Undergraduate / Photoshop/Digital Art-Commonapp Extracurricular Essay [5]

TOPIC: Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences in the space below (1000 character maximum).

The process of making digital art is like designing an onion: it involves a ton of layers. In the beginning, everything looks like a mess; unappealing shapes and clashing colors fill the canvas. But as layer upon layer is added, the shapes gradually become recognizable-a mountain there, a ledge here-and the colors start mixing and blending like a beautiful symphony of music. Each layer makes a subtle adjustment to what is already there. Taken alone, it is barely noticeable, but after many, many layers of this, the result is a breathtaking product. The once chaotic canvas has turned into a masterpiece.

Learning is like making a piece of art-it may begin with just a fact or method, but with each lesson and each practice, depth and breadth are built upon that initial information; the fact starts gaining aspects and perspectives that I had never considered before. After the last layer has been added, what started off as a random, seemingly insignificant fact metamorphoses into a gem of knowledge and understanding.

General comments and criticisms are appreciated! :) But I need advice on the last two sentences of the first paragraph, starting with "...the result is a breathtaking product." I was wondering if people could suggest a more eloquent way of writing the last two sentences so it's more vivid and makes a bigger impact on the reader? Also, how are my descriptions? Do I portray the process of making art and gaining knowledge insightfully?

I'll be happy to look over your essays for you too ^^

Undergraduate / 'Scars become scabs' -Commonapp Main Essay [6]

Topic of your choice:

Here's the funny thing about scars: they start as cuts or scrapes that eventually become scabs. When the scabs fall off, the skin is healed. However, while most cuts heal and vanish like fleeting ghosts, scars remain. I don't know why some injuries disappear while others turn into scars, permanently engraving themselves in the skin, but I get this feeling that scars are from the more important injuries and our bodies are telling us something when scars form. It's almost as if the scars are calling out to us, warning us against the foolish deeds that created them; scars serve as remembrances of our mistakes so that we may prevent making the same ones in the future.

I have a peculiar scar on my right calf: it's shaped like a circle, about the same size as my pupil. The scar arches out slightly, a lone hill among a barren landscape of skin. Its texture is bumpy-if you gloss your finger over it, you'll feel the subtle peaks and valleys. I don't quite remember how I received the scrape; I do recall, however, that as soon as the scab had formed, I became terribly interested in it. As a third grader, it is unimaginably difficult to leave such things alone. The scab looked and felt weird. So I kept touching it, and picking at it, hoping to remove the blemish from my immaculate skin. My mother told me not to mess with it: "If you leave it alone, the scab will eventually disappear by itself; however, if you keep picking at it, it'll leave a permanent mark on your skin," she informed me in an amused tone. At 9 years old, I couldn't make heads or tails of her advice, which seemed absurd. What kind of scab would fall off of its own accord? But my intuition told me she was right. After all, hadn't she always been? Yet I chose not to listen to her advice, thinking that I knew better. The result? The same scar that sits in the middle of my right calf today.

I must say, I'm incredibly proud of having a scar on my leg (I've heard that apparently, girls dig guys with scars). More importantly, this was the first moment in my life that I learned to keep an open mind-the first time I was exposed to the idea that our predispositions can affect our judgment. We can be so sure of ourselves and our beliefs at times that we automatically reject differing points of view, unwilling to listen to other equally valuable opinions.

Nietzche once said, "There is no immaculate perception." These days, before I participate in socratic seminars or take a position on an issue, I remind myself of my biases and preconceptions. Of course, there are times when I forget my scar and why I got it. But maybe sometimes biases aren't so bad; as I'm typing this, I have already developed one towards the University of Pennsylvania.

Thanks for the critique in advance and please be as critical as possible!! :)

Undergraduate / 'I want to major in statistics' - UNC Chapel Hill Discovery Essay [NEW]

What's your latest discovery? What do you hope to learn next?

RINNNGGGG. I walk into the classroom as the bell rings-a room plain as a daily routine. The scent of a bit too much air freshener lingers in the air. Surrounding me are colorful posters pasted on the walls. A dozen note cards filled with quotes and axioms reside on the posters. One by one, everyone sits down as our teacher Mr. Richardson enters briskly with a smile on his face. Not wasting a second, he begins, "Alright everybody, give me a topic-animals doing something silly. Platypus's riding unicycles? Ok, let's say that the mean time platypuses can stay on a unicycle is distributed normally with a mean of..." -my AP Statistics class has started.

Statistics covers a wide variety of subjects, but of them all, measures of center is by far the most repetitive. Everyone has already heard the terms mean, median, and mode a hundred times before they take AP statistics. Yet it was a lesson on measures of center that proved to be one of the most insightful moments in the class.

He started off with a story: An unemployed man was trying to find out the average yearly salary of pencil sellers. So he asked three of his friends, who came back with completely different numbers: $125000, $40000, and $15000. Why did he receive three different answers? More importantly, which of these numbers was the best representation of reality? Each of his friends had chosen a different way of determining the average: the first chose to report the mean ($125000), which was skewed right due to the big salaries of the CEO and upper management; the second chose to report the median ($40000); and the third chose to report the mode ($15000). In the end, the median was the most correct, because it is the unbiased estimator.

I was amazed by the contradictory "facts" that could be presented based upon the same data. It made me realize that contrary to popular sentiment, nothing is absolute in life, not even mathematics. People trust numbers because they think that numbers are "cold hard facts", but in reality, numbers can be just as subjective as a personal opinion. The more abstract side of mathematics scared me at first; I had always taken solace in the fact that in math, there was only one right answer. Finding this belief to be untrue was like finding out the sky is green. Initially, I wrestled with this new concept, unable to come to terms with it. In time, however, the subjectivity of numerical data grew on me. I found it fun to search for the statistically correct answer among all the "right" answers.

Therefore, I want to major in statistics so that I can learn more about the synthesis and interpretation of subjective numbers and data. Although there is a degree of uncertainty within numbers, there is still a "more correct" answer, and looking for that answer among the other seemingly correct answers is a challenge that I look forward to facing in the future.

Please be as harsh as possible (you will not hurt my feelings, I promise)! Thank you!