Please critique!! Will critique back :)
This is due literally tomorrow, and I would appreciate ANY FEEDBACK
Yale: In this essay, please reflect on something you would like us to know about you that we might not learn from the rest of your application, or on something about which you would like to say more. You may write about anything-from personal experiences or interests to intellectual pursuits. (Please answer in 500 words or less.)
Harvard: You may wish to include an additional essay if you feel that the college application forms do not provide sufficient opportunity to convey important information about yourself or your accomplishments.
"Where are you from?"
"Hangzhou, China." . . . Except not really.
I wish to tell the full story of myself, including my stays with seven different host families over periods ranging from ten days to a year. This is a part of me that blends China with Colorado, New Jersey, Montana, Wisconsin, Connecticut, and Costa Rica, Chinese with Chinese Americans, Mexican Americans, and European Americans. I myself have become a member of seven different families with whom I am not biologically connected whatsoever.
During my freshman year, I stayed with a Lutheran host family in Milwaukee. I attended chapels everyday at school and a lutheran church with my host family every sunday. After a while, I noticed that all of the chapel speakers, who were usually faculty members, were males. I first brought up this question on our drive back home to my host family mother: "mom, why has there never been a female speaker at chapel?"
"I don't know. Most lutheran schools in our area don't allow female speakers," her response was casual, but I have not dropped this complex issue ever since. During my ten - day stay at my roommate's house in Princeton on Thanksgiving of 2012, I witnessed her constantly getting shut up by her dad when she tried to join his conversation with her brother on politics. One time, I followed her to her room. She closed the door, turned around and faced me; I saw tears rolling in her eyes. "It's despairing to realize that you don't belong to where you come from," she murmured.
I understood her powerlessness. During the summer before junior year, I stayed with a Chinese American family in Denver. Someone brought up the topic, "diversity in school," at dinner, and the host dad commented authoritatively: "That's bullshit . . . Most black people are just born to be less smart." Across the dinner table, I knew I was not in the power position to say anything.
Over these past three and half years, I have grown fascinated with sociology because of the people whom I have met. I read many sociology literatures in my spare time, and am pretty much a self-educated social justice fighter. At that moment, however, I felt immensely powerless. It was not the first time I heard such comment, and last time it was exactly the same words, from my biological dad. I realized that, despite how much I have talked, I still have much left to say, to do.
Coming from China, a socially homogeneous country, I was ignorant towards people different from myself. Whether talking with a street jewelry vendor in Montana or chatting under two layers of quilts with my immigrant friend because her family couldn't afford to turn on the heater, my interactions with diverse people have made the imperfections in the world troubles of my own. They have ignited in me a desire to start social changes; they strip me to the core and leave me a heart unsatisfied with where I was from and inspired by where I can be.
word count: 458
This is due literally tomorrow, and I would appreciate ANY FEEDBACK
Yale: In this essay, please reflect on something you would like us to know about you that we might not learn from the rest of your application, or on something about which you would like to say more. You may write about anything-from personal experiences or interests to intellectual pursuits. (Please answer in 500 words or less.)
Harvard: You may wish to include an additional essay if you feel that the college application forms do not provide sufficient opportunity to convey important information about yourself or your accomplishments.
"Where are you from?"
"Hangzhou, China." . . . Except not really.
I wish to tell the full story of myself, including my stays with seven different host families over periods ranging from ten days to a year. This is a part of me that blends China with Colorado, New Jersey, Montana, Wisconsin, Connecticut, and Costa Rica, Chinese with Chinese Americans, Mexican Americans, and European Americans. I myself have become a member of seven different families with whom I am not biologically connected whatsoever.
During my freshman year, I stayed with a Lutheran host family in Milwaukee. I attended chapels everyday at school and a lutheran church with my host family every sunday. After a while, I noticed that all of the chapel speakers, who were usually faculty members, were males. I first brought up this question on our drive back home to my host family mother: "mom, why has there never been a female speaker at chapel?"
"I don't know. Most lutheran schools in our area don't allow female speakers," her response was casual, but I have not dropped this complex issue ever since. During my ten - day stay at my roommate's house in Princeton on Thanksgiving of 2012, I witnessed her constantly getting shut up by her dad when she tried to join his conversation with her brother on politics. One time, I followed her to her room. She closed the door, turned around and faced me; I saw tears rolling in her eyes. "It's despairing to realize that you don't belong to where you come from," she murmured.
I understood her powerlessness. During the summer before junior year, I stayed with a Chinese American family in Denver. Someone brought up the topic, "diversity in school," at dinner, and the host dad commented authoritatively: "That's bullshit . . . Most black people are just born to be less smart." Across the dinner table, I knew I was not in the power position to say anything.
Over these past three and half years, I have grown fascinated with sociology because of the people whom I have met. I read many sociology literatures in my spare time, and am pretty much a self-educated social justice fighter. At that moment, however, I felt immensely powerless. It was not the first time I heard such comment, and last time it was exactly the same words, from my biological dad. I realized that, despite how much I have talked, I still have much left to say, to do.
Coming from China, a socially homogeneous country, I was ignorant towards people different from myself. Whether talking with a street jewelry vendor in Montana or chatting under two layers of quilts with my immigrant friend because her family couldn't afford to turn on the heater, my interactions with diverse people have made the imperfections in the world troubles of my own. They have ignited in me a desire to start social changes; they strip me to the core and leave me a heart unsatisfied with where I was from and inspired by where I can be.
word count: 458
