<p>"Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family."</p>
<p>I love this prompt. The only problem is, I am not sure whether my topic falls into any of the three (culture, community or family). Anyway, it's about being able to take care of myself in public places alone. It is not a ritual or anything like that, and the only link I can think of is how I deal with some cultural 'traditions' in my everyday life (I'm from Asia).</p>
<p>Write the essay you’ve started without worrying about being directly responsive to the prompt. Your “community” can be interpreted in any way you choose - narrowly or very, very broadly to include the whole community of people in public places. You don’t even need to specify what you believe your community is. This isn’t a test where answering the question fully and directly gets you more points. The goal is to give schools a window into important aspects of you, what motivates you, what you believe, or how plastic and inquisitive your thinking is. Your topic can be done well and is reasonably suited to prompt 5 without artificially forcing it to also address cultural traditions.</p>