Essay Category:
Essay Question:
What work of music, science, mathematics or literature has surprised or unsettled or challenged you, and in what way?
The work of mathematics that has most surprised and unsettled me has been the fundamental theorem of calculus. When I was small, I was told that calculus was all about finding the areas under curves, and I always was in awe of it. I saw pictures in calculus books, when I had learned algebra and knew all about curves, of little boxes being used to approximate integration. And then I though that calculus was stupid. But the concept of using infinitely small and infinitely many boxes to approximate a curve was a revolution, precisely because it doesnt use boxes at all. When a box is infinitely small, the box vanishes, but the abstract relationship between length and width remains. Differentiation and integration are fundamentally opposite simply because multiplication and division undo each other; slope is length over width, while area is length times width. These algebraic relations are crystallized in the formula for the curve, and the beauty of calculus is that the formalism introduces numbers in the large boxes, and sweeps them into a formula before anybody has to use them. Calculus isn't stupid anymore, it's elegant. When infinite processes converge into finite numbers rather than spiral into a nonsense of infinities, it is proof that there is a deep order in the universe. The symmetry of inversion between multiplication and division underlies all the operations of nature.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Look out any window in your home. What would you change about what you see?
It's 1:10 AM and I'm looking outside of my window. It's dark. I can't do anything in the dark, so my first tweak is moving the sun. Now it's higher in the sky, fixed at noon. I can see the street from my bedroom window. It's a cold and bleak Tuesday afternoon. I make it Saturday, and for good measure, it's now cherry blossom season. But the neighborhood houses are starkly visible. Their architecture lacks inspiration. With a bit more effort, I add flourishes. Arches, stained glass windows, gargoyles, and flying buttresses seamlessly snap into place, but they look odd and foreign. Frowning, I wipe them all away and replace them all with solid, respectable Roman buildings. Better. My toga-clad neighbors walk from their atriums and marvel at the improvement. They're confused, but I know they're secretly pleased. They excitedly point up at my window, impressed at my artistic sensibilities. Yet they seem disturbed, probably because my home is unchanged home is an eyesore to their perfect planned community. So with a flourish of my hand, my home becomes a palace. Corinthian and ionic columns spurt up and cover the lawn. But with a start, I realize that my favorite holly bush is gone. I turn the season back to winter to recover it, but now the mismatched columns are cracking, sagging under the snow bearing down on them. I pull the sun to 1:10 AM, push the Earth back into winter, and restore the neighborhood, disappointed but relieved.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Essentially, talk about something important to you in 500 words. There were various permutations in the wording between Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Georgetown, and UVA, but this was my general "major" essay.
Consider the Piet`, by Michelangelo. Not his first Piet`, the masterpiece with
Mary forever youthful and mourning over the luminous Christ, finished at 23 and
enshrined in St. Peter's Basilica, but his afterthought. Michelangelo said that
in sculpting, rather than imposing his will on the block, the statue is already
perfectly formed inside of the marble; he merely chips away the stone concealing
it. His last Piet` Rondanini was left half-delivered on his death at age
ninety.
It is a coincidence of history that the Christ and Mary are frozen stepping
from
the marble, almost dripping off like water at their feet, and their torsos are
obscured by the rough grain stone. Form and imagination meet in this Piet`, and
it proves that the artist's saw is not hubris, but his own deep sensibility of
form.
Michelangelo's renaissance sensibility is also modern. Karl Popper's
epistemology of falsification is the enormous chisel that divides what we know
from what must be. Science exalts and humbles its student, whose deepest
insight
is the removal of chaff. There is truth in data obscured by the opacity of
ignorance, and so analysis is a chipping away. Plodding sterility brooding over
the pure marble, the dispassionate scientific method has no taste for insight
unless it is reproducible. Intuition and the chipping away become negative
images that meet in beauty, where science and art are the mind becoming one with
the external.
I learned this at the National Institute of Health. My research involves data
from PET scans of sleeping patents, which we correlate with
electroencephalograms
to learn how brain metabolism is reflected in brain wave patterns. One thing we
have noticed is that while it's commonly thought that brain activity decreases
generally across the brain as a person goes deeper into sleep, there are some
regions that actually decrease less. This is exciting, and something which we
seek to explain, and yet, my work has also been extremely mundane. I spent time
dividing the brain into 200-odd general anatomical regions for comparison among
subjects, and I spent long hours tweaking the mathematical form of the data.
Often, it would seem like meaningless numerology.
Yet, to find a conclusion in
one of these forms that relates back to the brain itself through all the
numerical and formal abstractions, to all the brains of our subjects, is a
moment
of beauty where insight illuminates a drab chain of logic and cuts off a chip of
marble that never truly belonged.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
"Tell us about an experience that tells us about you"
I boarded the train at 9:17 and sat down. I opened Camus. The Stranger.
'Light reading for the summer?' said the man seated on my right. I looked at
him. 'Yeah'. - Digging into my bag, I pulled out a garishly green, laminated
copy of World's Best Coin Tricks. Grinning, we talked. He works for the State
Department. I was interning at the NIH and get off at the end of the red line.
He works setting up education exchange programs and I did neuroimaging on sleep
and language patient. His major was national defense at the War College, and I
asked what he read. 'Modern writers and the classics, like Thucydides, and a
Prussian' he trailed off. 'Clausewitz? On War?' I offered. 'Yeah!' he said.
'I bet nobody else in this whole train has read On War.' What else have you
read? 'I've read Sun-Tzu and Herodotus, but haven't read Thucydides.' 'You'll
like it,' and he asked me what I wanted to do for college.
'I'm really not sure now. There are a few things.' 'Go on?' 'I either
want to
go into neurology, business or join the CIA. I'm undecided, but until then I
want to major in economics or biochemistry. I also want to join the Peace
Corps.' 'That's great!' he said, 'I was in the Peace Corps 20 years back.'
'Really? That's awesome! Where did you serve?' 'Afghanistan, in Kabul believe
it or not.' 'Do you speak Farsi?' I asked, remembering reading a snide letter
to the editor of the Washington Post deriding yet another professor's plan for
peace in Afghanistan of teaching US soldiers Arabic by pointing out that people
in Afghanistan don't speak Arabic. 'I did, but I'm out of practice now.'
Thinking of languages, I added, 'Would you believe that I don't speak my mother
tongue?' He looked at me appraisingly. 'Yeah, sure. Maybe your parents wanted
you to assimilate?' 'Close,' I replied, 'My dad speaks his regional dialect,
while my mom's from elsewhere and speaks her own dialect. They didn't share a
common, natural language and met in the US speaking English.' 'That's really
interesting,' he replied. I asked, 'So what did you do in Afghanistan?' 'Oh, I
taught English to schoolchildren in Kabul, and since there wasn't much to do, I
kept a dream log.' 'Really? That's unbelievable!' I burrowed into my bag,
scooping from below my laptop a small, cloud gray book called A Little Course in
Dreams. 'I promise you, that's the last book I have in my bag, so no more
surprises.'
'Wow,' he replied, 'I haven't seen this book in a long time.' Pulling out a
fountain pen and writing the title and author on a corner of newspaper, it was
his stop coming up. So he asked for my phone number to continue the
conversation
later: I gave him mine, took his, shook hands. Tucking the slip into page 73,
the Horizontal Vanish, of World's Best Coin Tricks, I leaned right and went to
sleep, bound for Medical Center.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
This essay was a response to the open-ended question, "Do anything you want to a sheet of paper to persuade us to admit you."
Dear Princeton Admissions Committee, When I had to find a number for reading in my ranked list of activities, I had trouble placing it. I've always read, and I think that reading is something too important to me for one line. So, here is a list of the books I've read over the last year that I can remember. I hope that this can give you a sense of where I've been intellectually wandering outside of school. Sincerely, Now reading: Ecrits, Jacques Lacan One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez American Constitutional Law, Laurence Tribe The Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal editorial pages daily. Fiction The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams The Orestia, Fschylus The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell The Plague, Albert Camus The Stranger, Albert Camus Artemis Fowl (Trilogy), Eion Colfer The Chocolate War, Robert Cormier Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Great Cases of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas The Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison The Golden Bough (condensed volumes), Sir George Frazer The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass The Saskiad, Brian Hall Folk and Fairy Tales, Martin Hallett Mythology, Edith Hamilton Magister Ludi, Herman Hesse Ulysses, James Joyce Collected Stories, Franz Kafka Captain Courageous, Rudyard Kipling The Man Who Would be King and Other Short Stories, Rudyard Kipling Eden, Stanislaw Lem Chronicles of the Vikings, R.I. Page The Morphology of the Folk Tale, Vladimir Propp The Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling Holes, Loius Sachar A Series of Unfortunate Events Series (11 volumes), Lemony Snicket The Bronze Bow, Elizabeth Speare Huck Finn, Mark Twain A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers Non-fiction How to Build your Home in the Woods, Bradford Angier Arabic in Three Months, Mohammed Asfour The Complete Book of Abs, Kurt Brungardt The Complete Book of Shoulders and Arms, Kurt Brungardt Libertarianism, A Primer, David Boaz De Bello Gallico (The Gallic War), Julius Caesar Alchemy : an illustrated A to Z, Fernando, Diana. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Frederick Douglass Caesar and Christ, Will Durant The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas L. Friedman The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud The Book of Survival, Anthony Greenback Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter Modern Times, Paul Johnson Dreams, Carl Jung Man and His Symbols, Carl Jung Psyche and Symbol, Carl Jung Worlds Best Coin Tricks, Bob Longe The Discourses, Niccolo Machiavelli History of Florence and of the Affairs of Italy, Niccolo Machiavelli Talk of the Devil: Encounters with Seven Dictators, Riccardo Orizio Winning Table Tennis, Dan Seemiller The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, Barbara Tuchman Ethics: Theory and Practice, Manuel Velasquez The Middle East: Opposing Viewpoints, Mary Williams Coaching Olympic Style Boxing, USA Boxing The Evelyn Wood Seven-Day Speed Reading and Learning Program, Evelyn Wood Poetry The Waste Land and Other Poems, T.S Eliot Never, Jorie Graham Complete Works, Edgar Allan Poe Collected Poems, George Seferis Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, J. R. R Tolkein The Aeneid, Vergil
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Describe a character in fictions, an historical figure, or a creative work (as in art, music, science, etc.) that has had an influence on you, and explain that influence.
Sitting on a grassy hillside, Scipio Africanus stared down at the burning remnant of Carthage. After three long years of fighting, Rome's mortal enemy was defeated. Scipio ordered his troops to salt the soil and cross the city's foundation by plowshare so that it would never rise again. Still, tears rolled from his eyes and the words of Hector slipped from his lips: 'The day shall come in which our sacred Troy and Priam, and the people over whom Spear-bearing Priam rules, shall perish all.' Asked by a companion what he meant, Scipio replied, 'This is a glorious moment, Polybius; and yet I am seized with fear and foreboding that some day the same fate will befall my own country.' Many people who hear this story interpret it as a fable of humility, but pure humility isn't what forged the story into accounts of the battle, or impacted Romans so strongly that they whispered the tale as a bedtime story for their children. What speaks so powerfully to us is Scipio's gravitas, his sense of the importance of the matter at hand. Scipio Africanus didn't lament looted museums, burned orphanages, or even the fate of the city. In the dying embers of Carthage, he saw Rome. As heirs of the Roman Empire, our culture is steeped in classical thought and we surround our judges and lawmakers in Corinthian columns, but gravitas is acutely missing. And there is no better example of this than our dealings with the heirs to the Carthaginian Empire, Libya. Libya seeks to purchase an end to its pariah status by paying blood money for its Lockerbie bombing. Four million dollars dribble when the UN lifts sanctions of Libya, then four more drip should the US lifts its own sanctions. The final two million trickle if the State Department removes Libya from its terror list. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, probably one of the last confessed bastions of Roman virtue, acridly expressed its sentiments by asking, 'Would the US accept ten billion dollars from Osama Bin Laden and call it even?' But the story goes deeper. As a young nation, we lack the gravitas that Rome had. We possess greater power than Augustus ever wielded, but we lack earnestness in what we do. In ancient times, tribute was accepted in exchange for yielding your prerogative to wage war. Now, we place sanctions on North Korea, or Cuba, or Libya as their actions compel us, and promise to lift them should conditions ever change. Through international law, we've given up the catharsis of forgiveness. Rather than forgiving and forgetting, we simply forget. Scipio Africanus stared into the dying embers of Carthage and discerned the fall of Rome. We stare into the embers of Libya and see nothing.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Jot a note to your future college roommate relating a personal experience that reveals something about you.
In my junior year of high school, I was thinking of what I could over summer. I had already applied to do research, but it would be months before I would hear from them. In the meantime, I was making other plans. I desperately wanted to travel, but I didn't know how I'd be able to. I found a book on travel in the library, and buried inside of it was a footnote on traveling by courier flights. By agreeing to take the manifest of a cargo with you on a flight, courier companies are able to speed their packages through custom faster than if the cargo had been sent through as a package. Thus, for sensitive deliveries that require quick custom clearance, it's necessary to buy an airline ticket. Rather than hire couriers to take packages across the world on short notice, the companies let citizens accompany packages, and offer the ticket as a steeply discounted incentive. I realized it was possible to get a round trip flight from New York to London for $50 dollars. Other flights were free if you were adventurous enough to leave with hours of notice. I had an entire travel plan laid out, from keeping my bag permanently packet to staying with family friends in various cities across the world. At the last moment in April, I heard from the research institute, putting a premature end to my plan. Traveling is still an option for my next summer, though.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Discuss an intellectual interest of yours.
Whether politics is an endlessly various soap opera or the deepest expression of our culture striving for itself, I'm totally captivated. I spend at least an hour a day over the newspaper, and read, from left to right, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal editorial pages. What captivates me is that politics is the ratio of all disciplines. Biology collides with business in Medicare, but the conflict centers on methodology, not fact. Making two opposed op-eds talk to each other is like squeezing water out of rocks. The dull language of policy is truer than any other because the allocation of resources seeks to span the breadth experience. Ultimately, the law of conservation is the law of the universe, and policy can't deny all of it at once, nor any of it forever. My brother and I both read multiple newspapers, and for years we've played tennis and talked through our opinions of the opinions. We both love to rattle off order of magnitude calculations. An opinion in the Post on falling Chinese aquifers brought us to calculate that the world's energy supply, including metabolic, is about 50/50 biomass and oil. Almost a gigaton of wheat is harvested annually, nearly a quarter of all agricultural yields, and a gigaton of oil is burned, with four times starch's energy density. Wherever I go to college, I know I'll miss these conversations.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Of the activities, interests and experiences listed previously, which is the most meaningful to you, and why?
I'm deeply interested in biology, so the activity most meaningful to me has been my research. I began last June when I was chosen as a summer biomedical research intern. This senior year, I've continued my work through my school's selective mentorship program. It allows chosen seniors to leave school three days a week at 10:00 AM for area labs. I take the metro to the DC where I continue my work as a volunteer and leave for home at the end of the work day. My foray into research began when my chemistry teacher, suggested I apply to the summer internship program. I applied, and while waiting for a response, I became interested in the work of a researcher who was exploring the intersection of neuroimaging methods and language. Luckily, since I had studied neurobiology and had read some Noam Chomsky, both scientific and otherwise, he could find a place for me. Our project involves comparing differences in regional brain metabolism with EEG brain wave patterns. Our data suggest that as a person falls deeper into sleep, brain activity decreases less in certain area of the brain than commonly supposed. My role has ranged from analytical work to dividing the brain into over 200 different anatomical regions for region to region comparison, and the last half-year has been extremely exciting for me.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Write about anything important to you that will give us a sense of who you are in 500 words.
'Tell me the causes, O Muse, why the Queen of heaven drove him, a man marked by such devotion, to undergo so many perils, to endure so many toils. Can the minds of heaven bear such malice?' (Aeneid, 1.15) Water laps at my heels, and I realize with a start that high tide is washing in. On salt caked soles, I walk back from the foot of the lighthouse, thinking over a classical question the Aeneid's opening raises: do the gods inflict suffering from cruelty or apathy? The year was 1911. My grandfather coiled his hundred-year lease into a shallow pocket of his thick dungarees. The promised lush acres rolled down to the sandy shores of the bay on the West rim of the island. Age twenty, he rooted his sugar-cane plantation under the bright-eyed lighthouse. Planting by the bay, he prepared his crop for the harvest of the fall. Growing sugar cane is exacting work. At harvest time, the towering Cane calls you to the field, barbed and beckoning by serrated leaves. The field is given to flame, cleansing it of dry leaves and releasing caramelized incense as it burns. The stalks are hacked down by machete and bundled alongside the plantation tracks. Later, agents would appear at the junction to receive the burnt offerings. My grandfather fathered many children before my father was born. But between the first and the last, times changed. Our family plantation was successful, but the tide of globalization eroded our prosperity. Although our cane was less expensive than Floridian cane, farm subsidies to Florida cane growers amounted to $618 an acre, and Congress severely restricted sugar importation into the United States. As a result, Americans pay four times the international market price for sugar, while island growers are denied the right to compete. Plantations folded, and the honorable and ennobling work gave way to the pursuit of tourist dollars. My grandfather felt that tide lap at his heels as the agents granted less and less for cane. Soon, they stopped coming at all, and our plantation came to an end. Abel killed Cane and Globalization struck us from tillers into wanderers, scattering us East of Eden. We prospered in the United States, becoming doctors, teachers, and businessmen, but ultimately, we're still wandering. Walking on salt-caked feet across the shoals that separate the lighthouse from the plantation, I gaze over the worn fields. The plantation lies fallow and its fields are covered in low shrubs, tall grass, and dead leaves. On a corner of the property, our old tractor rests in a furrow, grizzled by tawny rust. The air is thin and cool, without a hint of the caramel of burning cane carried on ocean breeze. In the distance, a yacht slices across the bay under the bright-eyed lighthouse's gaze: Carthaginian ruins blurring into Roman foundations. Now, I realize that the classical question of whether we've suffered from apathy or malice doesn't matter. Now, it's only my academic point.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Personal statement
Black Band E-V-I-L are the letters which label the black band that I wear on my left wrist. That's rights Evil- bad, mean, harsh- but look at the word again. Sideways, front wards, upside down and even backwards, that's right backwards L-I-V-E. So when seeing my bracelet from the eyes of others, you see the bold possibly bitchy side of me; the me that takes control of life not allowing others to walk on, nor over me. I have to be mean at times: life isnt easy. Everyday is a task. Everyday affects my future, and the future is my life. My family is not the type with college educations, great jobs and nice cars. My family is the type that can't stand their jobs and have only high school degrees. My mother gets up everyday for a nine-hour shift in the produce section of a grocery store. She leaves when the sun's up and gets home after it has set. She walks through the door with a frown on her face and questions in her mind. 'Do these people hate me so much to hold me back?' She wants to quit but where will she go? How will she support me? With only a high school degree there isn't much else she can do. For her this job is a blessing. I feel sorry for her and bad for her. I don't want to be like her. Now it's my turn to wear that cap and gown and step off the podium and decide if I want that high or low road. What makes this hard? The people that care nothing for me, the ones that put me down, or try to at least. I push everyday and every hour to hold a smile on my face, to say you can't hold me back. What do they see? 'Evil on my left arm, the darkness of my skin and the brightness of my smile.' That's what those careless people see, not what I see, nor what my loved ones see. I'm here to live out loud, as the saying goes, and to live is what life is about. So take another look at what the bracelet says or what it means. Evil is only the front that I put on when it's time to defend myself, but to live is the word that pushes me to my goals.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Tell us about who you are. Personal Statement
EARLY ACTION Essay One. Korean-Spanish, that was how my American friends identified me. Unlike Korean, my birth identity, or Spanish, my cultural identity, I did not know what to make of my new identification. Korean-Spanish reflected my past and it seemed that this new identification was my only possible one in America. Somehow my American friends were fascinated by a 16-year-old Korean boy who came from Spain and spoke four languages fluently. Maybe Korean-Spanish was how I really identified myself. Or maybe I had already guessed that my new friends would hyphenate my identification, just like African-American, or Japanese-American. (Pardon me if I am wrong, but to me, it seems as though most of the American identifications include hyphens.) In America, everyone seemed categorized and hyphenated. I read a number of passages in the Critical Reading sections of the SAT I that began by citing articles or books written by different hyphen-identified people. One introductory paragraph said: 'This passage is from a book written by a Chinese-American woman about Chinese-American women writers.' Another stated: 'This passage is from a book by an African-American woman who is a law professor.' I was confused: 'So, is the author of the book African or American?' Hyphenation of identities was perplexing and ambiguous to me. Why cant everyone with an American passport be just American? America has always been an eclectic society where much diversity in ethnicity and race existed. In that sense, America is more than just a country; it is a smaller representation of the world. However, Spain and Korea have always been, and still are, countries mostly populated by people of single ethnicities. Spain and Korea both want to maintain the country among their people and limit opportunities for foreigners. They have to change. I was blessed to be able to live in three different countries, on two different continents. My intercontinental life has given me the ability to perceive the world from a different point of view. Before I realized, the American culture found its place in me and naturally became part of me. I no longer am just Korean-Spanish, but Korean-Spanish-American. As I assimilated the diverse cultures each continent represented, my international experiences helped me to understand that underneath, people were very much the same regardless of their ethnic backgrounds. Maybe that was why I felt that learning many languages English, Spanish, and French was essential. I believe that foreign people and cultures can only be truly understood through their own languages. Yet, I hold onto my native language, Korean, for I know how important my roots are. Ironically, even though the world is being globalized, ethnicity, race and religion still cause friction among people. I hope, with my international experience, I can help make the world change into one in which ethnicity and race are of little consequence. I am convinced that through understanding, tolerance, and acceptance, we can make a difference in this world. It is time to begin a journey towards the shaping of a truly globalized world, where I hope to act as an unbreakable bond among different countries.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
What invention had the greatest impact in your life?
If somebody were to ask me, 'What invention had the greatest impact in your life?' I would not hesitate to say 'jigsaw puzzles.' The jigsaw puzzles had the biggest impact on my life. Since the age of four I became the creator of many things; from Mickey Mouse to Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao, Spain. As I matured, the number of pieces needed for creation increased. When I was five, the number of pieces were already exceeding one hundred. While I was struggling with a thousand identical pre-created puzzle pieces, I learned many things, more than just the names of my creations. The puzzles taught me perseverance. Jigsaw puzzles require much concentration and persistence. Beginning with the edges of the puzzle, piece by piece, I created my own Mona Lisa and Bayr Alphen of Germany. I endeavored until the last piece was in its right place for one misplaced piece could ruin the entire creation. When it seemed that I had come to a dead end, I endured until I found the piece that would lead me to the correct path again. I thank jigsaw puzzles for teaching me endurance. The puzzles also gave me motivation and inspiration. As the number of pieces in a puzzle grew, I felt more and more inspired to conquer them. As I created many works of art, I gained confidence, not only in the field of jigsaw puzzles, but also in other activities. I came to believe that there was a solution to every problem and did not hesitate to find an answer when struck by a difficult question. The jigsaw puzzles, in many ways, shaped me into who I am today. I am now creating the most difficult and sophisticated jigsaw puzzle ever, the puzzle of my life. I am molding my own life and building my own shape. I am just about to place another piece in my puzzle of life, applying to the college where I will be spending the next four years of my life. I look forward to finding many interesting pieces I could place in my puzzle of life during the next four years. I would like to think that the yet-to-be completed puzzle will become a whole, made up of the colors and shapes of my heritage, my efforts, my accomplishments and my dreams.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Minor essay
When I first went to Spain my knowledge of foreign language was limited to mere recitations of Alphabets. The first language I had to learn was English because I had entered an international school in Barcelona. I began to learn English, a completely new language, in an ESL class, but I started taking regular courses after just seven months I could finally communicate with my peers and teachers in English. I began to learn Spanish in a class for foreign students and after one year, I was in a Spanish class with my Spanish friends. After two years of studying Spanish, I began to learn yet another language, French. Language, in my opinion, is the most sophisticated and beautiful form of art. Learning languages has always inspired me; learning new languages has always surprised me because I found out that each language had its own unique, hidden appeals. Maybe that is why I was so challenged when learning new languages, challenged to find those beauties of each language. It has been fascinating to learn new languages. I will not limit myself to the languages I have already learned but will continue to pursue my desire to study even more languages in the future.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
What is the most significant academic honors you have received?
While I was in Spain, I applied for the Spanish perfection course at "La Escola Oficial d'idiomas" during ninth grade summer vacation. The course offered at "La Escola Oficial d'idiomas," a national language school, requires even the native Spanish speakers to take a qualifying exam. I was qualified and was accepted. The course began at nine o'clock in the morning and ended at half past one in the afternoon, Monday through Friday. At the end of the course, students had to take and pass a rigorous exam in order to graduate and receive a diploma. Fortunately, I passed the exam and graduated from the Spanish perfection course at 'La Escola Oficial d'idiomas' with the prestigious diploma and certificate.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
What was your most meaningful activity?
When I was in Spain I volunteered to teach Korean and English to underprivileged Korean-Spanish children every Sunday at church. It was a small church with about 30 children who could not speak, write or read any Korean or English. Spanish-Korean children, as a result of an absence of Korean language education, had forgotten their native language, maybe even their roots. Their parents, who were too busy to learn Spanish, couldn't even ask the children about their school lives. Thus, I offered to stay two hours after the service to teach these children both Korean and English. I communicated with them in Spanish and encouraged them to learn Korean and English. When I began teaching them, I was surprised at their eagerness, their thirst for knowledge. They wished to learn their native language and were proud to display their knowledge in front of their parents. I helped them to find their own identity, to absorb their own language. I read Korean books about Korean myths to the children. The first time I read a story for them, I had to read each page two or three times until they fully understood. But after a year they could, though very slowly, read Korean and English books by themselves. It was gratifying to see that I could be a bridge between people of different cultural backgrounds through my language skills. It was pleasing to see that my language skills were not used to only express my thoughts, but those of others too. Even though they still talked in Spanish with their peers, they tried to talk to their parents in Korean. It was an experience that I will never forget.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Please describe a person of great influence in your life and explain how the person influenced you.
A person of great influence She was immobile. She stood up. She took a step. She runs. She, the definition of perseverance and triumph. It was in March 1999 when I first met her. I had newly moved to Castelldefels, a suburban seaside town fifteen kilometres away from Barcelona. It was a nice house where you could see the Mediterranean Sea and the beach once you opened the windows in the living room. About a week later, I went out to the beach at six oclock in the morning to jog on the beach before school. Smelling the freshness of the morning breeze, I began jogging towards the southern end of 'La Playafels'. I saw a distant figure ahead of me. As I got closer to the figure, I realised that the figure I had seen was a middle-aged woman trying to force herself stand up from the wheelchair. As I approached her, she stopped and stared at my legs. I stopped. I said 'Buenos dmas!' and asked if I could be of any help. No reply, just the stare. So I continued my routine and when I looked back, I saw her still endeavouring to stand up. I pitied her for trying to achieve what seemed impossible but at the same time, admired her courage to reach what seemed unreachable. Every morning she tried to stand up, to be free. Our continuous 6 o'clock rendezvous at the southern end of 'La Playafels' was repetitious and unchanging. She, trying to lift herself up from the wheelchair and I, stopping to greet her. Every night I prayed. I prayed for a miracle. Every morning I put my trainers on, wishing that there was a change in the way we met; that it was the day she bore fruits of her efforts and faith. It was on a Tuesday in October. I silently went out. The sun was just about to rise. I began running as usual and could see her at a distance. First, it seemed that she was with someone because there was a figure behind her wheelchair. But as I approached her, I realised that the figure I had seen was actually her, standing up against her wheelchair. Her emaciated legs were trembling. She took a step forward and sighed. She let her hands release the handles of the wheelchair and took another step. She could not balance well and fell. I quickly went over to her and lifted her. She looked at me. She smiled. She had done it. Her legs gradually gained the strength she needed to walk. By the end of February 2000, she was able to jog lightly. As Henry Ford said, 'Whether you think you can or think you can't, you are right.' Her perseverance and her strong will brought her the glory she had always dreamed of. She was triumphant in the battle against herself. She was right in thinking that one day she could, as everybody around her did, stand up and freely move around on the beach early in the morning. Once she stood up and ran, there was nothing that could stop her. From my house I could see her running on the beach, through bright sunshine, through rain, and through fog. Sometimes we ran side by side towards the southern end of 'La Playafels,' in silence. In March of that miraculous year, my family and I decided to move to Pedralbes, where my school was located. Castelldefels was a beautiful town to live in but it was difficult to commute to school and work everyday. Though I knew I was going to miss her, I was happy to leave the town after seeing her achieve her goal. The morning I was going to leave Castelldefels, I went out to the beach at six oclock. As I walked to the place where I had first met her, I could see her running. She was coming towards me and once she recognised me, she waved. I said 'Buenos Dmas' as usual and she pointed the southern end of 'La Playafels,' meaning, 'let's run.' I told her that I could not run because I was leaving the town and that I admired her. I told her that I would never forget her, and that I learned much from her. Whether she understood that or not, she began to run towards the southern end of 'La Playafels' alone. She did not look back nor waved at me. This is what I believe: with perseverance, courage, and faith, there is nothing a human cannot do. She was the curer of my weak mentality, mentor of my life. When I first met her, I had felt sorry for her 'vain' efforts to walk, but as I saw her undaunted will, I came to firmly believe that one day she would be able to run just like me. If God gave people something special that other organisms did not receive, it is the ability to make impossible things feasible. I never met her since then, and a year after, I came to the States. I cannot physically run with her but she will always be in me, running with me, motivating me, eradicating my fears, freeing me from all the wheelchairs in my life.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Please explain why you have chosen to apply to this school.
I was lucky to live on two different continents, in three countries. As a
result, I gained an international experience and learned to quickly assimilate
the cultures different people represented. The cultural diversity that exists at
Duke is what attracts me to Duke. I believe that I could perform well, both in
academics and extracurricular activities, by joining the huge pool of diversity
at Duke.
Also, during my 11th grade February break, I visited Duke University and stayed
on the campus for four days with a close friend of mine who was currently a
senior majoring in English. During my stay, I visited many places to get to know
Duke thoroughly; I read books on campus, I dined with Duke University students,
and I attended many classes. While doing so, I felt a strong affection towards
Duke: I imagined myself living on the campus, studying and interacting with
different people. I met many friends of my host and they helped me gather
extremely appealing facts about Duke. I hope I could become a successful member
of the Duke student body.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
If you were given ten dollars, where and how would you spend it?
Before I realized, I was on a white, feeble horse walking by a man on a mule. I was wearing a heavy armor with a lance in my hand. We were riding towards the horizon of endless fields where there were many windmills turning slowly. I asked the man next to me, 'excuse me sir, where are we now?' The man said, 'We are still in La Mancha, don Quixote, but I am getting a little hungry now. Would you like a potato too mi amo?' A potato? La Mancha? Why is he calling me don Quixote? The man gave me a potato and kept on calling me either don Quixote or 'mi amo,' meaning 'my master' in Spanish. I must be in a play, acting as don Quixote, I told myself and decided to act well. A while later we saw a massive windmill in front of us. I remembered that I was supposed to destroy this windmill, thinking that it is a giant trying to hinder my path. So I lifted the heavy lance up and courageously charged against it. 'Princess Dulciane, this is for you!' I screamed and pierced the windmill. The result was that I got utterly destroyed and was defeated by the 'giant.' When I woke up, I was lying on a bed made of straw. The armor, fortunately, was taken off from me. I stood up and looked outside the window, where clouds of smoke were rising. I saw my father dressed up as a priest, my mother as a maid, and my sister as don Quixote's niece. They were, as planned, burning most of my books or giving them out to others. While they were busy doing that, I had to sneak out, wear that heavy armor again, get on my horse and go to Sancho Panza to depart again for the unfinished adventure. The priest, the maid and Quixote's niece was going to deliberately ignore me while I snuck out. But no, they began ruining the whole play by obstructing my path, and hiding my armor and lance. What were they doing? They laid me down on the straw bed again and my sister, Quixotes niece guarded me. I was lost. I did not know what to do next. I was not prepared to act impromptu. So I stayed there and waited, pretending I was asleep. Well& I really did fall into a deep sleep. I opened my eyes. Quixote's niece was gone! I looked at the clock across the room. It was four o'clock in the afternoon. I must have slept a bit too long. It was time to leave again. I looked around the room to see if the armor was there. The room had changed since the last time I looked around. In the place of piles of hay, there was a computer. In the place of farm tools, there was a DVD player. In disbelief I got up from what was no longer a straw bed, but a comfortable bed. As I got up something fell on my feet. It was a book. I picked it up and looked at it: Don Quixote de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, $10.00.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Please describe a book you have read in the past and explain how it influenced you.
'La Isla Soqada is all about an adventure I would have wanted to live' - says Fernando Martmnez Gil, the author of La Isla Soqada (The Dreamed Island). In fact, that is what everybody who reads the book would think. I received La Isla Soqada as a gift from one of my friends in Spain when I was leaving Spain to come to the United States. This book addressed a meaningful question in me because at first I could not decide whether I agree to the author's criticism about certain people's lives. The book is about the adventures Juan, the protagonist, has during his journey to find a nonexistent island (or rather, an island in his dreams) that he believes it to be 'the Heaven of the Earth.' Gil praises the courage and eagerness of Juan, who embarks on a journey full of unknown and obscurity. Gil commends Juan's zealous pursuit of his dreams but at the same time, criticizes Juan for disregarding the reality and living in his dreams. While reading this in the airplane heading to the United States, I applied Juans journey to mine. When I was nine I embarked on a dreamlike journey to Europe without any knowledge about how Europe would be like. After eight years of life in Spain, I decided that Spain was not the destination of my dreams and left for the United States. It seems that Gil would reprimand my traveling to so many different places in pursuit of my dreams. I, however, hesitated to agree to Gil. I could not decide whether Gil's criticism was a valid one of the lives of people with dreams. Gil seemed to censure their lives for impracticality but I have always believed that going on an adventure to seek one's dreams was worth a try. There was so much to learn, so much to experience during the pursuit of the dreams. I know that my departing from South Korea to go to Europe was not a futile choice for I learned so much in Europe, even the things I could not have in Korea. I came to the United States for the same reason: to learn more. In the end, after arguing about Gil's criticism with myself, I was convinced that the people with dreams do not live a vain life in pursuit. They accomplish their dreams while pursuing them. La Isla Soqada is a book that anybody with dreams should read because it is never too late to embark on a journey of dreams.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
What was your biggest challenge in life and what did you learn from it?
A Day in the Life 'Go to the door! All right, are you ready to jump?' 'Sir, yes, SIR!' 'Speak up! Are you sure?' Psychologists say that of all heights, people most fear falling from 11.3 meters above the ground - about the height of a four-story building. The Korean army exploits this fact in its 11.3-meter tall Mak training towers, reasoning that if a soldier can conquer his or her fear of jumping from that height, he or she can jump from any. That my own memories of the Mak tower persist so intensely stands in stark contrast to my recollections of the other trials of life in the 701 Regiment of the Special Assault Commando Unit. Despite its foreboding moniker, the 701 Regiment was less a training ground for elite special forces than it was an army-operated camp for over-stimulated adolescent boys. This is not to say 'military life' was devoid of challenges - indeed, survival in the 701 Regiment involved precisely the kind of tribulations I as a twelve-year-old boy was ill prepared to contend with. The food was tasteless and underdone, and access to television and junk food was strictly prohibited. The instructors kept us under constant surveillance, filling our days with drills and exercises. Today, I feel gratitude for the discipline the instructors labored to instill in us, and a bemused nostalgia for the twelve-year-old boy whose most profound grief arose from losing two Saturdays' worth of soccer with his friends. But the emotions stirred by these recollections remain dulled, muted by the hazy expanse of time. Not so with the Mak tower. Early the morning of our second day, we assembled at the base of the tall mountain overlooking the camp, our first exercise of the day. The ascent was steep and our only relief was the cooling breeze blowing down from the summit. Twenty minutes into the hike, we came to a rocky plateau dug into the side of the mountain where the instructors ordered us to halt. There, we saw a half-dozen soldiers poised on top of a tall wooden tower. A cry rang out from the tower, and without a moment's deliberation, the men leapt from their perches, restrained from certain death by only four impossibly-thin ropes attached to a cable. I was terrified. Our instructors turned to their silent regiment. 'No one has to do it. If you don't want to do it, you can leave.' Several of my fellows immediately fell out of the group and headed back to camp. My fear, bolstered by reason, urged me to go with them, but a peculiar resolve compelled me to stay. Even now, I struggle to account for this alien resolve that carried me up the four flights of wooden stairs and steadied my hands as I fastened the safety gear around me. I do not think it was bravery, for I was very much afraid, and had I perceived a choice in the matter, I may not have been able to do it. Rather, I think it was a sense of purpose that guided me. Five years have passed since the afternoon I stood atop the Mak tower, but to this day I can feel the echoes of the adrenaline that coursed through my veins as I stepped to the edge of the precipice, and the mere recall of the ground 11.3 meters and some unfathomable distance below still shoots an icy jangliness through my shoulders and into the back of my skull. The wind blew fiercely as I readied myself, drowning out the barking of the drill instructor, pressing me back into the security of the tower's bulwarks. A ripple of indecision rolled through me and then in an instant, was gone, carried away in the slipstream. With my eyes wide and fixed on the horizon, I pushed off. The beginnings of change for me occurred that afternoon on the mountain. Though my friends watching from below would later insist that I passed only through open air, moments after I leapt, I felt myself crossing a threshold. Hurtling toward the earth, strapped into a confining safety vest, I tasted a kind of freedom previously unknown to me, the freedom of a world unbounded by ones fears. The process of disentangling myself from them has been gradual. Five years later, I am still all too often distanced from life by a wall of my anxieties. But the freedom I came to know just a little that afternoon provided me a glimpse of the riches that lie behind it.
