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<p>I did not. I feel like my main common app summarized me pretty well, and I didn’t want to send in an unnecessary second essay out of ease.</p>
<p>I sent a second essay because I lost a year of my childhood to surgeries (first two failed, good times) and a body cast when not in the hospital. While I did not want my only essay to be about that–I did not want to write an essay full of specific events on that, so my health issues essay was basically a 250 word summary on how it affected me as a person, not a full-blown essay–I thought it was an important piece of my application because significant life obstacles show that you weren’t just spoiled and expecting everything on a silver platter.</p>
<p>If you hopefuls want to PM me at any point, feel free. (Especially in September or afterwards! ^^)</p>
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<p>Probably my grades/transcript… as well as my confusing school situation, which sort of contributed to the grade issue (see my location for details) :/</p>
<p>@ fledging: (Completely oblivious to fledging’s confusion): Wow! Those are awesome places you’ve been to :)</p>
<p>Yup, I actually lived in Singapore for most of my life (though I was born in Canada) but am currently living in Michigan. I’ll be moving to California for my senior year though, which is why I have three different places listed under my location. :)</p>
<p>@MonochromeAddict Thank you for your good words!!I wish you the same:D</p>
<p>As for me I am not nervous about a particular part of application.I am worried about whole one…Is very important for me.But I believe that everyhting will be ok!!</p>
<p>Good luck again;)</p>
<p>I think that I am going to write about cooking. It is my passion and I think that it makes me individual (for a 16 year-old boy) and I think I can represent much f myself through my essay. I may write a supplement essay about my term paper this year, which wasn’t good but I met with my teacher and the learning specialist and took initiative on my own in order to make huge improvements between my rough and final drafts.</p>
<p>At the moment, all of my brainstormed essay topics seem either contrived, cliched, insane or a mix of the three. At least I have a whole summer to crystallize something excellent.</p>
<p>^Jersey,</p>
<p>If you don’t mind answering, what race are you?</p>
<p>Do they expect us to exude eloquence in our essays or are they primarily intended to be indicative of our passions and pursuits?</p>
<p>It’d be a shame if admissions turned into a creative writing contest.</p>
<p>@fledgling: Oh, Singapore is indeed a fine country to live in, apart from its Singlish.
@<em>helen</em>: LOL. You got that right.</p>
<p>Haha, I actually found Singlish one of the most likeable quirks about Singapore, although it did get slightly annoying after a while. 
And apparently it’s partly Singlish’s fault that people from English-speaking countries (e.g. the U.S., Britain) sort of perceive Singaporeans as having sub-par English. I got the “You speak very good English for a Singaporean!” thing a lot, which is even more annoying because I’m not Singaporean in the first place! :D</p>
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I’m sure a little eloquence wouldn’t hurt, but I’d assume it’s the message you attempt to get across that’s more important.</p>
<p>They said that about TASP too. I thought my ideas were okay, but I guess the writing style was pretty important too, since I got rejected ):</p>
<p>Congratulations, Anonymous93!
Yell well deserved it!</p>
<p>Ahhh…I seriously feel hopeless right now.
I want to give a shot, but it just seems that I have zero chance in competing with other very accomplished applicants.</p>
<p>The main reason I want to go to Harvard (or Yale or Princeton) is to show people that if you dream big, try big, you can achieve it, no matter where you are from.</p>
<p>@fledgling: Yeah. Singlish is roughly a mixture of Mandarin and English, I think, which convinces some people about it being ‘sub-par’. But, if you had lived there for a considerable amount of time, your spoken English would have been slightly influenced by Singlish, unless you went to an international school?</p>
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<p>I seriously doubt that. :)</p>
<p>@ MonochromeAddict: I was at a local elementary school for first and second grade (P1 and P2 according to the Singaporean school system), and I had to struggle mightily to keep from being influenced by the Singaporean accent. Some of my peers even made fun of me for a while for speaking proper English… can you imagine?! 
But then after that (and a year-long stint in Montreal learning French), I began attending international schools. I can still speak with proper grammar and pronunciation. 
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<p>A lot of people tell me I have an accent, though. It’s not Singaporean (at least that’s what they say) – apparently it’s more like a blend of a bunch of different accents. It’s really very interesting; I believe it’s been influenced by different people around me. Though both my parents are Chinese, my dad speaks perfect American English (he grew up in North America), and my mom went to college in Texas after being in Taiwan all her life, so she’s quite an interesting/amusing case (slightly broken English with elements of a Southern accent - she says “yeah” and sometimes the occasional “y’all”). And since I speak fluent French and Spanish as well, I think my English accent got influenced by that too… the weird thing is, I don’t have a funny accent when speaking in any language besides English. o.o</p>
<p>I don’t know; I could be just rambling. I propose that when we all get accepted to Harvard and go there together, we could meet up and you could listen to me talk and be the judge of what you hear. :P</p>
<p>(EDIT: …or maybe not, seeing how I probably won’t get accepted in the first place XP)</p>
<p>@fledgling: you’ve moved around to so many places! (looking at your location)</p>
<p>Do people in Singapore mostly speak English? Or do they also speak all these other languages in addition to English? Haha, I can imagine it must be really interesting going to school there - it’s like you probably have to learn almost four languages to understand everyone :D.</p>
<p>^ Yes, everyone speaks English. Bilingualism is the norm though (the government requires all public schools to teach English along with each students’ native language, or mother tongue), and since there are three major ethnic groups in Singapore (Chinese, Malays, Indians) everyone usually speaks English + their native language. </p>
<p>Unfortunately I never really got the chance to learn Malay. There simply aren’t enough resources for Malay/Tamil (the other two official languages of Singapore besides English and Mandarin Chinese), since most people tend to just stick with others of their own race, and Singapore’s population is overwhelmingly made up of people of Chinese ethnic origin (myself included).</p>