Undergraduate / Doctor of Pharmacy Application [3]

Hello!

I am looking for some feedback on the content as well as errors in my personal essay for the Doctor of Pharmacy Application. Thanks in advance!

pursuing the Doctor of Pharmacy degree

Topic: Why did you select pharmacy as a career and how does the Doctor of Pharmacy degree relate to your immediate and long-term professional goals? Describe how your personal, educational, and professional background will help you achieve your goals. The personal essay is an important part of your application for admission and provides you with an opportunity for you to clearly and effectively express your idea.

In elementary school, parents, teachers and adults always ask the children "What do you want to be when you grow up?". Some would reply "police officer", "teacher" or "scientist", but I never had an immediate answer. I would always change my mind and change my dream career to what some of the others would say but in reality, I had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life at 5-years old.

As a child growing up, I was interested in science. My parents bought me wacky lab kits and books about how science is present in our everyday lives, but my interest in the sciences took flight when I took general chemistry my sophomore year in high school. I thought it was fascinating how a simple collision between a couple particles could change the entire chemical structure of a molecule and how they interacted with each other. This love of fundamental chemistry has allowed me to take one of the most challenging classes my high school had offered: AP Chemistry, as well as 3 other AP classes. I've never been so excited to start a school year in my life.

AP Chemistry was full of 3-hour labs, long lectures and weekly practice tests even 2 weeks before school actually started. Although the year was long and hard, taking the class gave me the opportunity to tutor general chemistry and eventually mathematics to underclassmen for two years at my high school. It wasn't until the end of my senior year when I had realized what I wanted to do for a career. After my last tutoring session, a student whom I have been tutoring for math and chemistry had told me that he started the first few weeks in Chemistry with a low C, but he ended the year with an A- and wanted to personally thank me for the help and for showing him this capacity to learn. This volunteer opportunity has allowed me to develop close interpersonal relationships with these students and it was an extremely gratifying experience to sit down with these students and teach them a subject that I was so passionate about. Since then, I knew that I wanted a career where I had the opportunity to learn more about chemistry but also to create interpersonal relationships with others to educate them.

It wasn't until my senior year when I was exposed to the workings of the human body in Anatomy and Human Physiology. It was an amazing experience to learn about the workings of the different systems in various species as well as see how diseases and illnesses affect the organism. During the last month of school, I had the chance to attend a cadaver lab at George Fox University. There was a male cadaver who died of natural causes but had taken various supplements and medications throughout his lifetime because it was clear to see various parts of the body was affected like the kidney. Since then, I had fallen in love with the medical field and it wasn't until that summer while I was looking at different careers that I had discovered pharmacy. A career in pharmacy had everything that I was looking for in a career: the more intimate relationship between the patient and the pharmacist, the chemistry aspect of the medical professional and the constant learning environment to improve outdated treatments.

And although the journey will be long and difficult, I believe that with dedication and perseverance, I can create a strong foundation of understanding of basic topics such as chemistry and learn more about what the career entails in Bio-Health Sciences as well as Pre-Pharmacy Society at Oregon State University. By pursuing the Doctor of Pharmacy degree, I would fulfill my goals in learning more about the human anatomy under a professional program as well as my long-term goals to create interpersonal relationships with my future patients so that I can provide the most effective treatment and improve the overall health of the public.

Undergraduate / Track and Field is now an important routine in my day - The University of Washington essay [5]

Hello!
I would just like to get feedback about this essay. What can I do to improve (even anything as little as grammar)? Please help!
Prompt: The University of Washington seeks to create a community of students richly diverse in cultural backgrounds, experiences, and viewpoints. How would you contribute to this community? (300 words)

I've participated in my school's cross country team which somehow got me into Track and Field and now is an important routine in my day. It's a place where I can vent out my frustration and get stronger mentally and physically.

We had a potluck to celebrate the end of the year and acknowledge athletes who've improved by leaps and bounds. At this potluck there were foods I could not name. We had vegans, meat-lovers, Europeans, Asians, Bisexuals and Homosexuals, Jewish, Christians and Buddhists. I've met individuals who are in vigorous AP classes and others who are just going through the motions. After running races and going through hardships, I am proud to be a part of this community. These people have been my friends for as long as I've been running with them. We are all different, from different backgrounds and countries all over the world but we all seek one goal in this sport: to improve.

Diversity is often overwhelming because there are so many different traditions and practices but I am thrilled that in this new chapter in my life I can share my culture to other people while simultaneously discover others. I offer my culture to the great melting pot of the community in hopes that I get the experience of things I never thought about before. I want to meet people where even though we come from places all over the world, we are united under one goal and one ambition.

Undergraduate / Wilsonville - for me it's all the world I've ever known [4]

Discuss how your family's experience or cultural history enriched you (600 words)

Hello everyone!

This is one of many college application essays I have to turn in within a couple months or so. This prompt was one of the harder ones for me to write so I'm posting it here in hopes that the community can help me with it! Thanks!

Wilsonville -a place that you've vaguely heard of or a town that is your entire world. For me, it's all I've ever known. I've lived here as long as I can remember and knew nothing outside of this little bubble. Many of my friends come from sheltered households who've never seen more than 5 people of different origins gathered in one place at any given moment. Fortunately for me, I had Korean parents. Through their stories, I quietly observed the bustling cities of Seoul and the calm farmlands in Noan. They described the vibrant colors in silk of traditional Korean hanboks, and the fast, elegant and percussive dance of mugo. For them, Korea is the present, but for me, it was a thing of the past, my simple heritage. Although I was vastly different from my parents, the single thread of connection I had with them was Korea.

It wasn't until when I was 15 that my small bubble was popped. I arrived with my brother, escorted by my grandparents at Incheon International Airport in South Korea. I didn't realize that we were on a completely different continent on Earth, miles away from home until we frantically searched for our luggage. It was an uneasy feeling.

When we stepped outside to take a breath of the blissfully cool air, I forgot how to breathe. The sun glinted off of tall buildings that could puncture holes in the sky, streets filled with people with their own families, hopes and ambitions, restaurants lining the streets with wafting smells of exotic spices and foreign ingredients. There were sounds of angry drivers honking at traffic and hushed conversations people sitting outside while smoking cigarettes. The pictures of Korea in my history books only captured a grain of sand in the boundless beach.

Grandpa hailed a yellow taxi and all of us squeezed in the cramped leather seat. With the air conditioner blasting cool air, he told us that there was only one public park in the entire city, he pointed at the river that made its way into the heart of the country and he mentioned the local college that my father attended for his bachelor's degree in business.

Not only did the tall diverse buildings fascinate me, it was the faces of the people roaming the streets. There were Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Indians, Europeans, even Americans all of whom like me, wanted to experience the culture, taste the food and admire the buildings, traditional and modern, of a new country. It was crazy to wrap my brain around the fact that even within America, there are millions of people who come from all over the world with different cultures, traditions and heritages.

In my visit to Korea, I met all my cousins, aunts and uncles, in-laws, and even great grandparents who were around for nearly a century. It was in Korea that I discovered my passion to find a career for medicine and in helping others, my love of reading books - even if they're picture books in a language I can barely speak nonetheless read, and the joy of meeting new people all over the world.