Hi! I am currently writing Oberlin College Supplemental Essay and looking for some comments and editings. I am an international student, and I think my essay contains a lot of gramatical errors and misused vocabularies! Any help will be greatly appreciated!
Prompt: Oberlin is a place of intense energy and creativity, built on a foundation of academic, artistic, and musical excellence. With its longstanding commitments to access, diversity, and inclusion, Oberlin is the ideal laboratory in which to study and design the world we want. What does your Oberlin look like?
Having searched for an environment where I would be most likely to succeed, I intuitively sensed that there was nothing but Oberlin College that suited me. Reading attentively the details of the websites and imaging my life at Oberlin, I am thrilled to discover the diverse cultural heritage that Oberlin has. Its 11:1 student-faculty ratio, dense collaboration between undergraduates and faculties, and plentiful research opportunities outside the classrooms are something I find so fascinating about Oberlin. But most importantly, Oberlin will help me not only cultivate my intellectual curiosity in American studies and in history but also train me to be an individual person.
As a pioneer college in the U.S. that admitted students regardless of gender or race, Oberlin has created as tolerate community as any other college could be. During my early college research, an article in 1942 caught my eyes. The text read: "Oberlin offers friendly welcome to seventeen Japanese-American students." For all animosity between America and Japan during World War II, Oberlin was magnanimous enough to greet Japanese-American students, who were long barred from the western society. As an amateur historian and as a Japanese citizen, I was impressed by the Oberlin's extraordinary history of tolerance and openness. Although it is not a tangible material, it was Oberlin's spirit of tolerance that spoke to me. After learning about Oberlin's commitment to tolerance and diversity, I became convinced that I would be an active participant in this campus community, where approximately 200 international students come from 50 different countries.
At Oberlin, I can also pursue my academic aspiration of the intended field. In my undergraduate research project about the impact that Asian immigrants have brought on the American society, I am excited to study in such an environment that has a tradition to celebrate East Asian cultures and languages. With the persuasive department, dedicated faculties, and active students' organizations, I am sure that I will be able to build solid academic achievements while staying in Oberlin's undergraduate. To mention a few, I plan to major in Comparative American Studies at Oberlin. The department allows students to explore the concept of Americaness though "race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality" In my research, I believe that the department's combined focuses will provide me with many dimensions from which to approach this subject.
Actually, your essay does not answer the prompt. You provided the information that you discovered through research about the university. What the prompt is asking you to describe is your idea of the Oberlin academic and social community. You should respond to the essay by imagining your life at Oberlin and how you believe you will be functioning as a student and member of the community. What does your Oberlin look like? Imagine if you will, how the university would look if you were to envision your own version of the university. What would compose the academic and social setting? How would such a setting help you succeed at the university? Don't answer the prompt with results of your research or your understanding of what the Oberlin academic and social community is like. Be creative, develop your own university using the commonly known information about the school but put a spin on it in order to make it creative and interesting. Once you accomplish that, you will have properly delivered a response to the essay prompt :-)
This essay is asking you to envision the kind of college that you want to attend. In this case, you should explain what Oberlin should be like if you were the one who created the university. In other words, you need to explain how the university would function if you were the one in charge of it. You could discuss something about the size of classes, extra curricular activities, or student community in relation to the way you envision Oberlin as a learning and social community. Think of it this way, look at the positive aspects of Oberlin that attracted you to the university in the first place. Now, think about how you can further improve the university experience. Those ideas are what will be the answer to the essay prompt for you :-)
