There is a Quaker saying: "Let your life speak." Describe the environment in which you were raised-your family, home, neighborhood or community-and how it influenced the person you are today. (Required length 200-250 words)
My grandma says that my family's house is what happens when both parents work double shift every day. However, having spent a lifetime in it, I opine it is more than that. My house is what happens when your mom conserves her childhood belongings deep into her adulthood, when your dad can get fixated on even a paper clip, and when your brother is fond of ordering online from distant countries.
Whenever I visited other houses as a child, I felt like I was stepping on a parallel universe. There were similarities between others' houses and mine, like beige-colored walls and south-facing windows but, from then on, everything else was unfamiliar. The books stood side by side on the shelf, vertically, and not on top of each other, horizontally. Power switches never popped out of their site. Unopened boxes of outdoors lights and camera rockets weren't part of the decoration. And even though I looked for one everywhere, I could never find it; I could never found a corner where rare rocks collected from family trips were kept.
Nevertheless, even at that age I knew I preferred my house because, how could I use my pottery wheel in an entrance hallway that always needed to be neat? How could I conduct ecological research in a garden with cropped grass? And now, I think: What other family, different from the one that made this house what it is, would stand eating in a table covered in my math writings?
Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences. (150 word limit.)
The girl asked me her question in the middle of the dinosaurs' video playing. She tapped at my knee to make me notice her since I was absorbed, watching.
"Do you know... why they aren't here anymore?"
That was when the rest of the kids focused on me too; their face with the stare from when they wanted us volunteers to read them a book, and paint stains courtesy of art class.
I begin nodding, but then stopped. I half-nodded.
"Is it true that a giant rock came from space and squashed them?"
I smiled, and suddenly knew exactly what to do. I told them stories, about furious volcanoes and moving continents, about red skies and raised dust, about coldness and a Sun to not be seen anywhere. The meteorite, which they kept asking about, came last.
"And so, how do the dinosaurs extinguished?"
"That's a mystery." I answered.
NOTE: Is it alright if I talk about a volunteer experience in this essay?
Thank you so much!
My grandma says that my family's house is what happens when both parents work double shift every day.
.... this sentence sounds confusing. What's wrong with your house? What does your grandma say? ....not very clear :(
I could never found
I could never findWell, you have to re-do the first response as it contains too many grammar errors. I don't know how to help you with that because I am not clear about your ideas. I like to help you, but then you need to tell me what were you trying to tell there. How your house was different to others? How your parents were different to others? Those answers not clearly conveyed in that response.
Agreed with moderator, couldn't really understand the first one :/
As for the second response, it is definitely ok to talk about volunteer experience. However, how does that experience show who you are? Basically the admission officers want to know you through your essays, but I cannot see your personality or how you think through this response. The golden question to me is "Why should I admit you?" Thats the advice people always give me. Try to think about it as you write your response.
Again, personal opinion. Good luck and cheers!
New essay 2, is this one better?:
Since day one of High School, the art classroom was my den. It was the place where time stopped and I could spend hours and hours working on a single detail of my latex mask. The classroom was silent when it needed to be, and although each one of us was concentrated on our individual work, we were also connected by it, getting our hands dirty on clay and finding peace in giving a new shape to things. Our teacher encouraged us to take advantage of our mistakes as a way of making our mask look even more expressive and theatrical, and that's what we did. We went through days of modeling a crude hump of gray clay and painting with an airbrush not because we wanted to make the perfect-looking mask but because, at the end, we wanted to have created something unique.
High School
"High School" doesn't need to be capitalized unless you're going to specifically write the name of your high school
getting our hands dirty on clay
I think it's dirty
with clay rather than "on"
Overall, I think this second essay shows more of you and your character as opposed to the first essay, good job:)
