Hi everyone! Here's my personal statement of common application, and any suggestion is strongly welcomed!
Prompt: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
My childhood dream was to sit in a circle with my parents and watch TV together after dinner on an ordinary Saturday night, or every night-to be so immersed in happiness that nothing else seemed to matter. Yet such a humble wish, to be with my parents, was a luxury to me.
I was born in a small village in the mountains in Hunan, China. Unlike normal nuclear families where children lived with their parents, my parents were working in Guangzhou, a city on the south coast, leaving me in the care of my grandparents. Only once a year during Spring Festival, the Chinese New Year, was I reunited with my parents. The wait for them to come home was a time of both extreme excitement and utmost torture. For nights I would lie in bed wide awake buzzing with joy, occasionally peeking through a crack in the window as the buses passed by, hoping that it was my parents, only to be disappointed by strangers getting off.
When my parents finally greeted me through the doors with armful of new toys, I would rush to their side and cling to my mother's leg like a koala clings to a tree, following her step by step. For the few days that my parents stay with me, the new toys were of minimal significance compared to their companion. However, such happiness always ended abruptly when my grandparents pull me away from my mother's arm and out of the bus to Guangzhou. I then returned to my life of playing in the village and hoped for our next reunion. But every night I would fall asleep missing my mother's soft arm and my father's bedtime stories. The cycle of reuniting and departing with my parents lasted until I finally moved to Guangzhou. Surrounded by the love of my parents, I found happiness even when I had to overcome the obstacles of adapting to a new environment.
However, not all families were like ours. When I returned to my hometown years later, I found that many of my old playmates remained separated from their parents. This separation not only led to their emotional breakdowns, but also caused them to become disoriented about life. As more and more of my friends began smoking, drinking, and dropping out of school, I could not help but wonder about the reason that I was able to live with my parents while my friends could not. I then learned that I could stay with my parents only because I became a legal citizen of Guangzhou city after my father got promotion in his new job. Apparently, university graduates in the 1989's China were forced to work as factory workers or farmers without promotion chances, whose children were unqualified for citizenship of the city that they worked in, and thus families had to split.
Gradually, I realized that it was the awful public policy that had torn so many families apart, and had such negative effects on these people's lives. Although my family got reunited due to my father's endeavor, other families were not so lucky like ours, and I wished to do more for them. While I could not reunite their families, I hoped that by giving the left-behind children access to some of the resources that villages lacked, I could alleviate their pain from the absence of their parents. I have collected over 3,000 books to construct libraries, tutored over 60 children from various villages, and even organized a special donation event for left-behind children. However, my efforts are only minimal compared to what is necessary to actually change the lives of these kids. In order to make bigger contribution, I determine to learn how our government operates and how to improve decision-making of public policies to address the problem fundamentally. I want to make sure that no children will be left behind again.
Prompt: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
My childhood dream was to sit in a circle with my parents and watch TV together after dinner on an ordinary Saturday night, or every night-to be so immersed in happiness that nothing else seemed to matter. Yet such a humble wish, to be with my parents, was a luxury to me.
I was born in a small village in the mountains in Hunan, China. Unlike normal nuclear families where children lived with their parents, my parents were working in Guangzhou, a city on the south coast, leaving me in the care of my grandparents. Only once a year during Spring Festival, the Chinese New Year, was I reunited with my parents. The wait for them to come home was a time of both extreme excitement and utmost torture. For nights I would lie in bed wide awake buzzing with joy, occasionally peeking through a crack in the window as the buses passed by, hoping that it was my parents, only to be disappointed by strangers getting off.
When my parents finally greeted me through the doors with armful of new toys, I would rush to their side and cling to my mother's leg like a koala clings to a tree, following her step by step. For the few days that my parents stay with me, the new toys were of minimal significance compared to their companion. However, such happiness always ended abruptly when my grandparents pull me away from my mother's arm and out of the bus to Guangzhou. I then returned to my life of playing in the village and hoped for our next reunion. But every night I would fall asleep missing my mother's soft arm and my father's bedtime stories. The cycle of reuniting and departing with my parents lasted until I finally moved to Guangzhou. Surrounded by the love of my parents, I found happiness even when I had to overcome the obstacles of adapting to a new environment.
However, not all families were like ours. When I returned to my hometown years later, I found that many of my old playmates remained separated from their parents. This separation not only led to their emotional breakdowns, but also caused them to become disoriented about life. As more and more of my friends began smoking, drinking, and dropping out of school, I could not help but wonder about the reason that I was able to live with my parents while my friends could not. I then learned that I could stay with my parents only because I became a legal citizen of Guangzhou city after my father got promotion in his new job. Apparently, university graduates in the 1989's China were forced to work as factory workers or farmers without promotion chances, whose children were unqualified for citizenship of the city that they worked in, and thus families had to split.
Gradually, I realized that it was the awful public policy that had torn so many families apart, and had such negative effects on these people's lives. Although my family got reunited due to my father's endeavor, other families were not so lucky like ours, and I wished to do more for them. While I could not reunite their families, I hoped that by giving the left-behind children access to some of the resources that villages lacked, I could alleviate their pain from the absence of their parents. I have collected over 3,000 books to construct libraries, tutored over 60 children from various villages, and even organized a special donation event for left-behind children. However, my efforts are only minimal compared to what is necessary to actually change the lives of these kids. In order to make bigger contribution, I determine to learn how our government operates and how to improve decision-making of public policies to address the problem fundamentally. I want to make sure that no children will be left behind again.
