Supplement essay: Beyond your academic credentials and extra curricular accomplishments, what else makes you unique and colorful? Provide us with some suggestion of the type of person you are. Anything goes! Inspire us, impress us, or just make us laugh. Think of this optional opportunity as show and tell by proxy and with an attitude.
Based on this question, I wrote a writing sample about singing. However, I noticed that it says "beyond extra curricular accomplishments", so I'm a little uncertain here. Does this essay fit the question well? And also, any comments or thoughts would be much appreciated.
(I'm actually thinking of deleting the first paragraph, it seems a little wordy and unnecessary here, will it be better to just delete it or save it?)
This is not a story of straight success. Maybe some people would not even regard singing as my greatest talent as I've failed so many times. But this is a story about myself, about how I changed the way I sing and why I sing.
I was told to have a great voice since I was young. So it came naturally when I was selected into the elementary school choir, performing at multiple places since then. Three years of experience in the choir gave me a lot of happiness. Singing in the spotlight proudly in front of the audience, I always felt being recognized and appreciated. Yet beyond this sense of achievement, I didn't know what singing actually meant to me.
When I stepped into Junior High, there was no choir owing to academic pressure. Hoping to get my happiness back, I turned to singing competition in school. However, it did't work this time. For the first time in my life, I stood on the stage on my own instead of just following others, feeling deeply tenacious and lost. I kept forgetting the lyrics and the performance was just a sprawling mess. I at last could not come up with a single word and had to wait there until the host sent me off the stage! After this "scandal", nearly everyone thought I was about to give it up. Nonetheless, my tough nature came into play and it did not take long for me to refill energy and hope again.
Waiting for next year's competition, I practiced through my phone and learned from performance videos whenever I was free. After another semi-successful attempt in Junior, I was all the way through the finals and made it to Top10 out of 300. I went to the judge after the competition and asked him why I was not good enough to be the best. He told me that I grasped all the skills but emotion. Sadly, I was not able to touch the audience.
I was confused by what he said for a long time until the day I watched the Voice of China with my parents. Surprisingly, my father wept hearing the singer's emotional interpretation of the song. I seemed to understand something. Beyond the good voice and skills, what a singer need is the emotion from within. Clearly, a song is great most because of the emotion that is vested by the singer. From that time, not only did I practice, but I studied the song, learned the stories behind, and interpreted it again and again. My endeavors paid off and I was allowed to pass the super selective audition in Talent Show of Harvard AUSCR Summit for Young Leaders in China (Hsylc) and became one of the three people who got a chance to sing in front of a hall of people from the whole country. After the show, a girl came to me and expressed her appreciation for my performance. She said she was brought by my singing to her happiest moment. There were no better compliments. I knew I finally made it. Over the years, singing has long ceased to be my way of getting recognized by others. Instead, it is an enjoyment. I enjoyed this process of bringing other people emotional impact. No matter what I do in the future, I shall always keep singing.
Based on this question, I wrote a writing sample about singing. However, I noticed that it says "beyond extra curricular accomplishments", so I'm a little uncertain here. Does this essay fit the question well? And also, any comments or thoughts would be much appreciated.
(I'm actually thinking of deleting the first paragraph, it seems a little wordy and unnecessary here, will it be better to just delete it or save it?)
This is not a story of straight success. Maybe some people would not even regard singing as my greatest talent as I've failed so many times. But this is a story about myself, about how I changed the way I sing and why I sing.
I was told to have a great voice since I was young. So it came naturally when I was selected into the elementary school choir, performing at multiple places since then. Three years of experience in the choir gave me a lot of happiness. Singing in the spotlight proudly in front of the audience, I always felt being recognized and appreciated. Yet beyond this sense of achievement, I didn't know what singing actually meant to me.
When I stepped into Junior High, there was no choir owing to academic pressure. Hoping to get my happiness back, I turned to singing competition in school. However, it did't work this time. For the first time in my life, I stood on the stage on my own instead of just following others, feeling deeply tenacious and lost. I kept forgetting the lyrics and the performance was just a sprawling mess. I at last could not come up with a single word and had to wait there until the host sent me off the stage! After this "scandal", nearly everyone thought I was about to give it up. Nonetheless, my tough nature came into play and it did not take long for me to refill energy and hope again.
Waiting for next year's competition, I practiced through my phone and learned from performance videos whenever I was free. After another semi-successful attempt in Junior, I was all the way through the finals and made it to Top10 out of 300. I went to the judge after the competition and asked him why I was not good enough to be the best. He told me that I grasped all the skills but emotion. Sadly, I was not able to touch the audience.
I was confused by what he said for a long time until the day I watched the Voice of China with my parents. Surprisingly, my father wept hearing the singer's emotional interpretation of the song. I seemed to understand something. Beyond the good voice and skills, what a singer need is the emotion from within. Clearly, a song is great most because of the emotion that is vested by the singer. From that time, not only did I practice, but I studied the song, learned the stories behind, and interpreted it again and again. My endeavors paid off and I was allowed to pass the super selective audition in Talent Show of Harvard AUSCR Summit for Young Leaders in China (Hsylc) and became one of the three people who got a chance to sing in front of a hall of people from the whole country. After the show, a girl came to me and expressed her appreciation for my performance. She said she was brought by my singing to her happiest moment. There were no better compliments. I knew I finally made it. Over the years, singing has long ceased to be my way of getting recognized by others. Instead, it is an enjoyment. I enjoyed this process of bringing other people emotional impact. No matter what I do in the future, I shall always keep singing.
