Please provide information which you feel will be of interest to the Admissions Tutors and will help them know you better, e.g. your reasons for applying to HKU, the chosen curricula, extra-curricular activities, participation in voluntary work, past working experience, career aspirations and other achievements.
^(please review my essay. I tried to answer every thing the prompt asked for, but its 1500 words long. There are no apparent word limit. I think its way toooo long. please help me out here. Thanks.)
(Why HKU? this is the toughest part; not finished yet)
The University of Hong Kong has always been a facile choice for me as an individual. In multifaceted ways, it is the optimal destination for a student such as myself. For one, it is located in the heartland of Asia, my long time home, Hong Kong, a city I have dwelled in since my childhood days. It is ideally situated, close to cyber port, a locale where I frequent in. Compared to my counterparts at Hong Kong international, many of whom were born in the states or have immigrated here not long ago, the American culture and lifestyle is segregating and alienating to me. Only but a few cities in the American subcontinent has the flair and metropolitan definition found here, all of which falls outmatched to what I regard as a peerless city with immeasurable qualities. Having been nurtured in the basins of an international education, it is empirical that Hong Kong far outperforms the United States in terms of opportunities and truly international provisions that caters to me. HKU microcosmically provides all that, as those qualities become increasingly necessary as deemed in a cross-cultural world. Many acquaintances of mine, previously having studied at Hong Kong international and now at HKU, cite HKU as a place where I can continue my infatuated style of education and learning. I have also visited the campus a few times, once entering the university museum with the art gallery for a school project. My impression of the campus was that it was hybridized between a modern and a more retrospective style, one that reflects my own upbringing having crossed in between local and international institutions of education.
(ECs)
I was never one to forcefully involve myself in numerous extracurricular activities, unlike the hordes of students out there who attempt to appeal zealously. My goal has always been to indulge myself in the right amount of activity, and from middle school onwards I have participated in a plethora of events. Playing international chess is one that began from a feeble age, starting from a simple casual game with my uncle. The workings of chess appear to be theoretically oriented and mechanical, as it appeared to me at least, and I perhaps perceived the game in a wayward manner that allowed my uncle to defeat me perfunctorily. It was only a few games later that the concept of Occam's razor, where at times the simplest solution is the correct solution, liberated me from my hardheaded philosophy, and allowed me to play with more options on the chessboard. I have led the Chess Club at school since last year, participating in scholastic tournaments with rival schools and I relish the chance to intellectually stimulate myself because with every game comes different scenarios that requires disparate decisions which duly projects the workings of life itself.
Another activity I have been involved with writing articles for a school published bilingual magazine called Chuan Long, or ĺłéž. My specialty, in my four years contributing to the magazine, has been of Differing Views, the name of the specific section I write for. The titular definition of Differing views condones me to selecting hotly debated issues, such as the conundrum with plastic surgery, or issues such as technology versus literature, a wider and broader topic. Such an interest stems from the coupling of my interest in writing itself as well as current events. Outside of school, I play two instruments, the piano and the viola, a less renowned cousin of the violin in the strings family. I used to play the viola for my school orchestra from grades 9 to 10, and in the 8th grade, I won the Hong Kong Youth Music Interflows silver cup alongside my orchestra members playing the piece "The Barber of Seville". As for the piano, I started when I was around 8, having then bought our piano, and have participated in several examinations. I apply my piano skills to helping my church community, of which I play every other week as the accompanying music to one of the hymns sung. I am more of a scholarly archetype of student rather than athletic, but I do play Badminton and have been in the school team for the past 3 years, a sport that has kept me in touch with one of my nation's heritages as well as balancing the dosage of work and entertainment, as I find playing badminton to release stress despite what it physically demands.
(voluntary efforts)
During my junior year, I participated in voluntary efforts to teach English to local students at the HoTung Secondary School. We congregated every Saturday, each week expanding upon an agenda comprising of grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary, and many more applications of the language, simultaneously attempting to convey the versatile nature of English. There were many inherent hindrances and language barriers that stood in between our teaching efforts, and as perspectives differ, many of us initially were frustrated at the local student' inability to comprehend what is rudimentary knowledge to us. The process of learning was not only the local students' to have, but it was also reciprocated when we had to take exemplary strides to adapting to their necessities and shortages. While I can be proud to say that we have considerably augmented the English aptitude of the local students, it is not too farfetched an observation to say that as a group, we have come to embrace the virtues of
Now, in the present year, I continued where I left off last year and am participating in voluntary efforts at the Chesire Nursing Home. The Chesire Home is part of a larger foundation of public hospitals in Hong Kong, but it is a permanent residence for many elderly and senior citizens providing needed medical attention as well as a stable abode. At the home, I have been able to witness the nuances between the elderly there to my own grandparents at home, who are fortunately healthy. Many residents there suffer from congenital conditions, such as Down syndrome or cerebral palsy, and some of them are disabled with malformed limbs or in need of wheelchair for locomotion. It goes without saying that we were once again required to learn and adapt in a relatively alien environment, one that is underprivileged and of malaise. So far, we have learned to operate wheelchairs and we have spent qualitative time with the residents, interacting with them and encouraging social activity. Just 2 weeks ago, when the Christmas festivity began, we sung Christmas carols to the residents, a genuine highlight of my experience at the home. Beyond that, we were trained and taught hospital protocol and the proper disinfection etiquette, to ensure the health of both the residents and us.
(career aspirations/choice of curricula)
What I aspire to be is a member of the larger scientific community. Growing up in an era of scientific proliferation has done nothing less than spur my inherent curiosity and fixated my beliefs that the atoms of the future are the members of the scientific field. Both my parents work as members of the medical field, with my father being a specialist physician and my mother a nurse. On my father's side of the family, the tradition of medicine has passed down several generations, with my grandfather and my great grandfather both plying in the medical business before my father. Given this, medicine has a certain affluence within my household, and although it is not absolute or definite, I have come to discern it as an important cog of my life. My exposure to the medical world has come naturally, and I am accustomed to regularly visiting hospitals or my parents' clinic. A few years back, my father was still working in a private hospital, and on many nights he was deputized to stay overtime and over the course of the entire night to monitor patients. Even as an established physician, my father has had to consistently participate in novel medical conventions to bring himself up-to-date with paradigm shifts and new advances in the field necessary for a novueau doctor. Alongside my father, I also gradually learned many things I would not have otherwise at school, and also heard of experiences with patients in the hospital or the clinic and their respective conditions. Not only has medicine specifically struck me as a grueling business, it has become apparent to me that it is preeminently substantial to a society. The power that is vested in my parents to remedy the sick has always fascinated me, and I revere them as much as the ailing sick that come to them for aid. At HKU, I have chosen for my curricula, 3 scientifically related majors; medicine, biomedical science, and science. Growing up in a medically relevant family and an international city which readily allows me to access information and exposes me to technology has warranted me to pursue and pinpoint studying science as my goal. Although my primary endeavor is to emulate the mission of my parents as well as to contribute to a global society, my fundamental drive is to impact the world around me with the means of science.
