<p>Thank you so much for this thread!
It really gave me some ideas about how my writing language should be. All the essays sound so creative.</p>
<p>ee33ee-what did you write for the Common App “short answer”? The question says smthg like: what is your most meaningful activity and why.</p>
<p>nice.hec2008 , ur essay got me thinking if i should write about my help to the china earthquake relief~~
nice.</p>
<p>Why Swarthmore</p>
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</p>
<p>I thought skunk’s essay on greed was creative and well written. The one on the toilet was too cliche for me.</p>
<p>I think this is a good thread, lets keep it alive</p>
<p>Skunk’s essay is all right - very creative indeed - but I think it spends too much time generalizing about humanity, and too little time talking about skunk himself. </p>
<p>Hec’s essay is great. Maybe the topic is a little cliche, but the emotions practically came alive as I read it. Wonderful writing.</p>
<p>i love this thread beacuse I just like to see what works (transitions, descriptions)</p>
<p>This is an awesome thread! I’ve been so drained of ideas lately. I keep starting essays but they turn out utterly boring. New perspectives are so refreshing, just seeing other ppl’s approach.</p>
<p>interesting thread indeed</p>
<p>Is anyone aware of another thread like this? Please share.</p>
<p>Meh. I guess you guys can have mine too =)
[Written</a> works | Crimsonietta.net](<a href=“http://crimsonietta.net/writings/]Written”>http://crimsonietta.net/writings/)
The first three under “personal writing” were college essays.
Accepted: MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, UT @ Austin</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Those essays are poorly written. They lack flow and are not great examples of final drafts.</p>
<p>CCFanatic: How’s 16 pages of Uchicago essays for ya?</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/164537-post-your-essay.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/164537-post-your-essay.html</a></p>
<p>Here’s the essay I submitted to the University of Chicago last year. The University asked to “Tell us about your table.” I adapted the essay slightly to fit the Common App topic of my choice: “Discuss something of importance to you.”</p>
<p>My tired fingers stop their chatter. My hands find rest from the keyboard on the table. Ahh, so woody and solid! My table and I go way back…</p>
<p>I could barely control my car. I was zooming 110 miles per hour down a local highway. I’ve never gone so fast in my life, but my life was worth risking. The once-in-a-lifetime giant table sale was going on right now, and I couldn’t miss it. I was the first person there! Perfect! Now, to find the perfect table for my room…</p>
<p>As soon as I walked through the door of the furniture store, I was greeted by a salesman. “Hi!” he said. “Are you here for the… oh, of course you are! I can help you find the table just for you!”</p>
<p>“Oh, that’s fine, Mr. Salesman, I just want to…”</p>
<p>“Nonsense! Right this way, young man. I’ll show you exactly what you’re looking for. Do you have a certain table in mind as you were coming here?”</p>
<p>“Well, there are certainly a lot of choices here!”</p>
<p>“Yes! We are proud to display every table imaginable. Purple tables, heart-shaped tables, flying tables! You name them, we provide them. That’s our policy!”</p>
<p>“Oh, wonderful. Okay, so I was thinking about having a nice, brown table…” </p>
<p>“Our latest model is silver, and I know that silver suits every teenager like you nowadays. This one has a drawer specifically for new music devices…”</p>
<p>“But I already have a radio at home…”</p>
<p>“Well, if that doesn’t suit you, how about this lovely blue lounge desk, which comes with…”</p>
<p>“Um, excuse me, but could you just please show me the plain tables?”</p>
<p>“Plain! Why would you want… Oh, never mind! Yes, the plain tables. Come this way.”</p>
<p>I passed through all the silver tables, all the flying tables, all the ones with computers attached to them. At the very end of the store I came across it. It was brown, rectangular, and plain. It was essentially a plank with legs and a few drawers on the sides. It was completely unadorned. It was perfect.</p>
<p>“I’ll take this one!”</p>
<p>I was excited when I went back home. I listened to the Oldies on the radio while I cleaned up my room and made my table feel right at home.</p>
<p>My table is simplest and best. In this day and age, I often feel that I need a place where I can just sit down, free of distractions and worry, and think. That place is my table, my desk. The only things I ever allow on my desk are a piece of paper and a pencil. My table needs to be free of energy from outside sources; it must contain only my ideas. </p>
<p>Whom do I invite to my table? Those I conjure up from my imagination. I like to invite Catullus, the Roman poet, over for a cup of coffee. Erm… Catullus, could you please help me with this translation: “Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris”? After that we usually talk about whatever’s on our minds, whether it’s politics or war or poetry. Other days I like to invite chess grandmasters, like Nimzovitch, Euwe, and Capablanca over for a chess party, where I’d set up a chess position from one of my games and go over it with them, just to know what it’d be like to work with grandmasters. Or I might invite this year’s AP Calculus students over for a philosophical talk about the integral. Whatever the case may be, those who spend time at my table appreciate my ideas and I appreciate their ideas. </p>
<p>Or otherwise I spend my time alone with my thoughts. My table then becomes a forum for my own ideas. “If I have a square, what’s the probability that a point on the square will be closer to the edge than it will be to the middle?” Those days, the table becomes cluttered with paper, equations, and mistakes.</p>
<p>My table is alive, but not in the man-eating manner. When I really think about it, my desk is where my thoughts have been molded like dough, and where many of my current beliefs have originated. I don’t believe that this could happen with my ideas spilled out on a metallic table. There is something in the aura of the classic table that draws me. During the course of the rest of my life, many things will change all around me, but I hope the brown tables stay.</p>
<p>dchow08: Wow, that was great!
By the way, did you get 2/3 for the probability question? :)</p>
<p>Oh no, it’s way more difficult than that. It was a question on the iTest, which is a big math test given on-line. </p>
<p>Here’s the real question from the test:</p>
<ol>
<li>During a movie shoot, a stuntman jumps out of a plane and parachutes to safety within a 100 foot by 100 foot square field, which is entirely surrounded by a wooden fence. There is a flag pole in the middle of the square field. Assuming the stuntman is equally likely to land on any point in the field, the probability that he lands closer to the fence than to the flag
pole can be written in simplest terms as</li>
</ol>
<p>(a - bsqrt c) / d
,
where all four variables are positive integers, c is a multiple of no perfect square greater
than 1, a is coprime with d, and b is coprime with d. Find the value of a + b + c + d.</p>
<p>That problem took SOOOO long to do. I finished in when I was working with my math team buddies at my friend’s house. I think the answer was 17.</p>
<p>Any other threads out there where people post their Common Ap essays. BTW that UChicago thread was real nice, dchowder.</p>
<p>Wow, dchow. That was an awesome essay.</p>
<p>Okay, cool. But yeah I really liked the essay.</p>