Prompt: The quality of Rice's academic life and the Residential College System are heavily influenced by the unique life experiences and cultural traditions each student brings. What personal perspective would you contribute to life at Rice? (500 word limit)
Essay:
What makes a bowl of cereal?
Is it only the sum of its physical parts such as the bowl, the oats, and the milk or is there some mental or emotional piece, such as satisfaction, that completes the idea of cereal. If cereal can be described fully by its material parts, then it begs the question, when does a bowl of cereal become a bowl of cereal? Is milk a necessary ingredient, apart from other liquids, for cereal to truly become cereal, and if so, how much? A drop? A Gallon? Who gets to dictate that choice and if it's the individual who is eating the cereal, how can we truly trust our judgment when nothing can be known for certain as rational skepticism dictates (at least outside of mathematical proofs). Of course, I can't forget about questions such as Why, near the end of eating a bowl of cereal, do the oats seem to gravitate to each other, forming clumps along the edges and middle of the bowl and What chemical indicators on the cereal allow me to taste it and describe it as "good" or "tasty"?
I could go on and on but I'm sure at this point I'm being already perceived as a rather unconventional applicant. I mean, the metaphysical and scientific inquiries of a bowl of cereal are not by any means a subject of interest for any sane person. I mean a bowl of cereal is mundane, trivial even. But that's the thing. I'm not sane.
I have a thing for the trivial. A certain appreciation for the things overlooked and underappreciated by the bulk of society. It's an obsession of mine and one particularly hard to escape from. There are so many trivial things in the world. The chirps and hums of the night are trivial. The happy clunk of a toaster and the furniture of a room are all trivial. Well, In the grand scheme of things, the whole world is trivial, I suppose. I, for one, don't care, I love it.
The trivial, to me, is where knowledge truly resides. In the chirps and hums of the night, I find the knowledge of organisms' instinctual desires to carry on genetic material and continue evolutionary progress. In the happy clunk of a toaster, I find a potential research venture on the right conditions to create a perfectly golden-brown piece of toast. In the choices of furniture, I find how environmental and cultural pressures can translate into personal and artistic expression and enjoyment. Its tiring work but its work I'm more than happy to embark on.
At Rice I bring the perspective and scholarly psycho, a person so enamored by the trivial that his world is covered by it, outlook defined by it and life thriving upon it.
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Is there anyway I can imporve this essay?Dear Friend
I hope that everything is fine with you
first of all, please allow me introduce myself, I am Faiz Ahadina from Indonesian. As you all known that Indonesia is on the top consumers for rice because we all eat rice everyday as our major food. It might be true that for majority of us that that is not eating without rice, we call it as small eat which `will not affect our body or appetites. maybe you can compare the different of culture between western and eastern people to view this phenomenon. I think it is gonna be really interested if you can reveal the major reason behind that and how both parties can appreciate on another so we can present the harmony in diversity. In addition, you can say on your essay what happen in Indonesian when majority people eat rice but it always lack of rice saving so government must import all we needs from abroad
Holt Educational Consultant - / 14,835 
4783 Julian, your response is totally confusing and unrelated to the prompt discussion. You are over complicating your response when you are only expected to bring a simple response to the question "What personal perspective would you contribute to life at Rice?". It is a personal perspective that should be reflective of your " unique life experiences and cultural traditions". Therefore, the essay is asking you to discuss who you are in the traditional context of your life and culture. What is it about your heritage that makes you stand out as a person? What might other people see as an admirable trait in you based upon your culture and traditions? How does being a person from your part of the world translate into a person who can contribute to the student life at Rice? How can you make it more animated? How will your addition to the cluster of students make the student body more interesting? All of these responses must go back to your culture, traditions, and unique perspective about life as only someone from your upbringing can bring. Introduce your traditional side to the reviewer. That is what this prompt is all about.
Don't try to stand out and be unique in a strange but interesting manner as you did in this version because the keywords, leading the proper response is contained within the prompt itself. If you can't find it, then just look at the two sections that I placed in quotation marks earlier in my review. Yes, you will have to write a totally new, more clued in response to this essay prompt.
I really like at what you are aiming for: an addition to the Rice community. You're trying to sell yourself as someone who could prospectively add something totally new to the Rice community, however, you're not answering the prompt. You're not explaining any culture or life experience differences as to everyone that is applying.
Aside from that, the introduction is too long in comparison to your essay's overall length. You take up too much of the text explaining how you view the bowl and it confuses the reader a lot.
Consider possibly talking about how you first discovered this trivial intrigue of yours, probably.
