Hi everyone! I'm applying Underwood International College at Yonsei University, specifically for Science, Technology and Policy, and I'd really appreciate some honest feedback on my Common App personal statement. Is there anything that feels weak, unclear, cliché, or unnecessary? What would you change if you were reviewing this? Does it sound unnatural? How can I make my essay stand out and align with my major. I also need to write UIC's supplemental essay, and I'm not sure how I should approach it without simply repeating my Common App essay. The prompt is : What makes you a suitable fit for UIC and what have you done to prepare for a rigorous liberal arts education? How do you plan to achieve your future goals at UIC and beyond?
My essay:
When we arrived in Erdenemandal, a rural province in Mongolia, I kept saying "thank you" for everything, but no one ever responded. At first, I worried I was being misunderstood. Then I realized gratitude wasn't spoken because it was assumed; care arrived before it needed to be acknowledged. One afternoon, when our toilet, a simple hole in the earth reached capacity, neighbors appeared with shovels to help my grandfather dig a new one. No one had called them. At that moment, I understood that nothing from my previous American life would fully apply here. My days began with my grandmother returning from milking cows, her silver pails filled to the brim with fresh milk. My ritual was eating thick clotted cream with sugar on bread before stepping outside, where the crisp air of the steppe sharpened my senses. Our yurts were scattered across the valley, yet we knew everything about one another: when someone fell ill, when a family needed water, or when a neighbor had fresh sheep intestines to share. I felt embarrassed realizing how casually I had used the word "old" to mean inferior. My 76-year-old grandmother herded sheep and my 80-year-old grandfather rode his horse with youthful ease. They lived by a seasonal balance: rich meats in the winter and probiotic-heavy dairy products like airag and yogurt in the summer. This natural rotation prevented overconsumption, and their bodies were maintained by the manual rhythm of the steppe. What I had first labeled as "lacking" was, in fact, a deeply intelligent system where health was a byproduct of how we lived.
Eventually, my family joined the many others trading nomadic life for the promise of a city salary. Moving to Ulaanbaatar was framed as modernization. I looked forward to the convenience: cars instead of long walks, markets around the corner, and a warm shower that didn't involve a trip to the lake. But in the transition to apartment living, the assumed care I had known was replaced by isolation. We had better pipes and wires, but the social bonds that sustained my grandparents began to fracture. I saw that modernization without cohesion can be pathogenic; health is built in the spaces between people, in environments that either sustain dignity or erode it. Years later, in the unpaved alleys of the ger districts, I saw the physical toll of this "modern" promise. These settlements were disconnected from central heating, leaving families to burn cheap coal to survive the -40°C nights. Families weren't making poor choices; they were simply choosing to keep their children warm. At first, I helped in the most direct way I could by providing basic necessities. However, what I offered could support a family for a few days, but it did not change the conditions the children lived in. I had believed I was aware of Mongolia's air pollution as it is often discussed in the media and in school, but experiencing it firsthand showed me how incomplete that awareness was.Being there made me question: if the problem was well known, why was it still hard to fix? Without a deeper understanding of how housing, energy access, and urban design affect health, I could describe injustice but not challenge it in a meaningful way.This experience is why I want to understand what lies beneath these public health crises, the relationship between environment and human choices. What social structures enabled my grandparents' community to thrive, and why did they fracture in the city? I hope to turn what I witnessed into evidence that can guide better decisions. My goal is to help build systems of "assumed care" where health is supported by the environment itself, preventing disease by designing communities that sustain both physical well-being and human connection for both.
My essay:
When we arrived in Erdenemandal, a rural province in Mongolia, I kept saying "thank you" for everything, but no one ever responded. At first, I worried I was being misunderstood. Then I realized gratitude wasn't spoken because it was assumed; care arrived before it needed to be acknowledged. One afternoon, when our toilet, a simple hole in the earth reached capacity, neighbors appeared with shovels to help my grandfather dig a new one. No one had called them. At that moment, I understood that nothing from my previous American life would fully apply here. My days began with my grandmother returning from milking cows, her silver pails filled to the brim with fresh milk. My ritual was eating thick clotted cream with sugar on bread before stepping outside, where the crisp air of the steppe sharpened my senses. Our yurts were scattered across the valley, yet we knew everything about one another: when someone fell ill, when a family needed water, or when a neighbor had fresh sheep intestines to share. I felt embarrassed realizing how casually I had used the word "old" to mean inferior. My 76-year-old grandmother herded sheep and my 80-year-old grandfather rode his horse with youthful ease. They lived by a seasonal balance: rich meats in the winter and probiotic-heavy dairy products like airag and yogurt in the summer. This natural rotation prevented overconsumption, and their bodies were maintained by the manual rhythm of the steppe. What I had first labeled as "lacking" was, in fact, a deeply intelligent system where health was a byproduct of how we lived.
Eventually, my family joined the many others trading nomadic life for the promise of a city salary. Moving to Ulaanbaatar was framed as modernization. I looked forward to the convenience: cars instead of long walks, markets around the corner, and a warm shower that didn't involve a trip to the lake. But in the transition to apartment living, the assumed care I had known was replaced by isolation. We had better pipes and wires, but the social bonds that sustained my grandparents began to fracture. I saw that modernization without cohesion can be pathogenic; health is built in the spaces between people, in environments that either sustain dignity or erode it. Years later, in the unpaved alleys of the ger districts, I saw the physical toll of this "modern" promise. These settlements were disconnected from central heating, leaving families to burn cheap coal to survive the -40°C nights. Families weren't making poor choices; they were simply choosing to keep their children warm. At first, I helped in the most direct way I could by providing basic necessities. However, what I offered could support a family for a few days, but it did not change the conditions the children lived in. I had believed I was aware of Mongolia's air pollution as it is often discussed in the media and in school, but experiencing it firsthand showed me how incomplete that awareness was.Being there made me question: if the problem was well known, why was it still hard to fix? Without a deeper understanding of how housing, energy access, and urban design affect health, I could describe injustice but not challenge it in a meaningful way.This experience is why I want to understand what lies beneath these public health crises, the relationship between environment and human choices. What social structures enabled my grandparents' community to thrive, and why did they fracture in the city? I hope to turn what I witnessed into evidence that can guide better decisions. My goal is to help build systems of "assumed care" where health is supported by the environment itself, preventing disease by designing communities that sustain both physical well-being and human connection for both.
