<p>i just talked about how i liked new york city…let’s see if it works!</p>
<p>I loved NYC when I visited. I hate the “sense of community” I have in my comparatively tiny city. It’s so old-school, conservative, and honestly so nepotistic (even in the school system), ugh, and I stick out like a sore thumb when I’m “downtown”.</p>
<p>Lol, I guess it’s true that no one likes what they have lol :P</p>
<p>I get the best of both worlds by living just outside of the city :D</p>
<p>I talked about how I have always wanted to join a frat and how I could fulfill my ambitions of partay all day @ columbia.</p>
<p>much love <3</p>
<p>I have lurked on here a bit, and in an attempt to cool my nerves (I cannot continue trying to study Bio, I’m to on edge at the moment… aren’t we all? 
) I figured I’d chime in, as I feel mine is a wee bit different.</p>
<p>I tried to have fun with mine, but I also touched on the elements of history, classical learning, the kind of peers I will have, and ended it with a note about one alumnus in particular that I discovered, while doing some research on Columbia pre-applying, to have an extremely strong personal connection with my life.</p>
<p>First let me preface. I love history (wrote my persona; essay on the Common App largely about history and an amazing and influential middle school history teacher I had). I am a first generation Indian-American and much of my extended family is from a small little village in Tamil Nadu, India. </p>
<p>I visit every few years, like many of us do. On the way to my village, every time I take that long and bumpy car ride three hours from the city we fly in to, I see a statue outside/at the entrance of the nearest small town (which my dad grew up in). I had wondered when I was little who this person was, as it was gilded and extravagant in an area not characterized by opulence or extravagance in the least. I would always forget in boyish excitement to ask who he was, though (mind you, this was the “home stretch” after hours of hot, dusty, cramped car-ride through an amazingly different scenery from what I was used to); but when I was 13 and we made a trip, I actually remembered to ask. I received this great story about this amazing man and founding father of India, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a champion of the lower classes, etc, etc. Over the years this little tidbit of my heritage and cultural history was relegated to the back of my mind… so imagine my surprise when I found out while simply googling Columbian Alumni that he was at the top of the list, having studied there at the turn of the century (early 1900s), no less! So that made it into my supplemental, “Why Columbia” essay. It was enjoyable writing about something that was actually a shock and genuine surprise to me about this amazing school I was already planning on going ED to, but this just sweetened the deal (hard to explain I suppose).</p>
<p>Hopefully this was written well enough to make up for my ****-poor SAT Math score (Ironic, I know, an Indian who fails miserably at Math. Stupid stereotypes, LOL ).</p>
<p>I wrote about how my background as an IB student and living in many different countries (US, Switzerland, Argentina) really lets you “grow” or whatever but I basically talked about learning for the sake of learning, mentioning classes from the Core b/c that’s essentially why I LOVE Columbia. In my CommonApp essay I talked about wanting to interrelate my interests to gain a foundation which is a reiteration of my supplement and yeah basically it’s about a foundation and then I compared Columbia to Borges’ rhetoric as a short story writer b/c of the inciting allusions he makes and how that has pushed me to learn more about things I wasn’t necessarily interested in in the first place.</p>
<p>1 hour 30 mins</p>
<p>I wrote about how my background as an IB student and living in many different countries (US, Switzerland, Argentina) really lets you “grow” or whatever but I basically talked about learning for the sake of learning, mentioning classes from the Core b/c that’s essentially why I LOVE Columbia. </p>
<p>In my CommonApp essay I talked about wanting to interrelate my interests to gain a foundation which is a reiteration of my supplement and yeah basically it’s about a foundation. I compared Columbia to Borges’ rhetoric as a short story writer b/c of the inciting allusions he makes and how that has pushed me to learn more about things I wasn’t necessarily interested in in the first place.</p>
<p>1 hour 30 mins</p>
<p>sorry about double post ^</p>