Undergraduate / "new perspectives and fresh ingredients" - CommonApp- Topic of Your Choice [4]

Hey guys, I posted this before, but now it's not showing up in any searches or anything, and I really need feedback...

Smell the frying onions, lemon juice, and baking bread. Hear cumin seeds sputter in oil, the bubbling of soup, and the hiss of water as it meets hot oil. Taste tart pink ginger, sweet jaggery, and hot paprika. Welcome to my kitchen!

My kitchen combines all the elements of my world into a little space from which exciting experiments, smells, sounds, and tastes emerge. It is my chemistry lab where ingredients react, mix, burn, and turn into delicious or unsavory meals.

My kitchen divides itself into two halves. The first half consists of the exotic spices, such as mint powder, crushed mustard and saffron. These are my Indian ingredients; the ones that I am most familiar with. They lie in chaos; they are combined in chaos, the very essence of the seven years I spent in India. The second half of ingredients exists in order: clear, defined, order. They are drawn from my birthplace, America. This half includes the all purpose flour, mozzarella cheese, and eggs. These ingredients are combined neatly, precisely, and by the book.

Cooking is the lab experiment of my life, the mixture of my upbringings in two very different countries. At times, I use my Indian ingredients, combining them in dangerous and flavourful medleys that make my tongue tingle: spicy savouries, crunchy fritters, and tangy chutneys. They require no recipe, instead prompting the use of my senses, intuition, and quick additions of instinctive flavours. They are messy, they spill and splatter, pop and crackle. I have developed the tolerance for this chaos, and the spontaneity to take the chances it offers. At other times I use my American ingredients, with all their precision and neatness. I need recipes to use them; I meticulously plan the process several times beforehand. They reflect the skills I learned after moving back to the USA-- organization, balance, and leadership.The presence of specific recipes encourages me to try new items; the comforting base of a plan results in new explorations.

The two halves of my kitchen often co-operate and collaborate. My spicy Indian tendencies flavour my American cuisine as I liberally drop green chillies on pizza, or saute everything from soup to eggplant in ginger. I bring my American friends to the swirling colours of the annual Indian folk dance festival, and have a great time. While emceeing at the well- planned Youth Toastmasters event, my experience with uncertainty comes in handy when things don't go according to plan. Of course, the two halves also collide and clash. My Mom never lets me put mushrooms in any Indian curry, nor can I bring eggs into the house during religious festivals. I have never been allowed to experience a typical teenage girl sleepover. I refuse to break Western tradition as well; I will never put any Indian flavoring in cakes or cookies. However, I have to admit that the clashes and collisions are what make my kitchen interesting; They bring new perspectives and fresh ingredients.

While I think of the two halves of my kitchen as complete, they are soon to become two-thirds. I eagerly and somewhat anxiously anticipate the third addition to my kitchen. It holds new skills to be learned, new experiences to be explored, and, most importantly, new ingredients for my pantry.

Undergraduate / Since I was four, I have seen my mother make yogurt. Chemistry/Biology major at Hopkins. [3]

Prompt: Johns Hopkins offers 50 majors across the schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering. On this supplement, we ask you to identify one or two that you might like to pursue here. Why did you choose the way you did? If you are undecided, why didn't you choose? (If any past courses or academic experiences influenced your decision, you may include them in your essay.)"

Since I was four, I have seen my mother make yogurt. She stirs in old yogurt with milk, heats the mixture, and then covers it in a warm place. Seemingly magically, the next day, fresh, solid, yogurt awaits us! The process baffled me, as did many other kitchen rituals. How did milk turn into creamy yogurt? Why did pizza dough expand? As I entered fifth grade chemistry and biology, I began to understand these processes. The yeast we kept in the fridge was alive. There were bacteria in the yogurt, descendants of the original strain in the culture that my mother had borrowed from a neighbour several years ago.

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Undergraduate / Skills from two cultures: Rutgers Diversity Essay [3]

Prompt: Rutgers University is a vibrant community of people with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. How would you benefit from and contribute to such an environment? Consider variables such as your talents, travels, leadership activities, volunteer services, and cultural experiences. Only personal essays submitted via our website will be considered. You may enter a maximum of 3800 characters including spaces.

I was an ordinary American first grader, who had pizza parties and went trick-or-treating on Halloween, except that I was Indian, and my parents had just decided to move to India. I was intensely disappointed; I had visited India during the summer and while the vacations had been fun the thought of living there forever was not particularly appealing. However, there was no arguing with my parents and soon, I saw the bright lights of Bangalore, India, from the window of the airplane.

Bangalore, like the rest of India was chaos at its best. A first glance would yield no apparent scheme of organisation, something I despised at first. I hoped to move back to the USA immediately. A year passed by, and then two, and I realised that at this point, my parents loved India too much to move back. We were going to be in India forever.

India is regarded as a land of rich heritage and diversity. This is absolutely true. Every part of India is different and beautiful, and I learned this on our trips to all four corners of India. I saw the intricately hand carved temples of the South, the pink palaces of the north, and the glacier mouth of the Ganges. But I was not a tourist, I was living in India, and as a result, I learned and saw much more than the culture.

In India I developed a strong sense of freedom and independence, as the atmosphere required me to be self-sufficient. I could play wherever I wanted: in the streets, on sand piles or during the heavy monsoon rains. As I grew older, I could take auto rikshaws and the local bus to anywhere within Bangalore. I began to develop my knowledge of the local language both at school and by exposure, since I had to be able to communicate with people by myself instead of depending on my parents. In the haphazardness of India, I learned tolerance. So what if the bus was late? So what if the constant construction resulted in ever-present dirt piles? So what if there were no sidewalks and I could be hit by a speeding car any second? I learned to live with imperfection, to accept that nothing would always run according to plan. India worked without a plan, and so could I.

When I was thirteen, my parents decided to move back to the USA. USA was planned cities, organized traffic and clear instructions. It was here that I learned organization, leadership, and the importance of helping people. I learned to take advantage of opportunity. I participated in the Toastmasters Youth Leadership Program, which removed my fear of public speaking and enabled me to be a good leader. When I emceed at our graduation ceremony, I realised the importance of a plan, and the need for an event to progress smoothly. I began volunteering at HindiUSA, an organization dedicated to teaching Hindi to children in America. I kept in touch with my Hindi skills as well as gained experience in teaching.

I became involved in martial arts classes, and fell in love with the performance, precision, and balance. Balance was integral to my life, as I equalized my Indian and American personalities. I could not allow them to go into conflict.

I am still that American girl who loves pizza parties and trick-or-treating on Halloween, but with a twist. I am also Indian, not just in race, but in skills. I have the tolerance, independence, and spontaneity of India, and the balance, organisation, and leadership of the USA. I look forward to bringing these skills to Rutgers to add to its vibrant crowd. At Rutgers, I can participate in activities aligned with my interests, such as the RU Martial Arts Club and RU Toastmasters. I can bring my talents to these organizations and develop them further. Rutgers provides a large base of opportunity to explore, a base from which I have much to gain, and much to give.

Undergraduate / Expressing my inner world -My Kitchen- UNC Chapel Hill Prompt [5]

1. People find many ways to express their inner world. Some write novels; others paint, perform, or debate; still others design elegant solutions to complex mathematical problems. How do you express your inner world, and how does the world around you respond?

My kitchen combines all the elements of my world into a little space from which exciting experiments, smells, sounds, and tastes emerge. It is my chemistry lab where ingredients combine, react, mix, burn, and turn into delicious meals. I try to separate my kitchen into two halves.

The first half consists of the seemingly exotic spices-mint powder, turmeric, chilli powder, crushed mustard, saffron, and asafoetida. Along with these come grated coconut, minced coriander, fresh spinach, purple eggplant, and red onions. These are my Indian ingredients, the ones that I am most familiar with. I combine them in dangerous and flavourful medleys that make my tongue tingle- spicy savouries, crunchy fritters, and tangy chutneys. They lie in chaos; they are combined in chaos, the very essence of the seven years I spent growing up in India. I know these ingredients well, I experiment extensively with them; they are the soul of my cooking.

The second half of ingredients exists in order: clear, defined, order. These ingredients are drawn from my birthplace, America. This half comprises the all purpose flour, cheese, graham crackers, baking soda, apple sauce, and eggs. These combinations are extremely precise, neat and by the book; I do not know these ingredients as well. But I enjoy their products-the cakes, cookies, and tarts. I enjoy their sweetness, predictability and organisation.

I spread my two cultures, and my experience with them, through my cooking. Every school party kicks off a cooking spree in the kitchen, with eggs, flour and chocolate rapidly being whisked and baked into delightful concoctions. The effort is worth it as I see people eat and enjoy what I have made. At home, the Indian ingredients prevail as I mix pureed tomatoes and onions with sautéed potatoes and spice-stuffed eggplants to form a delicious curry that my family eats and appreciates. The delights that arise from making a successful meal are happy moments that brighten my world. When disaster occurs in the kitchen, I cry over the mess, but eventually I cook again, all the disasters provide something to learn.

Cooking is the lab experiment of my life, the mixture of my upbringings in two separate countries. My inner world is split into two halves that forever collide and clash, no matter how much I try to keep them apart. I experience both my cultures as I cook Indian and American. I taste them both. They make up me, my kitchen, and my world.