Common Application. Help me choose a topic between these two!

This is for the "Personal Essay" section of the Common Application. I'm looking to apply to UPenn, Duke, Cornell and such as my top choices.

So I have two ideas in mind that could possibly work out. Here's the basic idea (it is not the essay itself.)

1) One night, someone discovered three dead people in a house not far from mine. The three people dead and the murderer were all Korean, and I, being a Korean myself, encountered some problems. A week or two later, I had to find my classmate's house for a school group project, but I ended up in a wrong house. A little boy looked out the window when I rang the door bell, and soon his mother came by the window to see who it was. As soon as she saw my Asian self, her facial expression changed and she grabbed her son, and asked me in a demanding manner what I was here for.

This idea could work in some way relating racism and what I had learned through a unique experience. I just can't find a way to show who I am through this essay.

The second idea goes like this, but I have a slight doubt in this because it is a very common topic.

2) When I joined the track team in high school after failing to make the freshman soccer team tryouts, I sucked at running. The coach told me to do hurdles and jumping because of my height, but I still sucked. I felt bad for myself and worked my ass out to make the varsity team in my sophomore year. This idea of improvement and motivation helped me get through high school even when my dad left the US to go back to Korea, being a manager of international business.

The reason why I don't like this topic is that so many people write about their sports, their heroic moments, and how it dramatically changed their whole lives. The first idea is more interesting and unique, but I don't know how to make it deep. I could say that I was never racist ever again, but so what, you're not supposed to be racist in the first place. Help me please!

^Overcoming racial prejudice is quite a big step in developing intellectual maturity. Having racial prejudice is often due to dogmatic and narrow view points, typically evident in those whose intellectual maturity tends to be quite low. By being able to illustrate how at one point, you had racist tendencies, that now no longer exists, shows your development of character and intellectuality from that point till now.

Liebe has the right idea, here. Racism is a very complex issue, with deliberate and malicious rejection of members of other races forming only the most simplistic and easily condemned part of it. Some research has shown that a certain amount of unconscious racism might be ingrained in each of us (of course, the research itself is not beyond criticism, but it provides some food for thought, as it were). Also, stereotypes, including racial ones, rarely arise in a vacuum. After all, if no one ever conformed to racial stereotypes, they wouldn't have such staying power. Often, they arise naturally as a consequence of the sort of inductive reasoning that guides us in many matters. This isn't to say that racial stereotypes are accurate, or that we should rely on them when judging people of other races, but it does mean that they are strongly enough rooted in our culture and in our minds that simply stating "we're not supposed to be racist" isn't going to be enough to dispel them. There is plenty of room for you to talk about how your personal experiences taught you valuable lessons about making superficial judgments based on race in ways that make it a good learning experience rather than a confession of having once been a hopeless bigot.

Definitely do the first one. Although it is going to be harder to write about, it will stand out much more than the rest.

It seems like a unanimous vote for the first topic. I thought it was better too. I am in the process of outlining and writing the rough draft, and will post in a few days in a new thread. However, I have one more question for all of you wonderful helpers. Since the topics are very broad for the common application essay, is it okay to use the same essay for the Columbia Early Decision essay? The prompt for Columbia is also broad:

Write an essay which conveys to the reader a sense of who you are. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to, experiences which have shaped your life, the circumstances of your upbringing, your most meaningful intellectual achievement, the way you see the world - the people in it, events great and small, everyday life - or any personal theme which appeals to your imagination.

Oh, I lied. I have two questions. Would it be too risky to give an incident in which I acted racist, then describe the experience, and finally show another incident in which I had completely changed? Or should I simply show that I was immature before instead of showing a specific racist incident...

Thank you all! You guys are very helpful.

One more thing that came to my mind: Do you think the second idea could work for the 150 word short essay in the common app? (the one with elaborating on an activity)

i think its pretty obvious the 1st one.
plus you may learn some stuff about yourself along the way. itll be a chance for you to get really deep and show that racism is truly somethig that ALL races deal with (i know this was pretty obvious but sometimes it feels as if ple sterotype only blacks or hispanics as being the only ones who murder)

i really like the 1st idea as well.

good luck!

Why not.

I'd go with the first one but I felt sort of weird with the words "dead" and murdered" along with "night"?

displayname, I have no clue what you're trying to say. Are you asking a question? Or are you saying that you felt weird as in you got the chills?