Undergraduate / "My Interest, its evolution, and its future" - 500-Words Limited Essay [8]

Hey!
I wrote an essay for my Cornell application.
I am not a native English speaker, so I will feel extremely appreciated if you guys can find & improve any syntax, grammar, or awkward sentences. Please point out any weird parts that interrupt the whole essay.

Also I could not answer the last question: "Tell us how you will utilize the academic programs in the College of Arts and Sciences to further explore your interests, intended major, or field of study." as I feel the question is so hard to answer. Unless one took many Cornell courses and lived in the campus, it is hard to see how one can utilize the program. Any idea on this problem will be great!

I thank you in advance for any help. Please feel free to criticize me!

+ Word limits: 479/500. If I add one more paragraph, it likely will exceed :(
- WJC -

Describe your intellectual interests, their evolution, and what makes them exciting to you. Tell us how you will utilize the academic programs in the College of Arts and Sciences to further explore your interests, intended major, or field of study.

Even before I could read, I harbored a natural affinity for mathematics. I remember the time when I asked my dad to teach addition and subtraction after watching my elder sister being taught Math from her kindergarten. I loved to spend time with numbers, picking up random digits, arranging and aggregating them, and throwing plus and minus signs into the midst. For me, math was never a scary monster - it was just a funny-looking toy to play with.

As I entered middle school, my interests in Math grew exponentially, especially due in part to my friends from after-school math activity. They all liked the unique characteristics of math that allowed one to derive complex formulas and prove mathematical conjectures just with fundamental mathematical operations. I found myself staying with the friends in a local library till sun sets, challenging to mathematical problems and proofs on topics ranging from simple arithmetic to complex national Olympiad problems.

Even when I moved to Canadian high school as an immigrant with language barrier, my passion in math didn't stop to grow. Although the barrier between English and Korean exhausted my energy, math, the universal language, was an immutable ally. Regardless of the language, whether Korean or English, the logic involved to solve a problem was the same. While working on Canadian and American math competitions, I met mathematically-passionate peers, and I embarked on establishing school's official math club with the head professor of math department. Since then, on the days of club meeting, my face was filled with joy of meeting people who speak the same language, Math.

During summer, my passion expanded beyond math to a more practical area. When I participated in Canadian/USA MathCamp, I met John Conway from his colloquial and learned about his cellular automation "Game of Life." Soon my passion transitioned to computer programming and then to algorithms and data structures. Realizing that I could materialize anything I wish by combining theoretics in math with practicality in programming, I began to dream to be a software engineer.

By junior year, after finishing all of remaining school math and computer science courses, I continued my life as an immature, but growing software engineer. I developed software from simple tools to complex games. One day, when I played Tetris from a website, I found the game creative because of its use of four square blocks as a piece. Then I wondered how Tetris would change with another number of blocks. With about one week of designing and programming, I developed Pentris with five-blocked pieces. On the other day, when I was using eclipse, the powerful IDE, I found it too heavy and slow in my old computer. I began to develop a light IDE for my computer and possibly for other people's computers. Racking brain to design a computer program, wrapping the design with Graphical User Interface, and sharing the outcome with other people have been always truly enjoyable processes.

My affinity for math and computer science leads me to computer science and math double majors in Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences. Cornell's CS department encourages students "to choose as if their professional life depends on it." In this way, while pursuing my dream of being software engineer with CS major, I can shape my ability to "think" with math major. Also Cornell's active math club attracts me. From experience in my school's math club, I know that vehement discussion about specific mathematical topics and preparation for international math competition can assist one to reach higher proficiency. Though I couldn't find about Cornell's CS club, if there isn't one, I am planning to establish one to participate in thrilling CS competitions like ACM-ICPC. I already dream to create my own programming language with interpreter, operating systems, extremely additive games, and many more by my hands.

[Extra paragraph required to answer the last question]

Undergraduate / "Language Barrier" - Common Application Additional Information Section [9]

Additional Information
-Include any additional information that you would like to provide regarding special circumstances, additional qualifications, etc.

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English Barrier (Word Count: 1035)
In February 2008, about two and half years ago, I stepped on the land of Canada. Since then, I have been challenged by the new environment. In my home country Korea, nobody ever spoke in English. Except in the 45 minutes of English class twice a week, I never read, listened, spoke, or wrote something in English. Consequently, when it came to studying at a Canadian secondary school in the middle of grade 9, English was an unbeatable hindrance. I had to take ESL classes to overcome the language barrier. I had to sit on my chair for the whole day only to write the notorious five-paragraph essay (I never wrote any English essay before). I had to bother teachers every day after school. But I never gave up. After about one year of hardworking, my English improved. I even could take and finish Grade 10 English course with an A. I did not need to bother teachers anymore. I still have weakness in English. It is undeniable. But if I challenge myself in American college, I will be improved as did I in Canadian high school.

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- I wrote this essay with a hope to explain my terrible SAT reading & writing score. Any critique/help on the essay will be appreciated. Also the word count limit is 1000, so I need to work on cutting it down.

- I am not sure whether this is the section to write something like this. Should I write about the honors (awards..) that I could not mention in the honors section due to # limit?

- I also went to a math camp in USA. The camp was held in a University. So I filled "Colleges and Universities section" ("If you have attended any colleges since 9th grade, including summer schools or enrichment programs hosted on a college campus") with the math camp. Should I write details about the camp in Additional Information section instead of the essay I wrote above?

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THANK YOU VERY MUCH EVEN FOR READING THIS!!!!

Undergraduate / [Being a Leader] #1 Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk [8]

Hello I live in Canada and am applying for USA colleges as a senior student.
My English skill is not great (since I am not native English-speaking), so it would be great if I can get any suggestions and helps.

I tried my best to write a piece that represents a significant experience, but I do not think the essay conveys my idea as I intended. I really want to write my experience as a leader in my computer science class team and why it did not work well. I would like to write how the experience made me think of the hardship of being a "leader" and made me become a better leader. Any help will be really a great help.

Here it is:

Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.

Being a Leader
If you were ever a group leader, you probably would know the hardship when managing the group members to do their parts of the group work. Many groups, especially for school assignments, usually consist of half idle members and half diligent members. Some do not care of their grades in classes, but some do have high expectations. Some are not interested in accomplishing their work as a member, but some are willing to finish not only their own parts, but also other members' if necessary. Because of members with ranging passions, a competent group leader is vital for a successful completion of a group work.

I had a dream of becoming a leader of a software team that develops amazing, attractive software that benefits billions of people around the world. I thought it would be really fun to cooperate with brilliant developers and designers to make great computer software like StarCraft, OS's, and Microsoft Office. To reach closer to my dream, I had wished to have experiences as a leader in a software development team. Last semester of my high school, I fast-tracked grade 12 computer science course. On the first day of the class, fortunately, my teacher, who was a fan of group work, divided the class into four teams and selected team leaders who are going to be in charge of the teams. I volunteered for the position excitingly, but without knowing, "with great power, come great responsibility." We worked on many assignments ranging from a small-sized white box testing to a large-scaled game development. On small projects, which could be done in a day, our group did a great job. However, when it came to a large-sized project, I felt disappointed of myself: I could not manage team members efficiently. We had to develop Blackjack game with a graphical user interface using OOP (Object-Oriented Programming) paradigm. We divided the whole game into small components: Player, Card, GUI, and many other necessary classes for the game. Then after discussing details, we distributed each component to each member. As we did not have much time during school, we met after school to check what we did on a daily base. On the first meeting after school, however, some of the member did not work on their parts and some even did not start. Also there were members who did not have basics programming skills. The most crucial problem was that many members did not follow the UML (Unified Modeling Language) diagram that we created to design the details; our source codes were not compatible to each other's. With many problems, our project ended to be unsuccessful and produced an incomplete piece of Blackjack game.

Thinking back to the experience, I think my team could do better if I was a better leader. If I examined the ability of each member before assigning their parts, I could find out members who have weak skills. I could assist them to learn what they need and I could make them join school's computer science club to increase their skill. Also I had to find out their strength so that I could distribute works efficiently. For the idle members, I had to seriously talk about their problems individually instead of giving up. Finally I could use developing tools such as Gantt Chart to manage the schedule and Google docs to share documents. I believe this experience, although unsuccessful, will be a variable nutrient for me to be a better leader and it will assist me to make my dream a reality.