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Universum Mexico, Dictionary, Catholic and Atheist - Stanford essays


Woodstock 7 / 17 3  
Dec 31, 2013   #1
Stanford students possess an intellectual vitality. Reflect on an idea or experience that has been important to your intellectual development. (250 word limit.)
In 2011 I visited a museum in Mexico City called Universum with a group of other kids from my state. For one of the activities we organized in pairs; each of us had a long rope whose ends were tied around our wrists, like handcuffs, and that was looped around our partners'. That way, we were tied together and the objective of the game, then, was to get ourselves apart.

My partner and I attempted the same things than the other couples: ducking under the rope and stepping over it. All of these options failed and suddenly all other ideas have run out. At that moment, we gathered around the museum guides who showed us the way to separate while relating the game to topology, an area of mathematics none of us have heard about before. Although we were excited about the knowledge we have just acquired, we were more frustrated. The solution had been there all along, we only had to let ourselves see it!

After this experience I became an amateur topologist: I read friendly and illustrated proofs of the Poincare's Conjecture, call a donut a torus, and tie my shoelaces with a trefoil knot. I even aspire to be a real topologist one day, but on the meantime, I am committed to spreading over the world the wonders of the mathematics of distortion, by telling anyone willing to hear the secrets of higher dimensions and challenging them with the same puzzle that beat us all that time.

Virtually all of Stanford's undergraduates live on campus. Write a note to your future roommate that reveals something about you or that will help your roommate -- and us -- know you better. (250 word limit.)

Dear roommate:
I am sending you a dictionary that I believe would be of use for you in the years that come, but don't be afraid to give it whatever use you want (as a paperweight, perhaps?).

Cheesebration. n. You, me, and a meal including cheese in any of its forms. What do you say?
Coyota. n. The most representative dessert of my state par excellence, and one of the sweetest things you're ever going to taste. Don't worry, as my roommate, you'll receive a special treatment when it comes to coyotas.

Dar el tonto. vi. You know that feeling? When you are with someone that gets you completely and out of nowhere you two begin to laugh with the kind of laugh that makes your stomach and your cheeks hurt, and everything than any of you say makes you laugh even harder? I've known it many times, but the one in which my brother and I made our "Koala in the Tower of Tokyo" movie surpasses them all.

Wiles. n. I always wanted a porcupine, but my mother is inflexible when it comes to pets in the house, so I got the closest non-animal thing to a porcupine there is: a cactus! Wiles take his name from Andrew Wiles, a mathematician I'll let you investigate about, if you don't know who he is yet. I hope Wiles and you get along just fine and that there are no spiky confrontations between the two of you.

What matters to you, and why? (250 word limit.)
My mother is a devoted catholic and my father, a skeptic atheist. I grew up under their differing ways of seeing the world and, for a long time, I didn't know how I saw the world myself. I used to think that I was following both of the paths they have put up in front of me and that I would never be able to choose when, in reality, I had not been following either, but instead had been floating amidst the two all along. And now, I know what I am. I am hopeful. Hope is what matters to me.

What my mother is faithfully praying for, I can only hope for it. When my father says there's nothing out there listening, I tell him that hope doesn't need listeners. Hope is universal and I think it is part of each of our souls, even if we can live our entire lives without knowing that we're hoping or what we're hoping for.

In my case, I don't hope for the world to be perfect, but I hope for the future, and trying to give a meaning to my past experiences is what gives me this hope. It may not secure me that everything will be alright, that I will get a happy ending, but it reassures me about me not living my life blindly, and I find that more important. As my favorite cartoonist, Charles M. Schulz, said "A whole stack of memories never equal one little hope."

(on that last sentence, do I have to begin the quote with capital letters?)
Please, any commentary, critique and suggestion is welcomed, and if you could also check my other essays below, it would be great. Thanks a million!
boston1002 2 / 19 3  
Dec 31, 2013   #2
If the quote is from the start of a sentence yes to the capital letter.. if it's from a middle portion of a sentence then no.

Your application is amazing. I love it so much. I think you rushed a little in the last paragraph of your what matters to you and why supplement. You should be fine :)
Gervin101 2 / 7 1  
Dec 31, 2013   #3
Essay 1:
"All of these options failed, and suddenly all other ideas have run out. " I would use a different word choice. 'Were no where to be found' or 'disappeared' might work better in my opinion. This might be a regional dialect nuance, but I've always heard "on in the meantime". That is all I found grammar wise. The response answers the prompt well.

Essay 2:
The dictionary idea is fantastic. I especially like the cheesebration.

Essay 3:
This essay is written adequately and answers the prompt. I can't find anything I would necessarily change.


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