvious that I don't speak Portuguese? [3]

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.

350 words too long?

"Oi primo, como foi a sua viajem?"
"Errr... muito obrigado," I responded nervously. My Brazilian cousin smirked. Was it that obvious that I don't speak Portuguese? My mother was born in Brazil, which automatically makes me a Brazilian citizen. But, having lived in the United States all my life, I wondered if I was Brazilian in any way other than legal status.

For weeks I had jittered with anticipation. White sand. Warm water. Plenty of bikini-clad girls. That was my postcard, picture-perfect image of Rio de Janiero, home of Copacabana and Carnival. Therefore, it was with reluctance and an edge of chagrin that I agreed to give up a few of my precious hours in the city in order to see its other side - favelas (slums) and abject poverty. Almost immediately after I left the airport, I traveled to the institute where my great uncle had served as a missionary, a place where my mother and her cousins spent hours playing with slum kids in their childhood. Like the language, this part of Brazil was completely foreign to me. I trekked up the steep embankment through a jungle of shanty houses stacked precariously on top of one another, ducking under vines of pirated electricity and intricate webs of water pipes. Among these dilapidated dwellings I expected to find downtrodden people overcome by poverty. Rather, I found a community more vibrant than in the manicured suburbs of my hometown. While I expected to be treated as an outsider I was instead greeted warmly by strangers eager to hear my story. As I ventured out of my reserved shell, smiling and making eye contact with the people I encountered, the language barrier began to crumble. After about three hours, we returned to the bottom of the hill. As I sat in the car waiting to leave, I took one last look out the window. A child from the favela smiled and waved. What I saw out that window you would never find on a postcard. I saw what Brazil now means to me. I finally felt - almost - a Brasileiro.

Undergraduate / Yale Supplement -- Dancing to Latin Pop [2]

You have already told us about yourself in the Common Application, with its list of activities, the Short Answer, and the Personal Essay. While we leave the topic of your second essay entirely up to you, try telling us something about yourself that you believe we cannot learn elsewhere in your application. Please limit yourself to fewer than 500 words.

Some of my friends call me a music snob. I prefer the term "aficionado." However, you are more apt to notice times when I listen to music that normally I would mock. These "impurities" within my music collection have their appointed occasion. When I am plowing through a tedious calculus assignment or a copious amount of reading for lit - and I feel my eyelids drooping -nothing energizes me more than listening to a little bit of Latin pop. In my iTunes library, between the legendary Pete Seeger and eclectic Paul Simon, lies the electrifying Paulina Rubio. Around eight o'clock each night, she moves to the front of the queue. Be warned: I am not a passive listener. When I put on Dylan or The Boss, my feet respond to the rhythm. When I listen to Latin pop, I am compelled to dance. For a few exhilarating minutes, my body breaks loose from its usual rigid form -- my extremities flowing freely, albeit not exactly gracefully. I am like a marionette controlled by the puppet master of the raw, primitive beat. My hips don't lie. With spatula microphone in hand, and my socks sliding along the kitchen floor, I sing along to the music. What my voice lacks in talent, it makes up for in volume. When the song ends, my alter ego regresses to its previous calm, studious state - with only the sweat on my brow hinting at the moment of Jekyll and Hyde transformation. As my heart rate finally begins to slow, and the reverberations in my ears begin to fade, I return to my homework. The adrenaline and endorphins provide clarity of mind, renewing my concentration on the task at hand. And they say Mozart makes you smarter...

It only 300 words (200 words short of the limit). I think it answers the prompt well. They definitely would not see this side of me in the rest of the application. What do you think?

Undergraduate / Common App Essay -- High School Policy Debate [2]

Common app essay so there really isnt a prompt... I guess it would fall under the "meaningful experience" one though.

When I was three years old, I crafted a rattle for my baby sister using two laundry detergent scoops, a bouncy ball and duct tape. My parents immediately proclaimed me a visionary engineering genius. Attempting to foster the inventor inside of me, they filled my room with Legos, Lincoln Logs, and model airplanes. While I was a kid, the possibilities were limitless - as long as I was motivated and had a little imagination. As I grew older, I realized that I would never invent a functioning jetpack or dig a tunnel from the playground to China. However, my innovative spirit remains. When I don't have the materials or tools I need, I make do with what I am given. This outlook has not only enabled me to better appreciate the opportunities I do have, but it has also brought me to make opportunities where they might not have previously existed.

By high school my passion switched from inventing devices to devising arguments. Debate has taught me how to operate the mechanics of logic and rhetoric to produce a convincing line of reasoning - not unlike how I once used a piece of plywood, two large fans and a Radio Flyer wagon to make a wind-powered car.

Furthermore, debate has challenged my capabilities as an inventor. When I started doing policy debate as a junior, I began to utilize these skills more than ever. At first, I set my expectations low. I had never considered trying to compete on the national circuit. But, after one year of competing locally, my partner and I had exhausted the competition. My enthusiasm for debate began to stagnate. I realized that in order to retain my passion for debate I needed to compete on another level. Last summer, I attended a seven week debate institute at the University of Michigan, where I studied with some of the brightest debaters in the country. When I compared myself to some of these debaters - the skills and the resources they possessed - I felt like David facing Goliath, but without a slingshot. Most teams succeed on the national level by attending challenging tournaments almost every weekend, benefiting from the advice of multiple coaches, and sharing the research burden among a large team. Our resources were paltry by comparison.

Still with the mindset of an inventor, I assessed our situation by looking at what we could do, not at what we couldn't. Accordingly, we were able to come up with ways to circumvent some structural barriers. Our school has the only policy debate program for about two-hundred miles in all directions. In order to gain experience debating nationally ranked teams, I am working with my Spanish teacher (and school technology guru) to set up a video-conferencing system so we can debate anyone in the country. To get advice and feedback, we have found a coach in Idaho who is willing to work with us from a distance over e-mail and the phone. With the support of the school principal and some generous donations, we now have the opportunity to travel to some of the most competitive national tournaments.

Though I sometimes find myself envious of teams with large budgets and coaching staffs, I would not change my high school debate experience. It is possible that if my school had a more competitive, established program, I might have achieved more individual success. But I don't think I would have learned as much. Being the underdog has led me to be more diligent and independent; it has taught me that hard work, a little bit of ingenuity and - when appropriate - a roll of duct tape can help me overcome almost any obstacle.

Undergraduate / Princeton Supplement Essay -- the Metaphysical Musings of Martin Heidegger [3]

PROMPT: Using a favorite quotation from an essay or book you have read in the last three years as a jumping off point, tell us about an event or experience that helped you define one of your values or changed how you approach the world. Please write the quotation at the beginning of your essay.

"The threat to man does not come in the first instance from the potentially lethal machines and apparatus of technology. The actual threat has already affected man in his essence. The rule of Enframing threatens man with the possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth"

- Martin Heidegger in The Question Concerning Technology

It was like banging my head against a brick wall. I sat in the corner and read, and re-read, but I could not extract the significance. It would have made just as much sense if I had read it backwards. Two hours passed before I finished Martin Heidegger's essay, "The Question Concerning Technology." Yet, though I had read the content, I could not decipher its meaning. My brain was overflowing with garbled terms. Poiesis... challenging-forth... bringing-forth... enframing... techne... veritas... alethia... I tried to define them, but then I could not comprehend my own definitions. I attempted to order, decode and contextualize them. I tried to manage them. But all of this led to deeper frustration.

Finally, I reconvened with my debate camp peers, most of whom were stuck in the same mental quagmire. Presuming our instructors would hold our hands and walk us through Heidegger's deep metaphysical musing, I was disappointed when they instead encouraged us to discuss what we had read amongst ourselves. I demanded a formulaic explanation, one filled with summaries, bullet points and Roman numerals. Even a "Heidegger for Dummies" book would have satisfied me. However, after a thorough discussion guided - though hardly controlled - by our instructors, Heidegger's argument began to reveal itself. At this point I realized that my initial method of understanding was flawed. I had been seduced by the power of enframing - so powerful and "correct" that my understanding bore no relationship to alethia, the Truth. I, like the western science Heidegger was critiquing, was only interested in what I could describe define. By expecting a certain outcome, I was challenging-forth. I had developed a narrow-minded view that allowed for only a superficial understanding.

It was an afternoon of exhausting mental gymnastics. Yet, through our group discussion, we were able to engage in a bringing-forth, or poiesis. I discovered the difference between Veritas and Alethia, the subtle yet profoundly significant difference between truth as in correctness and Truth that reveals the true essence of being. My perspective changed. I then knew that I must not predetermine the solution to a problem. By enframing or prematurely passing judgment on a person, thing or idea we are evaluating them solely for their use-value as opposed to seeing them in their essence. For, the way we think about what is true is fundamental to what we believe to be true. To allow for a "more original revealing" I needed to allow my expectations and predeterminations to be defied. This simple paradigm shift has had made a profound change in how I look at the disciplines of study. Stepping back, I realized the brick wall was not wide and could now be easily circumvented.