I fear looking in the mirror and not recognizing what I see. Yale supplement?

Yale supplement essay

Prompt: Write about something you would like us to know about you that you have not conveyed elsewhere in your application.

I wake up late. It's a 15 minute struggle to get to school by 7:15, and God knows I refuse to do anything without eating, which uses about half my allotted get-ready time. And to me, eyelash curlers look like medieval torture devices; but that's not why I don't wear makeup.

I joke with my friends that my three biggest fears are heart disease (runs in the family), skin cancer (the most preventable cancer), and makeup. The latter usually raises the most eyebrows. Though I say it with a lingering laughter in my voice, there is without doubt validity to my statement.

I fear looking in the mirror and not recognizing what I see. What I fear more is recognizing my face with makeup and not recognizing myself without it. I fear the day when I feel exposed or empty with a bare face, when makeup is no longer about representational art.

Makeup should be about insight, giving people the ability to see the colors of your soul, to read your face the same way they can read body language. For many, foundation is a blank canvas for a masterpiece of self-reflection.

But a pimple here, a birthmark there. Make short eyelashes longer, cheekbones more defined; makeup is also a panacea to societally-induced insecurity.

Makeup cannot be my crutch. Demons can tunnel through painted faces. There are parts of myself that applying makeup would fix. I just can't risk losing acceptance of my flaws.

This is really well written and creative! I think if you emphasized a little more why YOU don't want wear makeup, it'll make the essay even stronger. Maybe add a small anecdote?

Ishani, you really have shared a tremendous amount of information about yourself in this essay. However, the prompt and the reviewer in this instance, expects to read about only one thing that you feel you have not yet shared in the application essays. While the topics you have presented are interconnected and interesting, you need to pick the highlight of the presentation to discuss in this essay. You need to focus on that one topic and build on it. For example, if you want to discuss why you don't want to wear makeup then discuss that. If you want to discuss reasons why you don't want to look in the mirror, then make that the subject of the essay. One or the other, not both. The way I read it, your story about why you fear looking into the mirror is the most relevant topic you can discuss in this essay. You can tie that into the reason why you don't wear make up. So the topic statement should be along the lines of:

I don't wear make up because I fear not recognizing who I see in the mirror.

In this instance, the way that the two separate topics are framed to interconnect with the anchor subject (looking in the mirror) leads to a soling, single reference discussion in the essay. This will create a more informative presentation that focuses on only one subject based upon one reason (not putting on make up).