Hello everyone, thanks in advance for your help and feedback. I am planning to apply to UChicago this year and i have been wrestling for the past month with their infamous essay prompt. i went through of their past year prompt and one clicked and another one prompt for this year clicked as well. I tried asking my brother and sister for feedback which one i should pick and if there's any room for improvement but as you might have imagine i do not come from family with critiques and their feedback make me even more confuse. so i hope you guys can help me a bit more on my draft, on which essay i should pick and how i can improve it better. once again thank you.
the first essay.
We're all familiar with green-eyed envy or feeling blue, but what about being "caught purple-handed"? Or "tickled orange"? Give an old color-infused expression a new hue and tell us what it represents. - Inspired by Ramsey Bottorff, Class of 2026
Out-of-the-red.
With her brows drawn together in a sharp and severe line, her eyes wide and unblinking, Ms. Savana, my 5th-grade English teacher, shouted, "Why did you ask that out of the blue?".
Fear-struck, Jimmy, my classmate, recanted his question, and sat down drowning in shame, deeply believing that he had done something wrong. I never paid more attention to it than a fraction of a millisecond. But these small moments of anti-defiance, stripping down away the Jimmys that exist in all of us, have occurred more than I can count, enough to turn milliseconds of attention into an hour movie. The Jimmy's that yearn to venture outside of the norm. The Jimmy that wonders and questions. Yet, society would not dare let us do that. Society, or should I rather say the Ms. Savanas that always dreaded the blue, the depth of impossibility where lies boundless possibility would rather sternly drive us to the path of commonality. The path that serves their right. The path only they know of.
What do you picture when you see one hundred thousand people ferociously fighting over one spot? What is it that you first see? Is it the face of the weak getting walked over? Is it the stream of individuals mindlessly walking to their cemetery without realizing it? I see red. I see the red of the blood. The blood of their possibilities dying, suffocating under the crowd of thousands of people faithfully following the same scripts handed to them ever since birth, under the presumptuous of the likes of Ms. Savana boldly believing that they may define us, that they may know what's best for us while barricading us in this invisible cage called normal, safe net.
"The red or blue pill?" they often ask you. One has the ability to turn you back in time while the other gives a guaranteed five hundred thousand dollars; which one should you pick? But they often generously forget to disclose to you that if you choose to take the red pill, you will lose your sense of self, that you will have that certainty of five hundred thousand dollars while drowning in the red of your dreams, which is self. So, in essence, you are committing suicide. Is it worth it? I know. Pardon me for the morbid comparison, but if this grotesque depiction of what I believe is can provoke deeper thinking so we may focus on what could be, then I will gladly use my penmanship as a martyr.
I want to ask new questions to old problems. Or discover new problems by using old questions in the most unorthodox way, ways that will make the likes of Ms. Savana press their lips into a thin, bloodless line, barely containing the words that threaten to burst forth.
"New knowledge cannot be formed when hindered by old ways of thinking."
So yes, I dare not to fret at the impossibility of the blue. I yearn for out-of-the-blues. I will gladly take the adventurous route of the blue, of the unexpected, of the unknown over the red of certainty. I will gladly march forward on a journey without knowing the end while keeping my "self "rather than drowning in the Red Sea, where my "self" is void.
In a parallel world where the Jimmys inside of us is galvanized to shape thyself, where knowing and exploring thyself is the new gospel, we will have the Ms. Savanas sternly scolding anyone shying away from their true sense of discovery, shouting, "Why did you ask that out-of-the-red?"
So out with the red, or I shall rather say out-of-the-red.
One essay per thread
the first essay.
We're all familiar with green-eyed envy or feeling blue, but what about being "caught purple-handed"? Or "tickled orange"? Give an old color-infused expression a new hue and tell us what it represents. - Inspired by Ramsey Bottorff, Class of 2026
Out-of-the-red.
With her brows drawn together in a sharp and severe line, her eyes wide and unblinking, Ms. Savana, my 5th-grade English teacher, shouted, "Why did you ask that out of the blue?".
Fear-struck, Jimmy, my classmate, recanted his question, and sat down drowning in shame, deeply believing that he had done something wrong. I never paid more attention to it than a fraction of a millisecond. But these small moments of anti-defiance, stripping down away the Jimmys that exist in all of us, have occurred more than I can count, enough to turn milliseconds of attention into an hour movie. The Jimmy's that yearn to venture outside of the norm. The Jimmy that wonders and questions. Yet, society would not dare let us do that. Society, or should I rather say the Ms. Savanas that always dreaded the blue, the depth of impossibility where lies boundless possibility would rather sternly drive us to the path of commonality. The path that serves their right. The path only they know of.
What do you picture when you see one hundred thousand people ferociously fighting over one spot? What is it that you first see? Is it the face of the weak getting walked over? Is it the stream of individuals mindlessly walking to their cemetery without realizing it? I see red. I see the red of the blood. The blood of their possibilities dying, suffocating under the crowd of thousands of people faithfully following the same scripts handed to them ever since birth, under the presumptuous of the likes of Ms. Savana boldly believing that they may define us, that they may know what's best for us while barricading us in this invisible cage called normal, safe net.
"The red or blue pill?" they often ask you. One has the ability to turn you back in time while the other gives a guaranteed five hundred thousand dollars; which one should you pick? But they often generously forget to disclose to you that if you choose to take the red pill, you will lose your sense of self, that you will have that certainty of five hundred thousand dollars while drowning in the red of your dreams, which is self. So, in essence, you are committing suicide. Is it worth it? I know. Pardon me for the morbid comparison, but if this grotesque depiction of what I believe is can provoke deeper thinking so we may focus on what could be, then I will gladly use my penmanship as a martyr.
I want to ask new questions to old problems. Or discover new problems by using old questions in the most unorthodox way, ways that will make the likes of Ms. Savana press their lips into a thin, bloodless line, barely containing the words that threaten to burst forth.
"New knowledge cannot be formed when hindered by old ways of thinking."
So yes, I dare not to fret at the impossibility of the blue. I yearn for out-of-the-blues. I will gladly take the adventurous route of the blue, of the unexpected, of the unknown over the red of certainty. I will gladly march forward on a journey without knowing the end while keeping my "self "rather than drowning in the Red Sea, where my "self" is void.
In a parallel world where the Jimmys inside of us is galvanized to shape thyself, where knowing and exploring thyself is the new gospel, we will have the Ms. Savanas sternly scolding anyone shying away from their true sense of discovery, shouting, "Why did you ask that out-of-the-red?"
So out with the red, or I shall rather say out-of-the-red.
One essay per thread
