Undergraduate / "My life in China; I appreciate my own culture" - Common App [3]

Please be as brutal as you can be and help me improve this essay >____<"

According to Robert Fritz, "If you limit your choices only to what seems possible and reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that left is compromise". At the age of 15, I made a choice to move to China. Unlike many people I know, I was given a second chance to mend my ways and create a new beginning for myself again. I knew who and what I was leaving behind in order to venture on this exciting, life-changing experience but I remained firm with my plans, as I know that the end result of this choice would change me into a better person than I was.

From the moment I stepped foot on China's ground; I knew that I had to kiss my old life goodbye. Everything in China was different, from the food to their way of living, and in order to be able to live with the Chinese people, I have to move forward and be accustomed to their way of life. There were a few challenges I faced while living in China, the first and foremost was the language barrier between the Chinese people and I. The only form of communication I had with the Chinese people were hand signals, and even that could be tiresome for sometimes not many could understand the message I was trying to put across. I was also taken advantage of especially when shopping at their flea market; many times I was overcharge for a pair of shoes or a piece of clothing even after bargaining.

China is also known for their exotic delicacies in which I find very hard to swallow when I first came to the country. Due to this, I fell sick on the first week of arriving in China. French writer Simone de Beauvoir wrote in The Long March (1958); "The poet Ai Ts'ing told me one evening at table, 'we eat everything; everything on four legs except the table; and except for our friends and relatives, everything on two'". In the corner one of Beijing's famous shopping area, Wangfujing, lies a small snack street that has a selection of exotic food. I have to admit that seeing those snacks had left me speechless for I have never seen a fried scorpion or fried seahorses in my life before.

However, despite all odd the things I have discovered while living in China, there were also moments in which I cherished the most. I was enrolled in an international school where there are diversity in students and teachers. I met people that have molded me into a young lady of tomorrow. Unlike the teachers in my previous school in Singapore, the teachers here believed in me despite my mediocre grades or lack of enthusiasm in most classes. This has helped me change my perception towards the importance of education and serve as a backbone for me to excel in all my classes. My classmates came from different countries with different cultural backgrounds and working collaboratively with them on projects in school has enabled me to develop people's skills and self-awareness as it allows me to have a clear perception of who I really am and how the other people perceive me to be. In terms of the language barrier, I was given the opportunity to study Mandarin that has allowed me to create a bond with the Chinese people in China. Thus, the choice I made 3 years ago has helped me appreciate my own culture, the world outside of from Singapore and most importantly it has successfully changed me into a better person.

Undergraduate / "pleasant location and diversified community" - how you became interested in BU. [6]

Short Essay: In five or six sentences, tell us how you first became interested in BU and what steps you have taken to learn more about us.

When I started the college search, I listed the things I want in a school. I wanted to be in a school that has a diversified community, a school that offers great amenities, mainly laboratories, since I intend to major in Chemistry and a school in an urban setting. I can honestly say that even though there were many schools that met my criteria, only BU stood out for its pleasant location in the heart of the city. When a BU representative visited our school, I eagerly attended the presentation because I needed to further educate myself on BU. After the presentation, I had a chat with the BU representative whom I regarded to be a valuable source of information and he encouraged me to take the risk and believe that BU might be a place for me.

Essay #1: Given what you know about Boston University, what do you hope to accomplish as an undergraduate here? Please respond in an essay of no more than 500 words.

Many have asked, "Why Chemistry? And most importantly why in BU?"

Well it is simply because Chemistry is a subject that opens doors to many fulfilling career opportunities, such as a crime scene investigator or a pharmaceutical chemist. In my opinion, chemistry is the most engaging and fascinating subject, because through conducting laboratory experiments, one possesses the opportunity to question conventional theories and create theories of their own. With the vast resources BU offers, there are many things that I can accomplish throughout my 4 years in BU. For example, I could continue my research on the concentration of ethanol affecting the rate of reaction of starch hydrolysis by using -amylase. I have started on this research a year ago for my Extended Essay, the research encircles around the effect of humans behavior under the influence of alcohol. I find this research interesting because it gives me the opportunity to understand the reasons why people enjoy drinking. Through this research, I managed to gather data that covers many aspect of why people consume alcohol. However, this research is focused more on the chemical reaction between the body system and alcohol. However, I could not come to a proper conclusion due to time constraints and lack of resources. I believe that in BU I could further improve my experiment by using isotonic solution, which is a solution closer to blood or maybe use blood itself. This is a good consideration as the results I might be achieving can relate to the biochemical reaction rather than the results I achieve by using water, which has a high degree of hydrogen bonding and that low alcohol concentration may not be affected. Thus in BU, I will not only have the opportunity to finish a research that I started but also a chance to conduct experiments with people with different views than mine and amend each other's hypotheses to produce better results.

Please feel free to criticize it because I want to learn from my mistake and make this short essay better.