Undergraduate / What's life without a little challenge? - transfer for challenge [5]

Hi. ^-^ It's my first time to post here. Don't know if I expressed myself clearly in this essay. Any comments would be great. Thanks.

PROMPT: Statement that addresses your reasons for transferring and the objectives you hope to achieve. >250words

What's life without a little challenge?

As I lay wide-eyed in bed, last year, staring at the ceiling of my dark bedroom, the words, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both...", from Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken reverberated in my head. With the light from the street lamp outside, I could just make out the two pieces of paper on my bedside table. One is the admission letter from an U.S. college that just arrived in mail, and the other a notice about the coming National College Entrance Examination (NCEE). "It's time," I told myself, "to make a decision."

The last half of my high school years hadn't been easy. TOEFL, SAT, application on top of the usual Chinese high school ...

after edits:

This kind of feels like déjŕ vu. As I turned the volume of music down so it was just background and stroke my fingers across the keys, I was about to embark upon my second journey of applying for an U.S. college.

I have always wanted to study in the U.S., ever since I stood on the top of the Y mountain in 2003 and overlooked the campus of Brigham Young University. Out of the curiosity of a twelve-year-old Chinese girl, I explored this campus and became attracted by almost every aspect of studying in an U.S. university. True, back home in China, I had lived near several college campuses where my parents were working. But college life in U.S. was like nothing I had ever seen. From football games to swimming teams, from researching in the library to finishing reports on lawn, everything about college life in the U.S. was so new and exciting. It is this first glimpse of an U.S. university that implanted in me a dream, which has come to grow and blown throughout the years. I want to study in an U.S. university.

But when the thick admission envelope from Purdue University arrived in mail last March, I hesitated. I was only a click away from fulfilling my dream. Yet, somehow, I knew that this was not the right moment. There was something else that I had to experience --- a challenge, the likes of which I had never taken. For 31 years, NCEE, the National College Entrance Examination, has been decisive in determining the futures of Chinese high school seniors. Risky and scary it may be, banking my future on this one final test, this was the challenge I decide to rise up to.

Many would say that my decision was hilarious and that I had earned myself some rest after all the hard work I had put in. It is true that the last half of my high school years was not easy. TOEFL, SAT, undergraduate application, the usual Chinese high school workload... Going through high school in the traditional Chinese way while preparing to apply for U.S. colleges was like trying to force together the same poles of two magnets. Despite the odds, I managed. In 2008, I scored 103 on TOEFL and 1990 on the SAT Reasoning. What's more, I never dropped out of the top 5% of my class. Having successfully completed what had seemed impossible, I am more aware than ever that what I end up with is nothing comparing to my experiences along the way.

Taking the NCEE means even more efforts. For three months, I worked very hard, trying to cram everything into my brain. But this experience is amazing. Never before have I gone to such great lengths to struggle against time, to push the limit of my knowledge, and, after months of preparation, to compete with peers nationwide. My efforts finally paid off in mid-June, when the result of NCEE came out. I ranked 330 among millions of students who took the test. I realized, then, that through hard work and persistence I can conquer any difficulties.

Now, as a freshman at the University of Science and Technology of China, I know that it is time to make my dream come true. I have sidetracked to experience something I don't want to regret later on. But never once, in the past year, did I lose sight of my destination. I want to study in an U.S. college. Through transferring, I hope to live in a community made up of students from around the globe, to experience the best academic setting in the world, and most importantly, to stand on my toes and reach for the infinite sky that is called bioscience. In turn, I want to share my experience and knowledge with students from different cultures, contributing something unique to the university life that has long enthralled me. In transferring, I would fulfill my childhood dream and at the meantime move forward on the path to uncover the mysteries of nature.