<p>For my common app essay, I chose the prompt that asked to discuss "some issue of peronal...international concern." I want to write about corruption and its ramifications. The essay discusses corruption at different levels of organization, from national to personal. But, for the personal part, I want to take a HUGE risk, and discuss my own corruption: cheating. This happened my junior year, I was given detention for looking at my friend's paper during a physics tests. Judge as you may, my intention was to compare our progress, not to copy answers. My teacher was lenient and saw I meant no harm, so only assigned me detention (worst would be expulsion). But from this, I learned the lesson of personal integrity. </p>
<p>Would this essay work? I did something wrong, I learned from it. And admit it, of all the academics you know, many have cheated, yet few have learned from their mistakes. When colleges read something like this, are they looking at the content (oh my gosh, this kid cheated) or the message? And if I were able to make this very powerful, would the colleges overlook the mistakes and focus on the person? Should I bring up something that colleges won't even see in my record? And lastly, if I were to admit more mistakes (copying homework which, lol, many people still do), what would happen?</p>
<p>My school's ranked very high in the nation, and I just saw some of our best kids get rejected. And since I've already been accepted to one good engineering school, and mostly like some good UC's, I don't think I have anything to lose.</p>
<p>Well, thanks for reading, eh?</p>