The prompt reads; Stanford students are widely known to possess a sense of intellectual vitality. Tell us about an idea or an experience you have had that you find intellectually engaging.
Here is my essay. Please help me critique it. Thank you.
Who would have thought that a plain piece of paper could inspire potential life saving technologies? The idea seemed rather chimerical until I stumbled across the art of origami in a desperate attempt to recycle scrap paper.
This art of folding a square of paper- a technique I previously considered somewhat straight forward- is in fact fascinatingly intricate. My first few attempts resulted in distorted, creased-all-over, floppily dangling sheets of what should have been birds- yet the challenge of working around the intricacies of the design were more than rewarding. When the hard work was done and a 3D form finally sat before me, it was indeed satisfying- enough to throw confetti to the wind! It was almost hard to believe that the completed piece- so real and tangible- arose from a piece of paper.
I was awed to find that the principles behind origami went beyond the basic paper boat and were in fact being applied to nanotechnology to give rise to DNA origami with single stranded DNA as the starting point. The research is still a work in progress but so far, I feel that the emergence of the "medicine box" is groundbreaking considering the size limitations. The multilayered "box" of DNA with its own special set of "keys" has proved a potential forerunner of "smart" drug-delivery nanodevices that could ferry drugs to diseased cells while avoiding the biological barriers that prevent them from reaching their target.
I never thought science and art were correlated but it turns out, the two disciplines are simply two sides of the same coin. It is almost a magical concept and makes me wonder; what else can be done with a piece of paper?
I tried my hand-this phrase seems a bit awkward to me.
My first few attempts resulted in distorted, creased-all-over, floppily dangling sheets of what should have been birds, but the challenge of working around the intricacies of the design was more than rewarding.
Overall I like it!
Awesome writing here. They are going to like you. I suggest a dash after "birds" -- to help youmanage that long sentence. Pretty great sentence!!!
Strunk & White say, "use a comma after the conjunction in a compound sentence:
It is where art meets science, and it is the most magical concept.
Okay, so... my rule for this sort of thing is non-negotiable: if possible, find a way to relate this to your overall theme for the application -- the single, specific aspiration that is easy to remember and is your reason for choosing Standford rather than a different school. :-)
This is really amazing on how you make a single origami to connect to science; however, you should show more of the connecting because you want to show your intellectually engaging to Stanford.
(e.g. Later on, I found out that you can build a house with just paper that grow on tree. People always said that money doesn't grow on tree then how about building a house with just paper. Branch of banks :) )
Good luck!
Thank you guys for the advice. It means the world to me.
I revised the essay and added more focus on DNA as opposed to the airbag idea. Help me critique it. Is it any better?
Try to remove THAT whenever you can:
Who would have thought that a plain piece of paper could inspire potentially life-saving technologies?
----------I don't know if "potentially" is necessary in the sentence. Always kill the unnecessary modifiers. :-)
The idea seemed rather chimerical until I stumbled across the art of origami in a desperate attempt to recycle scrap paper.--This is cool!
In this case, I'll add a THAT instead of removing it, ha ha:
I never thought science and art were correlated, but it turns out that the two disciplines are ...
:-)
Congratulations on being a great writer!
