Undergraduate / UPenn- Describe the courses of study and the unique characteristics [3]

I would be very happy if you read my essay and corrected the grammatical mistakes I'm bound to have in it. Also, tell me what you think of it generally. Constructive criticism is more welcome than praises, so please feel free to say anything you think about it, I'm not sensitive when it comes to my own works. The deadline is also looming dangerously close.

Describe the courses of study and the unique characteristics of the University of Pennsylvania that most interest you. Why do these interests make you a good match for Penn?

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For me, moving to the United States to study is an incredible life-altering opportunity itself, but attending the best business school in the world would be really astounding and beyond anything I have done in my life.

What makes the Wharton School special, is how the undergraduate program combines liberal arts with business and theory with practical knowledge. This integration would enable me to gain comprehensive knowledge about the world of business and at the same time, feed my hunger for more knowledge in fields like social science, history and philosophy. Likewise, the program would enable me to learn the technical and practical skills of business, and at the same time, study the abstract theories of economics.

This versatility is important because I think that in order to think outside the box, one must also know what is outside the box. That is, to know about the world outside your expertise.

It is very simple; if you want to invent something new and unique, you need to know how to think differently from other people, because if you think like everyone else, you will only come up with the same ideas as everyone else. Only a person with broad knowledge of various fields is able to think outside the box, because he knows and comprehends the world the world outside. Thus, he knows how to think differently.

Combining the teaching of the underlying technicalities, patterns and methodologies with the teaching of the ability to think beyond the norm in approaching problems, the Wharton School puts its students into a position where they can create something brand new. A position where they can change the world.

At the moment my interests are very much in finance, but I have no idea where they will be in four years. One thing, however, is clear to me, wherever I will go, I want to break boundaries and do something no one else has ever done. I want to attend business school because owning your own business is the best way fulfill my dream of creating something unique, something that is me.

All the learning does not happen in classrooms, equally important is the learning that happens in interacting with other students. As the University of Pennsylvania is packed with intelligent and ambitious students, the possibilities of having interesting and enriching conversations are unlimited.

Just imagining that I could wind up in a heated debate about the economy or politics with an another student gets me excited and enthusiastic. We are all kids who are passionately interested in the same things yet we think differently about them. I am always eager to find out what has led my comrade to think the other way. I want to broaden my perspectives and play with new ideas. I want to talk to different people with different views. I think this is the best way to test your own ideas and views, how will they handle the scrutiny of other people?

The competitive aspect also attracts me to Wharton. I really think that living and studying with brilliant minds who are my age and interested in the same things I am is extremely motivating. They are the perfect contenders. To me, competition is the greatest motivation of all, and the competition at Wharton would push me the furthest.

Aside from enriching myself academically, because the university is so well organized in groups and different events, I would also wind up with people who have the same interests in other areas like literature and music. I also see myself joining the Scandinavian Society of the University of Pennsylvania to promote my Finnishness. I find the fact that someone foreign would be interested in my culture absurdly fantastic. There are no words to express the enthusiasm I have for educating people who are interested in Finland and smashing the stereotypes people have about Finnish people.

The top notch alumni of Penn intrigues me as well. I think it would be very astounding for me to go to the same school Steven Cohen, Daniel Och, James Dinan and many others went. These are the people who have gone into careers that are very similar to the one I aspire to have. Following their footsteps by going to the same university will help me to reach my ambitious goal of going as far as they have gone, and even more importantly, surpass their achievements.

The Wharton Leadership Ventures and Wharton's overall focus on leadership would give me important tools to use in my professional and personal life. When the time comes when I will be starting by own business, I need to have the ability to build trust on my employees and on myself. As a business owner, I also have to have the courage to take risks. These are skills that cannot be learned by reading a textbook, instead, they develop from real life experiences. Going to an university that understands this fact and constructs its education on it would advance me in a very profound way.

I see attending Wharton as the logical extension of my interests and aspirations.

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I might be adding something extra to it since it's far from the 7900 limit.

Thank you in advance.

Undergraduate / Common App Essay (Anti-Americanism) [5]

The prompt is:

Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.

Anti-Americanism

It's probably the biggest hypocrisies I've witnessed in my life. Brought up in Finland, ever since I was little, I was told not to be a racist, not to have any prejudices, and not to believe in any stereotypes. As I grew older, I came to know that the people who taught me these morals didn't act upon them themselves. For these people, making fun of people was totally okay, as long as they were Americans.

During the two and a half years I've spent there, my high school has served as a playground for those who foster the Anti-American sentiment. I believe I have not sat through one history, social studies or philosophy lesson where some student has not found a smart place to cast his or her anti-American slander.

"Yeah, it's good that American microwave manuals include the article that tells not to put a cat into the microwave, Americans are too dumb to figure out it themselves," one bloke pointed out, but I guess the saddest part is that other students actually praised his witty take on the subject. If, however, this student were to call Arabs or Chinese people stupid, he would quickly find himself in the principal's office, talking about how important tolerance is.

The teachers are the worst, they just keep pouring fuel to the fire. My social studies teacher always makes sure she relates everything about our society to the United States, which according to her stories, is like the one depicted in old westerns, except that the Indians have been partially replaced with immigrants from the Middle East and Mexico.

No matter what class I'm in, the Second Amendment, the refusal to enter the Kyoto Protocol, the presidential election process etc. are, without any kind of discussion, denounced and used as examples of the country's collective stupidity. Then, universally positive ideas like freedom and liberty are taught to be "not part of the United States of today". Needless to say, this is a very unhealthy environment for constructive debate.

When I listen to the teachers, it seems that every sentence that starts with "In America" ends up to be something negative and exaggerated.

"In America, the unemployed are starving because they have no social security."

"In America, poor people can't seek higher education."

"In America, employees can be fired without asking anybody anything."

My absolute favorite comment, however, is the one my Finnish teacher stated when she scolded some of my classmates for writing Finland with lower case F: "Please write America with lower case A if you have to disgrace some country."

And It doesn't stop even when I go to home; every time someone American does something foolish on a reality TV show, my sister is waiting with the classic "Americans are so stupid."

Am I supposed to teach these people some open-mindedness? Is it my responsibility to teach my ethics teacher the principles of tolerance? I really don't know. All I know is that I have to defend that what I think is right, I have to have the courage to disagree, and I have to be open yet skeptical for new ideas. This approach is the exact opposite to the one taught in my high school.

While I love my country for the security, welfare and the people, I truly think that the Finnish school system has failed me when it comes to objective teaching.

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I'm not totally happy with my essay, I think it lacks a certain something.

Along with the grammatical corrections, I would love to hear your general comments about the essay. I would actually love some constructive criticism rather than praises. Should I keep it this way? Should I attack the subject from a different angle? Should I try something totally different?