<p>FWIW I think you should seriously rethink your strategy on two levels. First, “the label.” Think for a moment how admissions committees work. Someone will be assigned your file, and will have to make a case to the committee for your admission. Maybe one other person will read your essay, too. There will be, what, 5,000? 10,000? other RD applicants competing against you at the schools you are applying to? Hundreds, if not thousands, of these competitors will have stats and ECs similar to you.</p>
<p>You are pretty much guaranteed to be the only person writing about bringing a gun to school. This will make you unique. The committee will know you as the “kid from Kazakhstan who brought the gun to school.” Is this really the way you want to be labeled? Wouldn’t it be better–and more interesting to the reader–for you to write about some aspect of growing up in Kazakhstan? What do you want to end up doing with your experience at an American University?</p>
<p>The second issue that you should consider is risk. There are at least three different levels where someone has to assume a certain degree of responsibility for being willing to admit you: the person reading your file and making your case; the committee that makes the recommendation; and the Dean of Admissions signing off on this. Given campus violence in America–from UT Austin in the 60s to Virginia Tech and beyond–it just seems to me that it is more likely than not that someone on one of the rungs of the admissions ladder may simply say, “No, I don’t want to take this risk with this individual. Not when I have 5,000 other applicants who don’t have this issue.” </p>
<p>You indicated in your posting that you are ambitious, which is a good thing! My simple advice for the next round of your applications, to increase the chance of actually achieving your ambitions, would be to: 1) scrap your previous topic completely and rebrand yourself in a more positive light; and 2) broaden the range of your schools to include some excellent universities that are not quite so hyper competitive. </p>