Undergraduate / 'Being able to see new places' - common app transfer essay [3]

Please provide a statement (250 words minimum) that addresses your reasons for transferring and the objectives you hope to achieve.

Home. It is not just a four letter word about where a person lives, but it is also a place where we discover who we are. Though living at home for the past 19 years has given me a place to grow as a person, I want to encounter different parts of the world because I don't want to be confined within my set lifestyle and perspectives on life. The world is a place where there are thousands of different points of view, from what is right and wrong to what is the best food out there. Living in the same vibrant city that I was born in, I am forever grateful for the chance San Francisco gave me to encounter people with different thoughts and personalities. Still, life is about taking chances and discovering what is out there and embracing it.

By transferring, I am hoping to take a chance and discover what is out there for me. Though my whole life has been within the same city, transferring to a different college will give me a way to find out who I really am. Am I the girl who loves to eat pasta and Chinese food because that is what I know? Or instead am I the girl that wants to travel the world and see many places, from China to Mexico to Thailand? The different possibilities out there show that everyone in the world is not the same. We have different thoughts, likes and dislikes and ways of learning. Being able to see new places will give me a chance to discover that the world is not just a small place where everything is set in stone. College is a place where people learn about new ideas everyday and it is where I hope to find exactly who I am.

Undergraduate / biology intended major-UC transfer app [2]

My interest in the field of biology didn't start off with a great field trip during middle school or even a single science teacher all throughout my school years. Instead, it inadvertently came from sports, from volleyball to basketball and to every imaginable sport out there. Playing since I was little and even now coaching in my community, it has given me a way to unconsciously see how far a body can be pushed until it eventually breaks. Throughout all my years playing, I've seen teammates go down with injuries after injuries and end up struggling with their recovery. It would take a long time for them to recover and by then, the season would be over. However, it's not just sports injuries that I've seen. Many people that I know have been injured due to a variety of reasons. With a degree in biology, I hope to enter graduate school for physical therapy to help others recover from their injuries to live a better overall life.

Truthfully, biology was never on the top of my list of intended majors during college. Though science, especially biology, has always been an interest of mine, I was still never quite sure if that was a path that I wanted to follow in my life. However, during the summer of 2010, I began to volunteer at St. Francis Hospital. This allowed me to interact with other people and I eventually got a chance to volunteer in their sports medicine department, which gave me a chance to do something that I realized that I loved. The department treated not just sports injuries, but also everyday problems, such as knee, ankle and wrist. To see people have the ability to slowly overcome their injuries gave me a path that I could choose to do with my life. It wasn't that the people healed and quickly went on with their lives that helped me decide, but the determination that the people had in trying to overcome limitations put on them. During college, I became an active member in the Kinesiology Student Association to learn more about physical therapy and they have allowed me to further my interest in both physical therapy and biology. It gave me a chance to volunteer with others in the field and learn that it wasn't just about healing others, but to help them continue to live their lives fully without regret. With my interest in science and sports rehab combined with a degree in biology, I could become a physical therapist to help other people recover from injuries, whether from sports or just everyday life.

Undergraduate / 'the streets of Hong Kong' - UC transfer app- out of my comfort zone [3]

Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?

People always say home is where the heart is, but what if my "home" is no single physical place. Though a home can be considered as the house that I live in, it is also the many different places that I have visited throughout my lifetime. It's walking through the city of Hong Kong with my grandparents every summer, traveling to new places with my family or even just sitting in the car waiting for the next great adventure to happen. This love for the unknown and new experiences will always be who I am. It has given me a new perspective on life because not everyone shares the same beliefs and traditions as you do. Growing up, I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by many different viewpoints on life, which gave me the opportunity to be more accepting to other people's ideas. By traveling to the many new places throughout life, I was able to see other ways of living, which helped me break out of my set comfort zone.

When I was younger, I hated trying anything new. Why try something new when I could be happy with what I already knew? Why risk feeling disappointment and embarrassment when the old could give me the comfort of familiarity? My comfort zone gave me a way to make myself feel like I belonged and safe from the dangers and humiliation of the outside world. However after backing out of bungee jumping with my family in Macau during one summer, I realized that I might have missed out on my one chance in life to do it. The regret that I was never going to be able to have this opportunity to have this ever again helped me realize that I only get one chance in life, whether to bungee jump, pet a tiger cub or even just go to senior prom. Eventually this led to my love for travel and experiencing new places. It didn't have to be a different country or even an airplane ride across the country. All I wanted was to just see different places in the world, whether Europe, the East Coast or even just a city 2 hours away for a day.

Home can be thought of as a place where one feels most comfortable. Eventually, my home became all the different places that I visited. It was the streets of Hong Kong. It was the freeways up to Reno, Nevada. Surprisingly, it was also all of the plane rides during summer vacations. My love for new adventures helped me become who I am today because I wouldn't be the person who tries something new so that I wouldn't feel like I missed out on something that could have changed my life. I would not be a person who is open to learning about new ideas to help follow my dreams of becoming a physical therapist. And I would definitely not be the person who has found a home, no matter where she goes.