Undergraduate /
'My sister and I were born in Morocco' - Letter of special circumstances for college [15]
Describe how a Purdue education will help you achieve your personal and/or professionI still remember that fateful day back in 2009 when my twin sister and I boarded a plane from Morocco to the United States. We were 15. It was our first time on a plane. Burned in my brain was the expression on my mother's face: anxiety, hope, happiness, sadness, love, a confluence of emotion amidst a sea of tears. She had committed the ultimate selfless act: a mother giving up her children for a better future not knowing when/if she would ever see us again while we were still children. It was an act of heart-rending pain for us too. For all practical purposes, we were giving up our mother, the only parent we had known.
My first priority in life today is to get a college education. So much have we sacrificed in our quest for a better education. My background is one of such hardship and deprivation. College is my only way out.
The past few years I have spent in high school opened me to new opportunities, such as being captain of the tennis team and working part-time at a pizza shop. I acquired a balance between academic and social activities. In college I will be able to continue this at an even larger scale. The combination of knowledge acquisition and the social experience really entices me.
The stepping stone to a better and fuller life, one where I could reach for the stars and realize my fullest potential, is college. My academic goal is to study engineering, potentially electrical or mechanical engineering, and later pursue these interests at the graduate level. Purdue has a renowned engineering program at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
I feel naturally drawn to engineering disciplines for a variety of reasons. All of engineering is predicated on mathematics. Engineering is the direct real-world application of mathematical concepts to find solutions to real-world problems. Math is my favorite subject; it helps that I am a straight A student in it. There is a universality to it that I find seductive. It transcends language barriers like no other academic subject can and is not so reliant on the medium of instruction. This is what naturally drew me to math here in the U.S. since English is my 3rd language, after Arabic and French. Pursuing engineering in college keeps mathematics as my central academic core, while I work towards undergraduate and graduate degrees that have great relevance to the real-world and are also highly employable. Other hallmarks that I believe would make me an excellent engineer is that I have a highly analytical and inquiring mind, always curious to know how the world around me works. I feel driven to find solutions when confronted with problems, even seemingly mundane ones like technology problems that confound our lives. The daily work of an engineer is to employ his or her analytical mind to find solutions to complex problems.
The size of a university also matters a lot to me. A larger institution like Purdue, with its graduate program, permits greater opportunities for growth and scholarship. It allows for a greater diversity in the interplay of ideas that makes a university truly unique. Academic scholarship does not occur in a vacuum. It requires close collaboration and a free, diverse exchange of ideas in order to push the limits of knowledge. Faculty plays perhaps the most significant role in a student's academic experience and Purdue's engineering program has gifted, accomplished faculty from around the world. Of course, an exceptional faculty with the greatest minds would be wasted if they taught courses with very large class sizes. It is one of Purdue's goals to deliberately maintain a low student-to-faculty ratio of 14:1 which is one of the best I've seen amongst the larger research institutions in the nation.
It was heart-warming for me to see that Purdue values diversity and makes a very concerted attempt to recruit for it. Your engineering school has established the Minority Engineering Program (MEP), which seeks students from underrepresented minority backgrounds. Being of African descent, it is only natural for me to gravitate to a school where I would feel valued for my ideas, my diversity, and for who I am.
If Purdue were to grant me admission, you would be rewarded with a hard-working, intelligent student who contributes to the university and furthers your academic enterprise. You would be making my dreams come true and throwing me a lifeline, especially considering the hardships I have had to endure in my life (Further details are in my enclosed Letter of Special Circumstance).
Last para: Make mom proud ... and to provide for her .... COLLEGE GIVES STABILITY ... FINANCIAL FREEDOM ... WHICH, IN TURN, PROVIDES CHOICES AND FREEDOMS ... TO THEN BE ABLE TO IMPACT THE WORLD ... TO MAKE MEANINGFUL CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE WORLD .... AND FINALLY AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, THIS WILL ALLOW YOU TO PROVIDE FOR YOUR MOM ... TO PAY HER BACK, SO TO SPEAK, FOR ALL THAT SHE HAS SACRIFICED SO SELFLESSLY.
( My teacher had an idea: what if my mom (in my imagination) atteded my college graduation. it could also include that will be the first i will be seeing her in probably 5 years , because i wont be able to go back as an undergrad, because i dont have any money and she doesnt either).
