Posts by mrkay66

mrkay66

Jul 29, 2010

Undergraduate / Essay: Randy Pausch, Someone Important to You [7]

I agree with titanswim about how you should mention how it challenged you. But also, it seems a little bit like you were using a thesaurus a lot to find more sophisticated words. That is just my impression, and if that is correct, the people reading your essay will definitely notice it also.

mrkay66

Jul 29, 2010

Undergraduate / "ketchup's popularity" - uc prompt-tell us about your community [5]

winstonli
Ketchup is the most wonderful condiment in the world. Nothing can go wrong when you add ketchup to it, not even that brick of a meatloaf a family friend brings to a dinner. There are many reasons why it's so great. One: it has a wonderful color: red that can brighten anything, even the dreaded broccoli. (ketchup on broccoli????????? Two: Ketchup has a conglomerating (seems like you used a thesaurus for this word) taste that works well with any food. In the same sense, the world from which I come from has the same aspects that make ketchup great: great color (atmosphere) in the city and a wonderful community at school. ( sort of an iffy comparison)

This listing thing right here isn't cutting it for me
Plano, Texas is one of the most prosperous towns in the nation. Aside from the economy, culture thrives in this city like a rabbit in Australia. Every month, the city has public activities planned for the amusement of its residents. As a National Honors Society member(makes it seems like your bragging about being a NHS member), I volunteer at many of these occasions and end up staying after my shifts to enjoy myself. The most popular gathering is the Plano Balloon Festival, which I both attended and worked. Bearing the atmosphere of a fair, the festival allows visitors to participate in a myriad of activities from eating to jumping in jump houses.(explain?) As a grand finale, dozens of passenger- bearing hot air balloons are released followed by spectacular fireworks. At the end of the night, everyone leaves exhausted, happy, and loaded with freebies.

In addition to the grandiose cultural atmosphere it bears, Plano also has the best public high schools in the nation. My high school, Plano Senior High School (PSHS), has a great student body committee that allows everyone to feel like he or she is an active part of the school. For instance, PSHS has over 30 clubs and organizations on campus, ranging from anime club to the Academic Decathlon; everyone can find a club that suits his or her interests. Over the past school year, my friends and I formed the first ever Art Club on campus and arranged meeting that attracted dozens of members with our interesting activities and excursions. Furthermore, organizations such as the Student Counsel and Student Congress allow my fellow classmates to take part in how the school is run. Recently, our senior class president was selected solely on the votes of students with no administrative interference.(doesn't seem like a big achievement) This practice, along with our broad range of activities allows every student to achieve his or her best in academics as well as feeling great about the school and having fun.

For me, ketchup's popularity rests on its color and ability to work well with other foods. These characteristics model the community from which I come from. A great atmosphere of culture and wonderful surroundings at school are all revealed as I reflect upon my city. I hope that my admission to UCLA will allow me to bring these qualities to the school and its surroundings.

Corrections and comments in red

mrkay66

Jul 29, 2010

Undergraduate / Music that has developed you... rate and give advice [2]

What work of art, music, science, mathematics, or literature has surprised, unsettled, or challenged you, and in what way?

When playing in the concert band at my high school, every piece we played would be a new encounter, an entirely new entity, but usually they had many similarities and could easily be written off as boring, classical music by those who don't appreciate it, which I must admit, is a category that used to include me. But, in my junior year we played a piece which undermined all of these expectations I had previously held to a classical piece of music. This work was called "Asphalt Cocktail". The day our conductor told us we would play this song, he played it for us on through his speakers, and the whole class was blown away, almost speechless. It was a very modern song, and had been written less than a year before we played it. The composer of the piece described it a way that embodies it entirely. He said "Picture the scariest NYC taxi ride you can imagine, with the cab skidding around turns as trucks bear down from all sides." This is exactly what the piece was like, with its blaring brass section, and screeching woodwinds, pounding away at the many interwoven melodies and countermelodies. I played bass trombone for our performance of this song, and I was allowed to do things that I had never done before on the trombone. It was my experience with flutter tonguing, but I was also allowed to virtually overpower the rest of the band at some parts, which was a great experience because I am usually told to quiet down. After, we played this piece in one concert, the whole ensemble begged our conductor to let us play it again, and he consented. I would say it was the most memorable work of music, not only for me, but for the rest of my colleagues as well; that it just how much it defied all expectations.

mrkay66

Jul 26, 2010

Writing Feedback / Favorite Word and why-Rate/give advice for my college essay [4]

Thank you both of you for your advice pertaining to my essay. It will help a lot, not only in this essay but more to come, as this is the first of many for this year.

mrkay66

Jul 17, 2010

Writing Feedback / Most beneficail discovery in the last 100 yrs; Transportation, Communication [20]

The three things you choose are very obvious and probably heard the most by all evaluators reading your essay. I would advise choosing something more unique and interesting to write about

mrkay66

Jul 17, 2010

Writing Feedback / Favorite Word and why-Rate/give advice for my college essay [4]

What is your favorite word and why? Explain in 500 words or less

When playing the game Hangman, the idea is to choose a word that your opponent cannot guess within a limited amount of tries. The strategy to performing well at this game is choosing words with less commonly used letters, arranged in an unusual fashion. Also, one should use the least vowels possible. One word that fits all of these parameters is the word "quirky". The order in which people usually guess vowels is the same order in which they are ordered in the alphabet, or "a, e, i, o, u". That is two wrong guesses right there for sure. Next, it would be logical to stop guessing vowels after "I" is uncovered, because the word is only six letters long, and the "i" is in the middle, so many people never even guess the "u". Finally, of the four consonants in the word "quirky", three of them are very uncommon. The combination of all of these factors makes "quirky" an exemplary word to use in hangman. This is also one of the many reasons why this word is one of my favorite words. To add on to that, the word "quirky" is worth a minimum of 72 points when played in the game Scrabble. Discounting all of these very appealing attributes of this word, the chief reason that I would call this word, out of the hundreds of thousands of words in the English language, is that it describes my personality to the core. One reason that this words describes is because two things that I identify closely with, two of the most personal things about me, are almost polar opposites. On one hand, I have been diagnosed with ADHD and can be very talkative, impulsive, and excessively communicative to a fault. On the other hand, I am an introvert and tend to shy away from intimate social relationships. These two things have been essential to my growth and to how people view me, but are in essence opposed. Other things that could make people think of me as quirky are a few habits of mine: biting the inside of my cheek, arguing nonstop but somehow being right most of the time, constantly drumming on anything solid, humming incessantly, and talking out of turn. Quirks like these are what make all of mankind unique individuals with our own eccentricities. Take away these, and you take away our identity. Without the word the can best be defined as my word, what would I be? For one, my skills at hangman and scrabble would be greatly diminished, as that is my signature word, but more importantly, I would lose some of my uniqueness.