college essay prompts 2011

In case you’re sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for notification of next year’s essay topics for Common Application member colleges and universities, I have great news—the topics will remain the same as they have been for the past several years. For juniors who are waiting “on deck” to begin the college application process, this means you will be asked to write an essay (250 words minimum) on one of several broad options, including: Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you. Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you. Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence. Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work (as in art, music, science, etc.) that has had an influence on you, and explain that influence. A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you. Topic of your choice. Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Not if it ends there. But unfortunately, many colleges aren’t content with the basic Common Application requirement. They ask for “supplements,” which can be devilishly time-consuming and tedious. For example, this year George Washington University asked for an essay of approximately 500 words that responded to one of three topics (your choice): The nineteenth-century philosopher John Stuart Mill once wrote that one person with a belief is equal to a force of 99 who have only interests. Tell us about one of your beliefs - how you came to it, why you hold on to it, what has challenged it, and.
The University of Kentucky pushes for a record by logging 26 essay requirements this year. Its enormous number is thanks to a load of school-specific, departmental, optional, honors, and scholarship requirements. Kentucky has a lot of each of them. Kentucky also accepts the Common App this year, so College Essay Organizer users will see more than twenty essay requirements through their RoadMaps and QuickFinders that don't appear on the Common App site. College Essay Organizer does this for all schools, providing you a direct look at what's really out there. Using the Common App alone can often leave you with only a partial look at what's really expected of you. Head over to our Common App page to read more about this.
The directions below are representative of what students will encounter on test day. The essay gives you an opportunity to show how effectively you can read and comprehend a passage and write an essay analyzing the passage. In your essay, you should demonstrate that you have read the passage carefully, present a clear and logical analysis, and use language precisely. Your essay must be written on the lines provided in your answer booklet; except for the planning page of the answer booklet, you will receive no other paper on which to write. You will have enough space if you write on every line, avoid wide margins, and keep your handwriting to a reasonable size. Remember that people who are not familiar with your handwriting will read what you write. Try to write or print so that what you are writing is legible to those readers. You have 50 minutes to read the passage and write an essay in response to the prompt provided inside this booklet. Do not write your essay in this booklet. Only what you write on the lined pages of your answer booklet will be evaluated. An off-topic essay will not be evaluated. The student responses provided in the following set illustrate common score combinations earned on the redesigned SAT. Each response has received a separate score for each of the three domains assessed: Reading, Analysis, and Writing. The scores are presented in order by domain directly preceding each sample essay. Scores for the samples provided below were assigned on a 1-4 scale according to the redesigned SAT Essay Scoring Rubric. It is important to note that although these are representative samples of student ability at each score point, the set itself does not exhaustively illustrate the range of skills in Reading, Analysis, and Writing associated with each score point. Although all of the sample essays were handwritten by students, they are shown typed here for.
As a college consultant, I have become intimately familiar with numerous supplemental college essay questions. While many prompts seem doomed to elicit responses that are conventional clichés, others are bound to spark creativity, and hopefully evoke genuine self-discovery, for the motivated applicant. In no special order, here are ten of my “faves”, with musings about how I might try to respond to these thought-provoking questions: 1. Imagine that you have the opportunity to travel back through time. At what point in history would you like to stop and why? (Swarthmore College) How fun is this? It’s like Peabody & Sherman’s WABAC Machine! I want to apply to Swarthmore myself, just to write this essay. Would I wish to be among the crowd on the Via Dolorosa that fateful Friday afternoon, two millennia ago? Stand as a spectator on the Tower Green as Anne Boleyn forgives her executioner, the swordsman from France? Be aboard the ill-fated Titantic that freezing night in April, deciding whether to step into a lifeboat or remain on deck with my husband? In my family, filled with history buffs, this essay prompt could be an exciting after-dinner game. 2. Select a creative work — a novel, a film, a poem, a musical piece, a painting or other work of art — that has influenced the way you view the world and the way you view yourself. Discuss the work and its effect on you. (New York University) My choice would have to be David O. Selnick’s epic film that brought to life Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel, Gone with the Wind. I have always admired survivors of civilizations that were totally disassembled and reconstructed in a new way, such as my parents and in-laws living through the Great Depression. I occasionally wonder how I would fare if today’s way of life was suddenly forever changed. Further, Mitchell’s insightfully crafted immortal characters are archetypes that offer.
What's so odd about odd numbers? —Inspired by Mario Rosasco, Class of 2009. In French, there is no difference between conscience and consciousness. In Japanese, there is a word that specifically refers to the splittable wooden chopsticks you get at restaurants. The German word “fremdschämen” encapsulates the feeling you get when you’re embarrassed on behalf of someone else. All of these require explanation in order to properly communicate their meaning, and are, to varying degrees, untranslatable. Choose a word, tell us what it means, and then explain why it cannot (or should not) be translated from its original language. — Inspired by Emily Driscoll, an incoming student in the Class of 2018 Little pigs, french hens, a family of bears. Blind mice, musketeers, the Fates. Parts of an atom, laws of thought, a guideline for composition. Omne trium perfectum? Create your own group of threes, and describe why and how they fit together. — Inspired by Zilin Cui, an incoming student in the Class of 2018 Were pH an expression of personality, what would be your pH and why? (Feel free to respond acidly! Do not be neutral, for that is base!) — Inspired by Joshua Harris, Class of 2016 A neon installation by the artist Jeppe Hein in UChicago’s Charles M. Harper Center asks this question for us: “Why are you here and not somewhere else?” (There are many potential values of here, but we already know you're here to apply to the University of Chicago; pick any here besides that one). In a famous quote by José Ortega y Gasset, the Spanish philosopher proclaims, Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia (1914). José Quintans, master of the Biological Sciences Collegiate Division at the University of Chicago, sees it another way: Yo soy yo y mi microbioma (2012). You are you and your.?—Inspired by Maria Viteri, Class of 2016. The mantis shrimp can perceive both polarized light and multispectral.