<p>What are they looking for in the diverse study body essay?</p>
<p>I really don't understand what they mean. Do they want me to tell them what makes me different or what I have done in the past or who I am or what my culture is or what?</p>
<p>im white/male/rich/no family problems/private school --- i think that means ill have to look outside the obvious when it comes to diversity...im sure they are looking for intellectual diversity as well, i hope lol</p>
<p>Write about how you have contributed to the diversity around you and how you can continue to contribute at UM. Make up a bunch of bull ****, which is what I did.</p>
<p>name some cool activities you did in high school that you consider unique...that is diversity</p>
<p>ethnic diversity is only type</p>
<p>I want all blacks, whites, mexicans, chinese, klingons, hobbits, and jews to live in a world where they are not judged by the content of their character but by the texture and color of their skin.</p>
<p>EDIT: Don't say this in your essay...this represents what you shouldn't put <em>ahem</em>. Yes, you're all welcome in advance.</p>
<p>So they don't want things like Im involved in the community and im active and my volunteering and tutoring etc show it?</p>
<p>They want like I wish for all of use to live in peace and **** like that?</p>
<p>What the **** is that **** man? Why the hell do I have to make **** up like that just so that they can fill their quotas?</p>
<p>So what, now I gotta make up how I magically realized the value of diversity or something like that?</p>
<p>Do they do extensive fact checking?</p>
<p>^No. Just write about how you <em>think</em> you're different from all those other pple who are involved in their communities and volunteer and tutor etc etc etc, be it your cultural/economic background, or your unique interests that you also wanna pursue in college, or at least pretend that you do.</p>
<p>Write about how you want to immerse yourself in a community as diverse as UM so that you can shape yourself to become an open-minded, cultured leader in the 21st century that will change the world for the better or some Bull**** like that. You know, something to that effect. It worked for me but I actually believe some of it so... make yourself believable when you write.</p>
<p>Don't just list how you're different...show how you're different. And you really don't have to mention race or gender or whatever...examples from things I wrote last year to the numerous diversity-related questions I encountered:</p>
<p>What you like to do for fun and how that makes you different:</p>
<p>UPENN:
I like to talk for fun. In the morning, during band practice, I “talk” through the sounds of percussion instruments: the sweet chirps of mallets, the stately speeches of chimes, and the violent bickering of snare drums. When the bell rings at the end of school, it interrupts a conversation I’m having with my math textbook: jabbing pens onto notebooks, arguing over numbers, and having to listen to the answer key when it proves me wrong. Sometimes, I admit, it’s even fun to make my math textbook shut up, closing it with a slight slam. Usually (, well, for sanity’s sake, <italics>hopefully</italics>), I hear the bell scream into my ear, so I pick up my math textbook and run to the chaos, where the real fun begins—the rainbow of “talk” from my classmates in the halls:
<italics>“Are y’all going to the soccer game?”
“I can’t believe he said that!”
“How’d you do on the Calc test?”
“Hello? Christine? Are you there?”…</italics>
That last “talk” is directed towards me. The genuine tone of this “talk” brings a smile to my face, making me feel right at home in this chaos. My eyes are closed. I’m absorbing the chatter of noise around me. I guess these are the days that my classmates are lucky—my mouth is shut and I’m staring into space as opposed to spouting made-up words and rants about philosophies and people and happenings: the quick, somewhat “unfollowable” train of words called “talk” that brings my heart what I call fun and sometimes makes my friends want to slam my mouth shut like closing an open math textbook.
<italics>“Yes. I’m fine. I’m just talking to myself.”
“I thought so. Have fun with that.”</italics></p>
<p>Ways to say you're an enlightened Asian redneck from the South without actually saying it(...hey, I guess that's diversity in itself):</p>
<p>UCHICAGO:
A bookmate is a work of fiction that so closely defines your soul that days, months, and years after your first reading of your bookmate, you discover the most recent chapters of your life hidden in its words. I met my bookmate as a pigtails-and-grass-stained-jeans, 14-year-old tomboy who listened to Deanna Carter’s southern drawl sing the words “I was caught somewhere between a woman and a child” on the radio as I stepped farther into the cold, harsh world. I found myself behind the innocent eyes of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird’s “Scout”, who, like me, grew up in Alabama without a mother and hated wearing skirts. The most memorable of the book’s quotations is the title reference itself, which I interpreted as the shattering of innocence: “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” Two years after I first read To Kill a Mockingbird, its themes of hypocrisy, which I viewed simply as people who go partying on Saturday night and condemn all that they did as sin on Sunday morning, and tolerance, something I thought I understood, took on a new meaning to me. Lib, whom I once labeled as my “best enemy”, and I can engage in hours of endless political debate, with her to the authoritarian left and me to the libertarian right on most issues. Two years ago, when a nearby Tennessee county voted to outlaw homosexuality by a vote of 8 to 0, Lib’s passionate sense of justice was outraged. I simply told her that if the county voted that way, that’s how the system worked. Sitting in a movie theater a couple of weeks later, I listened to Nightcrawler of “X-men 2:United” say, “You know, outside the circus, most people were afraid of me. But I didn't hate them. I pitied them. Do you know why? Because most people will never know anything beyond what they see with their own two eyes.” It was at that moment that, despite my fundamentalist Christian upbringing, I realized homosexuality was more than perversion. I discovered that it was not a conscious choice that one made: Why would so many go against their natural sexual instincts? When I told Lib of my newest enlightenment, she told me, “Good. Because I’m not sure how to say this, but I’m a lesbian.” I felt as if I were Scout discovering that Boo Radley, her mysterious, reclusive neighbor, was not a monster, but an ordinary man.</p>
<p>MICHIGAN:
My best friend and I were sitting on the front row of the top balcony of the auditorium as we watched the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra perform the time-tried masterpiece of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Overture to The Magic Flute, K. 620”. As I listened, I tried to imagine the “enigmatic mix of philosophy and fairy tale: on one level, a simple fable concerning a damsel in distress and the brave prince who rescues her; on another, a carefully structured allegory of a man’s search for inner harmony,” as printed in the program notes, but I all I could hear was a grandeur opening of contrasting dynamics that led to uncertainty and then to a beautiful, fast-paced tune of repetitive, but not entirely replicated, themes. I saw only the science—the finely selected notes and contrasts that wove together to create a brilliant masterpiece. I did not see the art, the story and analysis of the beautiful masterpiece.
I watched the orchestra through the railing in front of me that made an 8 by 20 inch rectangle. By doing this, I fit the hundred or so musicians and their instruments into an 8 by 20 inch view—I put the art of music’s beauty in a box. The science of perspective, of Einstein’s theory of relativity, let me view the same thing that the thousand or so people in the audience saw from an entirely different view. Interpretation is all that art and science is—both can be concrete and abstract, depending on how each is viewed.
The recent Intelligent Design versus Evolution in the science classroom debate has filled my government class with controversy. If the world were actually made by God in 6 days, would that make the book of Genesis science? If so, could religion be science? Hypothetical questions like this filled my head. I subscribe to no theory of our origins because I have never been taught any—the controversy of the subject among the people of my city muffled the schools from educating students on any discussion of how everything began. Evolution seems, as far as I know of it, to be a valid theory, but what if Intelligent Design were interpreted as something more than a way for fundamentalist Christians to put Creationism in schools—what if it were interpreted as the theory that man can not yet or is not able to conquer the unknown, the unexplainable, possibly supernatural, occurrence that created the world? What is the truth? Einstein himself thought the world too complex for a supernatural being not to exist. Taking away such an encompassing theory, the theory of the unexplainable, from the classroom is taking away a possibility, a science: the search and discovery of the truth. It is limiting the world’s view to an 8 by 20 inch box.
My best friend, just a seat away from me in the vast auditorium, was listening intently to the beauty of the music. She told me later that when she watches concerts, she thinks to herself, “I wish I were that good at music.” Time’s relativity and limits bound the universe to infinity. Mozart’s music, with its repeating, but altering, patterns, track time as the times change themselves. Through decades and centuries, the presentation of Mozart’s masterpieces to the world present countless truths to each individual’s ears. Art is beautiful when it studies science and waits to come in at precisely the right time: the elegance of a simple shrill note that ends a movement and begins another.</p>
<p>And a way to BS your way through a "Why Vanderbilt" essay...</p>
<p>VANDERBILT:
To be honest with you, the main reason I want to go to Vanderbilt is because it has nice trees. The first time I stepped on Vanderbilt’s campus, as a young girl of about 11 or 12 years, I remember running up to a tree and thinking, “AWESOME TREES!” It was at that moment that I knew that Vanderbilt would be where I wanted to spend 4 or more years of my life. Reading this essay, you’re probably thinking, “Trees? What’s so great about trees?” I admit, at the age of 11 or 12, I didn’t question my odd obsession with trees, but now, at the age of 18, I understand their true power. You see, at the age of 18, I finally got around to reading Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, which I highly recommend if you haven’t read it. The Giving Tree gave every resource it had to the man in the book. Likewise, Vanderbilt students grow every resource possible underneath the shade of the trees inside Vanderbilt’s campus and then give every resource possible to the city around them...(and it goes on...)</p>
<p>::Blushes:: Yeah, I just felt like going over my old essays... It's amazing how much I can already tell I've changed. Vanderbilt gave me a ton of money for that trees essay, by the way, but Michigan's the one that gave me the "diversity" scholarship.</p>
<p>I like your essays...very original.</p>
<p>i liked the michigan one, it was cool</p>
<p>Thanks! I don't know why, but it's really scary to post essays online...last year I would have wanted to read past students' essays on collegeconfidential, so I hope this helps someone, but don't rely on them too much just because I got accepted...come off however you're comfortable and spill yourself onto paper. They just want to get a sense of who you are.</p>
<p>haha i know id be scared to post mine online, with all the shrewd-do anything types on CC, id be worried some of my better sentences might find themselves appearing in other peoples essays!</p>
<p>but those were really well done, congratulations</p>
<p>Hahah, yes I second the part about not posting anything online :)</p>
<p>I am a very unique writer, and historically all of my essays have some unique or quirky attribute to them that makes them that much better.</p>
<p>I was just wondering what they are looking for, because technically the UM essay asks for experiences, talents, personal backgrounds and opinions. Which is weird. So I guess they just want an essay about why you are...you?</p>
<p>Yes...I don't know what this year's questions are, exactly, but I'd say tell a story about your experiences, talents, personal backgrounds and opinions.</p>
<p>After talking to a Penn student who worked in the admissions office and my teacher who used to work for Harvard admissions, I got the feeling that they were really bored with the same old "Look how smart I am...I can incorporate math into everyday life just because I'm forcing it to make me look intellectual" or "I did 500 hours of community service"...they want a real story. Ideally, it would be about a struggle, non-academically related. They want something gutsy that will catch their attention. (i.e. Penn requires you to send in a photograph of yourself. Why not use photoshop and insert a speech bubble or something? It shows creativity and tells something more about yourself) I didn't post my main essay that my teacher really liked, but I can send it to you if you PM/email me.</p>
<p>Here's mine (for this question.) I like Christine's a lot better</p>
<p>At the University of Michigan, we are committed to building a superb educational community with students of diverse talents, experiences, opinions and cultural backgrounds. What would you as an individual bring to our campus community?</p>
<p>I as an individual am the result of the many different cultures I have experienced. My personality and characteristics have been deeply affected by the different environments of my life. I was born in Bucharest, the urban capital of Romania during the waning years of communism. I grew up in an atmosphere of newfound freedom and optimism, in a metropolis that combined the West and the East, the old traditions and the new, and communism and capitalism. My years in Bucharest have lent me a sense of curiosity and a desire to learn. At the same time, spending vacations on a farm in a small village has taught me the importance of hard work, whether physical or mental. I also learned from my experience as an immigrant in an entirely new and different nation. Faced with obstacles, ranging from the obvious language barrier to deeper social and cultural divisions, I adapted and found a place for myself within my new community. When I started attending Troy High School, I found that hard work and an enthusiastic interest in learning paid off. I gained from the abilities and knowledge of others, whether teachers and staff or members of older classes. Now as a senior, I try to share my own experiences and interests with younger students, from the beauty of mathematics in our math club or the importance of culture in Quiz Bowl. I will bring to the University of Michigan a varied set of life experiences, an intense desire for learning, and a friendly and enthusiastic attitude.</p>
<p>Christine, those were great!!! I pmed you a question about one of them though....</p>
<p>Anyone done the engineering essay yet?</p>
<p>It asks where do you imagine your chosen field of study will be in ten years and how you fit into that picture.</p>
<p>I plan on doing aerospace engineering, but really don't know much about it. Any ideas?</p>
<p>tetrahedr0n, I didn't know that about you. I knew you were ethnically Romanian (hehe...Facebook groups!), but not that you'd lived there for most of your life. I like your style...much easier to understand and read than me, but I guess that kind of reflects our differences (I confuse chibears17 a lot...hehe...) (Thank you for posting, I was feeling weird for a while...)</p>
<p>Aerospace engineering...pretty good/hard at UM, isn't it? I actually know the head of the department pretty well... Say you see yourself in Huntsville, Alabama, designing space shuttles and experiments and trying to get to the Moon by 2010 and Mars by some other ridiculous date for no other reason than "the government wants you to."</p>
<p>I don't know, it'd be pretty exciting finding a cure for cancer on the Moon, right? Or having/dealing with a rational anarchy lunar revolution (Heinlein, Moon is a Harsh Mistress?)?</p>
<p>Yeah...more than half the people I know are Aerospace engineers/physicists (dear lord, spelling)/related to rocket scientists and I probably know more about Aerospace engineering than I think...but I still know relatively little. Maybe do tie in science fiction and the imagination along with the technical math/science stuff...</p>
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tetrahedr0n, I didn't know that about you. I knew you were ethnically Romanian (hehe...Facebook groups!), but not that you'd lived there for most of your life.
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<p>Haha, I didn't... I came to the US during 2nd grade so I've spent more time in America, but I go back a lot of summers.</p>
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I confuse chibears17 a lot...
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<p>lol</p>