Need help revising my supplement essay for Johns Hopkins Undergrad. Help is much appreciated!
Prompt:
Johns Hopkins offers 50 majors across the schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering. On this application, we ask you to identify one or two that you might like to pursue here. Why did you choose the way you did? If you are undecided, why didn't you choose? (If any past courses or academic experiences influenced your decision, you may include them in your essay.)
My ambition to become a neurosurgeon began with a trip to my local library with my mother when I was about eight years old. After returning Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, I walked through the children's section with no desire to read predictable third grade chapter books. In fact, I wasn't in the fictional mood at all; so I made my way across to the "grown-ups" section, as the librarian would dub the area. I found a book with a giant picture of the brain on the cover. No one gave me the old "Don't judge a book by its cover." speech, so of course I wanted to see what this book had to say. I opened to a random page on the inside to find the section labeled "Optical Illusions". There was a tiny cross on the left side of the picture, and a circle about two inches on the right from it. I was instructed to close my left eye and stare at the cross on the left side while I moved the book toward and away from me. The circle was gone! I had a "blind spot" according to the book, a part of my eye without receptors that respond to light, causing my brain to fill in that spot with white nothingness. At Johns Hopkins, my goal is to study neuroscience and with the aid of the numerous research facilities provided by JHU, grow to assist those who live with this white nothingness daily, as well as other brain-influenced obstructions.
It is six words too long :(, so my main concern is shortening the essay a wee-bit while keeping the essential idea.
Prompt:
Johns Hopkins offers 50 majors across the schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering. On this application, we ask you to identify one or two that you might like to pursue here. Why did you choose the way you did? If you are undecided, why didn't you choose? (If any past courses or academic experiences influenced your decision, you may include them in your essay.)
My ambition to become a neurosurgeon began with a trip to my local library with my mother when I was about eight years old. After returning Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, I walked through the children's section with no desire to read predictable third grade chapter books. In fact, I wasn't in the fictional mood at all; so I made my way across to the "grown-ups" section, as the librarian would dub the area. I found a book with a giant picture of the brain on the cover. No one gave me the old "Don't judge a book by its cover." speech, so of course I wanted to see what this book had to say. I opened to a random page on the inside to find the section labeled "Optical Illusions". There was a tiny cross on the left side of the picture, and a circle about two inches on the right from it. I was instructed to close my left eye and stare at the cross on the left side while I moved the book toward and away from me. The circle was gone! I had a "blind spot" according to the book, a part of my eye without receptors that respond to light, causing my brain to fill in that spot with white nothingness. At Johns Hopkins, my goal is to study neuroscience and with the aid of the numerous research facilities provided by JHU, grow to assist those who live with this white nothingness daily, as well as other brain-influenced obstructions.
It is six words too long :(, so my main concern is shortening the essay a wee-bit while keeping the essential idea.