<p>I actually really love your essay, OxalisWombo, and I think it’s more elegantly written than mine. =)</p>
<p>What did you guys write your favorite thing essays about?</p>
<p>@imdamoos:</p>
<p>My favorite poem and discovering the meaning of love through math:</p>
<p>[“The</a> Square Root of Three” by David Feinberg < Here Comes The Science](<a href=“http://www.herecomesthescience.com/2008/04/26/square-root-of-three/]“The”>http://www.herecomesthescience.com/2008/04/26/square-root-of-three/)</p>
<p>I wrote about how the book The Princess Diaries turned me into a writer and a historical documentation nerd.</p>
<p>I actually didn’t do the favorite things essay… (I procrastinated hugely and skipped school on November 1st to get things done and just didn’t have time to do it.) Yay for optional really meaning optional?</p>
<p>I didn’t do the optional essay.</p>
<p>This wins best thread on all of CC imo :)</p>
<p>@Helen
Loved your essay! Can’t believe that someone could write such an elegant essay with such an absurd and math-inferring essay title!!! 
Congratulations!!! You definitely deserve your offer!~~~</p>
<p>@Helen</p>
<p>That was a masterpiece. That kind of writing should be found between the pages of a novel.</p>
<p>Ugh. I’m more nervous about writing the required essay than I have ever been in my life.</p>
<p>this thread is lolz why would you make a thread seriously that makes everyone post their essays…smh</p>
<p>I chose the fifth option. For my essay I rewrote my resume as an obituary, and then commented on the connections between and contrasts of resumes and obituaries, largely as an attempt to poke fun at the college application and admissions process. I personally see test scores as trinkets/property that have little value. They’re collected, largely tied to socioeconomic status, and I would argue quite arbitrary. If you were to write an obituary about such thing-- say, a really great lamp, or a car-- people would think you’re a fool and be generally apathetic about your existence. If, however, your obituary were a lovely narrative, written by you, a professional, or someone else on your behalf, it would certainly be much more meaningful (as someone who occasionally reads newspaper obituaries, there are some people I still remember from their narratives). Alas, in the college application process it’s usually the other way around. (Not that at this point I can think of an alternative, feasible way of doing things).</p>
<p>Not my best essay, and perhaps angsty. I was rejected. But I’m glad I wrote it and applying was overall a good experience. Visiting Chicago, talking to students, and thinking about it overall gave me a lot of opportunities to reflect on liberal arts education as a whole and what exactly I valued in education. And I even shared an elevator with one of the most famous performance artists in the city, which was really awkward/awesome.</p>
<p>I liked my Why UChicago essay a lot. An idea I’ve taken interest in lately is play, so I basically looked at UChicago from the lens of play, as a way of “refuting” the idea of Chicago being the place where fun goes to die. I also enjoyed the ‘favorite things’ essay.</p>
<p>I guess I’ll post my Why essay. The writing isn’t that great and at times heavy-handed.</p>
<pre><code>I first heard of the University of Chicago in eighth grade when my friend dismissed her older sister as attending a school that, “Literally, advertises itself as the place where fun goes to die.” Although I was unfamiliar with U of C, this piqued my interest—is that self-deprecating humor I smell? It was very like my friend to cast an educational institution as monolithic and boring, so I was skeptical. But still, I didn’t understand the role of play in ‘the real world,’ and worried that a supposedly “anti-fun” institution might be on to something I was missing out on. Now I know our ideas of fun are merely different— she’s an improvisational belly dancer, I’m a history enthusiast. ‘Play’ is currently my favorite idea, and I know the University of Chicago would be a great fit for me because of its commitment to playing with ideas.
Play is the engagement in a “purposeless” activity—purposeless meaning enjoyed for its own sake, practical or not. With phrases like ‘The Life of the Mind,’ I love that the University of Chicago takes ownership of the idea of intrinsic value, making it a defining characteristic of its academics, especially with the Core. Visiting and hearing UChicago students speak animatedly about classes taken outside their major, such as an astrophysics-theology course on the discovery of the universe, a class about the Iliad taught by a professor who’d dedicated his life to its analysis, and a class entirely about American deserts, is enough to conclude that the unique liberal education UChicago offers is invaluable. I want to be in an environment where all pursuits of knowledge, serious and frivolous, can be tied together in celebration of humanity. Being intellectually stimulated by a variety of ideas and connections is more humane than purely expedient forms of education-- it is the freedom of liberal arts education that elevates minds above simply hunting-and-gathering knowledge for the job hunt.
In a state of play, people improvise and experiment, creating new possibilities in the mind. I saw this idea when reading student reviews for colleges. One student wrote that the University of Chicago is for those who are prepared to face who they are and what they believe in, and that’s what I am after in my education. I experienced this first-hand at a mock economics class on campus this fall—immediately the professor expressed complete disagreement with my opinions about the minimum wage, a topic I’ve spent months researching and writing about. My beliefs about the topic, and idealistic economic philosophy, suddenly and unexpectedly fell into serious doubt. I don’t want to go to a college where I can nest in my current ideas. I want to understand opposing viewpoints and scrutinize the origins of my assumptions, alongside others with a similar goal.
Finally, one of the most important occurrences in play is the diminishing of the self. Players create altruistic rules—those with a competitive advantage may ‘win,’ but as that is not the goal they make efforts to sustain the activity for others. This type of cooperative behavior is at the core of what it means to be human, but is somehow the culture of only some educational institutions. I like that UChicago is an environment where students are quirky individuals but share the common pursuit of working hard, learning cooperatively, and sustaining discussion outside of the classroom. The first time I visited UChicago, I could see myself in the dorms at night, talking to others about their thoughts and studies, sitting underneath a tree studying, or reading over a friend’s paper before starting my own work, and wanted to be a part of that. In the past I’ve experienced classes where the dialog extends beyond the classroom, either through blogs or friends in the class, and that’s when I’ve come up with some of my best ideas. Although U of C is cast as a place where fun goes to die, its sense of community and educational philosophy make it easy to see through the lens of play. There are many other things I could have mentioned that make UChicago great—the courses, the professors, the location. These resources are amazing, but more importantly, their quality allows the school to uphold its renowned educational philosophy.
</code></pre>
<p>@collegeftw</p>
<p>The thread’s for people to post their essays <em>after</em> they get their decisions. And it’s interesting because UChicago’s known for their super weird essay topics so seeing how different people interpret them is really cool. =)</p>
<p>People in previous pages posted without their results.</p>
<p>What I find interesting is that the Common App said that the Why essay and the optional essay should only be like 2-ish paragraphs long, but people write like 2 pages. That’s what I did too, lol</p>
<p>I was deferred, is it bad to post my essay before I know the decision for sure? I chose prompt #5, and ended up answering “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” Not the greatest piece of writing ever, but it was something unique and fun to write. I was quite pleased with it, and I honestly think I was deferred in spite of this essay (and more because of my crappy Why UC essay and mediocre grades), even though the inspiration didn’t come until 8:00 PM on November 1st I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading this thread and if it’s okay and people want to see, I will post it. Congrats to all who got in!</p>
<p>Post it and say you got deferred, this thread is meant to share, not to show who got in. I want to read it, please post =]</p>
<p>Good point, you’re right. :)</p>
<p>Prompt #5 – I was eventually deferred, and wrote this the day the app was due (not recommended! haha)</p>
<p>There are many deep, burning questions that I would love to see answered. Which came first: the chicken or the egg? What is love? Who Framed Roger Rabbit? To the chagrin of many, these questions will likely forever remain unanswered. One controversy, however, separates itself from even the most puzzling and paradoxical uncertainties in my mind.</p>
<pre><code>Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
On the surface, it seems like an elementary question. To most of the world, “Carmen Sandiego” represents the titular character of the old children’s game show, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Yet a bit deeper down, we discover that Carmen Isabella Sandiego is much more than the cartoon nemesis of 10-to-14-year-old gumshoes from the 1990s and the subject of countless other manhunts through more TV shows, board games, and video games. No, Carmen Sandiego is much more complex than that, and her exact location depends upon the context in which she is viewed.
On the original show, Carmen’s location changed constantly. One episode, she was in Chicago; the next, Czechoslovakia. A vile bandit, she could never stay in one place too long. Usually, she just eluded the grasp of the winning contestant, who was unable to place 8 countries on a giant map within the time limit. She must have traveled the world hundreds of times before the show went off the air, and in the 15 years since cancellation, who knows how far she could have ventured? By trying to find her within the realm of her TV program, we may accumulate a great number of frequent-flyer miles, but will get nowhere in our quest. We must delve further into the true identity of our target to find answers.
Carmen must have been a real hardcore criminal for PBS to devote 296 episodes to her hopeful apprehension. According to intelligence gathered from her various incarnations in different media, Carmen Sandiego is a conglomeration of prototypical antagonists. A former ACME detective, she is a good girl gone bad who performs such dastardly deeds as stealing “the history of medicine” because doing good just doesn’t quench her thirst for adventure. She is a “thief with a conscience” who tempts her enemies into having sympathy for her but always makes them regret it. She is a beautiful but mysterious woman who only brings trouble to those who seek her. Carmen Sandiego may seem like nothing but a figment of someone’s imagination or a harmless cartoon character, but upon closer inspection, how many Carmen Sandiegos are there in our own cruel world? How often do we see a spy betray his country? A two-timing public figure apologize for a wrongdoing, only to then go and commit further transgressions as if the only thing he or she is sorry for is getting caught? Innocent people lured in by beauty and subsequently taken advantage of? Carmen Sandiego, the villain, stands for theft and deception more than anything else. Anywhere in the world, if we look around, it is difficult not to see Carmen Sandiego staring back at us, waiting for the right moment to cause us misery and pain.
Even with all her horrible qualities, though, Carmen Sandiego was created intentionally by smart and well-meaning people. Why would anybody consciously give life to a soul that represents such evil and horrible things? Because she was developed to be a catalyst for positive change. The logic may sound counterintuitive, but any objective look at Carmen Sandiego must consider her true purpose. The figurative pursuit of her and her cronies was always carried out so that it made millions of children – real, living humans – worldlier and more globally aware people. It exposed every one of her chasers to foreign places and cultures they would never have otherwise seen. In essence, the game whose objective was to track her down doubled as an enlightening journey through not only political maps, but entire unknown regions of planet Earth. Similarly, Carmen Sandiego was more than a felonious con artist; she was a tragic hero who sacrificed her fictional reputation so the audience could become more educated with each successive half-hour spent shadowing her. In this vein, her spirit follows every person influenced by her onetime presence, every person who uses the comprehension gleaned from her program to change the world they live in. Using this criterion, Carmen must currently be in every corner of civilization known to man.
Physically, Carmen Sandiego will never be found. Neither will her identity. She has always been covered up by intimidating but clumsy henchmen, long-since-retired TV producers, and a divisive force that paints her as both good and evil. But the World that Carmen raced around so many times would do itself a favor by recognizing that she remains a significant figure inside each and every one of us – for better and for worse.
</code></pre>
<p>Find X. </p>
<p>I speculate that many other applicants will ‘find x’ in a vaguely mathematical context. Perhaps the fact that I will not attempt to do so is x and I have already found it. The fact that I am able to take this prompt out of its trite, standardized-math-test-question box is my x, or rather a manifestation of it. Of course I have already found it, and I believe I am the only one that could because X is that factor in all of us that makes us different, makes us who we are, attractive as a unique human being. It is one’s ‘hook,’ to speak in the somewhat crass terms of the college admission process. I suppose you, my principle audience, an admissions officer at the University of Chicago, demand this task,finding x, of me in order to determine this very x of my own person. It is my job, then, to make it known to you, to demonstrate my x as best I can. With this very straight forward goal outlined, I will begin…</p>
<p>I consider myself to be well on the introvert side of the introvert-extrovert dichotomy of the human personality. From childhood I was raised in such a way, having been home-schooled in a protestant Christian family, that encouraged introspection. Such introspective tendencies flourished into my adolescence. I naturally dug deep into my humanity, into my beliefs and perspectives of the reality into which I had been thrust. Thus education, the questioning of how life and how it works in the deep and down, gradually became my principle joy in life. I became a fledgling philosopher, returning to that primal state that is in all men, that inner, adamic curiosity. This intellectual curiosity grew slowly, from the time when PBS television shows such as the Magic School Bus and Wishbone tantalized me with small tastes from the fields of science and literature, to when I took keenly to writing and criticizing literature, a practice first facilitated by an online correspondence course in American literature. However, I found myself having become largely separated from my love of education, sometime around the advent of middle school. The lack of opportunities that comes with being home-schooled in Little Rock, Arkansas paired with various social pressures and my own laziness resulted in the stagnation of academic pursuits. I was just not willing to pour time into bettering myself in that way. None-the-less the spark remained; that Emersonian spark that never goes out and ever relights the candle of enlightenment. </p>
<p>Such a relighting took place, without much ceremony, under the extreme circumstances that dominated my life around the year 2007 A.D. A few years earlier, my parents had me approached with the news that my family would be moving overseas to Kiev, Ukraine, in order for my dad to assume a leadership position with the non-profit organization FamilyLife. As the summer of 2007 passed and the moved arrived, I found myself removed from my former situation and in an environment that very much encouraged me to pursue education with a new vigor. I attended a small private school, predominately for children of missionaries. I thrived academically, under the guidance of a few very influential teachers and students. I had come full circle, back to my true love, and I believe the University of Chicago is the next step in my academic journey. </p>
<p>Therefore, my x is simply defined by the undying, deep desires I have to understand life and the universe around me. It is my journey and the places it has taken me, and how those situations have fanned those desires from embers into roaring flames. Like the majestic and magical bird on the emblem of this great university, I hope to rise from the ashes and embers like at the University of Chicago.</p>
<p>whoops. that last sentence had an extra “like.”</p>