My Chinese name - Yueqiao, brings my weapons to make me grow and my bridges across the world!

Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

My name is WU Yue-qiao. Daring to overcome myself is my parents' expectation under my name. WU, my family name, is my Chinese heritage. Yue means to surpass. When separated the character, it is a combination of Zou, to walk and Yue, an ancient weapon. Qiao are bridges.

A brave warrior, holding weapons to defend herself, walks in the path of life toward happiness with her dignity and pride.

Heretofore, I have found English is my best weapons and bridges.

My parents chose English as my first weapon. Living in a small city in China, I was simply so excited to talk with people with blond hair and blue eyes. I jumped at my English study.

However, memorizing vocabularies and reciting movie dialogues all by myself were dull and tiring for a five-year-old kid. Schools and homework were usually finished at eight p.m., and I still had hours of music practice every day. I couldn't help slacking. Under strict family supervision, I studied English for two hours every day and grasped all the time when other children were watching cartoons and playing toys.

Yet when the first Native American I encountered in streets firmly insisted that I was raised in the US, I felt happier and prouder than ever. I was ten years old. Somehow, I started to expect my English hours every day.

Speaking English, I got into contact with more and more foreigners. Seeing their hearty smiling faces and listening to their travelling experiences over the world, all totally different from Easterners', I started to realize that English is also a bridge to connect one's inner values and outside world. Twelve years old, English opened my windows to see outside world. I enjoy love and dreams that English taught me.

As I coherently delved in English, I wondered how my weapons can help me continue walking ahead. French came into my mind. Bearing a full heart of curiosity, I entered L'Alliance Française when i turned fourteen. However, because of my young age, no class was willing to accept me.

Nevertheless, my confidence come from English didn't allow me to wince before trying. Every impediment catapulted my courage and determination to greater heights. Having conversation with me in English, the Principal, M. Leroux was totally convinced that I was an American. After knowing I learned English completely on my own, he was sure that I have incredible capacity of studying. Therefore, he broke rules to offer me an opportunity to study French. In adult class, a junior high student began her first French lesson. Without English, I could not imagine how I am able to open the door of French.

To study French, I arrived at another city, five-hour driving distance from mine, around midnight all alone at weekends. English helped me to develop my own sense of harmony in life and study. Surrounded by all the unknowns was frightful, but I always found that la vie est une belle. I smiled when seeing a laughing face on an overpass of an unacquainted city. To work efficiently, I released my minds, relaxed and NOT only pursued grades and ranks, like Westerners. I succeeded in school, English and French without wearing glasses. And then, I built my own bridges to France. Now, here I am in France, for my self-managed exchange. Many nights, I looked at stars in the dark sky, appreciating my English and asking myself: What is the bridge to connect realities and dreams? What is the bridge to balance my Chinese traditions and Western education?

Yue-qiao, to surpass bridges is to have wings. Wings make me fly over conventions; bring me liberty and inner-peace. I want to open more doors of outside world, to integrate cultures, to make world less random and to find answers for prayers. I want to build bridge across the Pacific to America, to challenge new unknowns and bring there my own culture.

Well Amanda, you have certainly presented a unique answer to this essay that will effectively work in your favor. Not everyone will have the ability nor opportunity to discuss the meaning of their name in the highly interesting manner that you do in your essay. This is not only a central identity story but a cultural trip that will help people understand the way Chinese names are picked out for their family members. Your essay's strength lies in the fact that you use languages to build your central identity. I am just wondering if the central identity story that you have chosen to tell is somehow related to your college major? If there is a connection, then all the better for you. There are still grammatical errors that need to be corrected in the essay but it can wait until you are absolutely sure that this is the version of the essay that you want us to review and edit for you. It is not too late for you to add or delete content. We can get started on that after your next post if you feel you want to play around with this version a little bit more.

Thank you. Yes, my inclined major is International Relations. Using my version to combine cultures and maybe find a balance to help more people who feel lost and confused in their belongings, to help them find their inner cultural indentity is what i would love to do in the future. And my main idea is exactly as you said--using languages to build my central identity, also wanting to discover more cultures and bring my own culture to the world. Yes, it is the version that i want to work on particularly, and in fact, it has already reached the word limit, 650 words. This is personal statement essay that i want to post on my common application in writing.

Thank you for clarifying those details Amanda. Don't worry about your essay then. It works well as a personal statement / essay because you offer the reader an inside look at your emotions, thoughts, and actions. It offers a look at a side of you that the other common app prompts will definitely not touch upon. So now all I need to do is help you clean up the grammatical errors in the essay. Let's get started :-)

- My Chinese name is Wu Yue-qiao. The combination of Chinese characters in my name basically means to "a weapon to surpass bridges". My parents raised me with the meaning of my name in mind. Thus, they have always encouraged me to be a brave warrior who is capable of defending herself while walking the path towards happiness with dignity and pride.

-Sometimes more can be said when you properly combine sentences in order to create a coherent thought process :-)


- Recognizing the need to properly arm me for the educational battle that lay ahead for me, my parents chose to arm me with the best weapon that they knew, the knowledge of the English language. It was their understanding that as a warrior, I would be able to use the language to help me get ahead in life and open up my world to a wider net of learning. I immersed myself in the study of English for 2 hours everyday, memorizing vocabularies and getting lost in the English visual world through cartoons and American educational toys. Keep in mind that I was only five years old at the time and already becoming a foreigner in my motherland. The proof that I was becoming a stranger in China came when an American who spoke to me when I was but a small child insisted that I was raised in the U.S. because I spoke the language so well. Making my parents and I proud of what we accomplished using language. So when I turned 10 my parents decided to move to the United States, I was giddy with excitement and proud that I would finally be able to put what i learned to better use.

- Now living in the United States, I became even more exposed to the Western way of speaking and understanding their culture in relation to it. It was totally different from the way Easterners did things. Slowly, English became the bridge that closed the gap between my two worlds. At the age of 12, I threw myself totally into the study of the English language and then, dived into the study of another language, French hoping to be admitted to L'Alliance Francaise at the age of 14. I was hurt when my application was turned down due to my young age. They could not understand that I simply wanted to widen my horizons and build better bridges with my friends by learning a new language.

- After meeting with the principal of the French school though, I was able to convince them that I had the ability to learn French just as easily as I learned English. Impressed with my almost native English speaking abilities, I was allowed to enroll in French classes, an exception that was made because of my ability to speak in English.That was when I realized that English was truly the weapon of choice for me. Just as my parents had envisioned, the language was bridging gaps and offering me a chance at opportunities that otherwise would not have existed.

- The essay is starting to become redundant. We are only establishing that your ability to speak English has helped you build bridges. You can already skip this part. You have established a tremendous amount of positive information about you already. The secret to an effective essay is always to say what you need to say quickly and with as little words as possible.

wow! Thank you so much for spending time on my essay. I see that nearly every phrase is revised. However, i think you may misunderstood some context.

Yet when the first Native American I encountered in streets firmly insisted that I was raised in the US, I felt happier and prouder than ever. I was ten years old This part doesn't mean i moved to the US. In fact, i have never been to US yet. I was trying to say that I talked to a Native American, whom i encountered in streets, and he thought that I was American. And that was inspiring for me.

The last paragragh was about how I succeed in study and life after struggling and how the two languages had eventually bridge me to France, a Western country. But new questions emerge and explained why I will keep studying in university, and what would I like to do in the futrue. And last, to demonstrate that the admission will benefit both me and the school.

Plus, because of the huge culture differences, i do not really know how an essay should be like. Chinese people write beautiful sentenses, while Americans like concise illustrations.My bold guess is that you are American, since you didn't keep nearly all my "poetic phrases". I guess i probably failed to balance the both strategies, but i want to know, will the essay be impressive enough when it is simple like that?

Amanda, I definitely misunderstood some parts of your essay. Thanks for clarifying those parts for me. That said, you are asking if your essay is effective in a more simple manner or if your wordiness using Chinese poetry is more effective. The answer is yes and no to both. You need to balance it out better by going direct to the point. Admissions officers do not have the time to spend wading through your flowery words. They have more more essays waiting to be analyzed on their plate along with yours. Try to revise the essay to be more direct to the point. Here is what I suggest you do, keep the meaning of your name and the closing description. Clarify the middle points. Are you living n France now? How exactly did English help you bridge this gap? the essay is now actually quite confusing since I already know what you are trying to convey as your main message. The essay does not work in the way that you expected it to but it can be revised towards doing what you want it to :-)