Freshman Admission Essays

Freshman Admission Essays Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by shared geography, religion, ethnicity, income, cuisine, interest, race, ideology, or intellectual heritage. Choose one of the communities to which you belong, and describe that community and your place within it. I analyze why I think this essay works in The Complete Guide, Session 6. Frozen in disbelief, the chicken tries to make sense of her harsh words. Cautiously, it inches closer to the barrier, farther from the unbelievable perfection of the farm, and discovers a wide sea of black gravel. Stained with gray stones and marked with yellow lines, it separates the chicken from the opposite field. I started playing basketball, began working on a CubeSAT, learned to program, changed my diet, and lost all the weight I had gained. “All the food, the nice soft hay, the flawless red barn--maybe all of this isn’t worth giving up. She just wants to protect me from losing it all.” The chicken replays the incident again. A fissure in the chicken’s unawareness, a plan begins to hatch. The chicken knows it must escape; it has to get to the other side. I started to make new friends with more people at my school and was surprised to find out that 90% of their parents were divorced. Because we faced similar issues, we were able to support one and other, share tactics, and give advice. One of my friends, John, gave me advice on how to help my mother emotionally by showing her love, something I hadn’t been able to do before. My friends gave me a family and a home, when my own family was overwhelmed and my home was gone. After 14 years of living in a region destroyed by violence, I was sent away to boarding school in a region known for peace, Switzerland. That year my father was found guilty and imprisoned for the charges related to his Army support contract. I felt as if I was Edgar in Shakespeare’s King Lear and this could not get worse, but yet it did. Saudi Arabia in the 2000s wasn’t the most ideal place to grow up. As with rock-paper-scissors, we often cut our narratives short to make the games we play easier, ignoring the intricate assumptions that keep the game running smoothly. Like rock-paper-scissors, we tend to accept something not because it’s true, but because it’s the convenient route to getting things accomplished. We accept incomplete narratives when they serve us well, overlooking their logical gaps. Other times, we exaggerate even the smallest defects and uncertainties in narratives we don’t want to deal with. In a world where we know very little about the nature of “Truth,” it’s very easyâ€"and temptingâ€"to construct stories around truth claims that unfairly legitimize or delegitimize the games we play. The chicken--confused, betrayed, disturbed--slowly lifts its eyes from the now empty ground. For the first time, it looks past the silver fence of the cage and notices an unkempt sweep of colossal brown and green grasses opposite its impeccably crafted surroundings. I was always scared of terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. My school was part of the US Consulate in Dhahran, and when I was in the 8th grade it was threatened by ISIS. I began spending more time in our garage, carefully constructing planes from sheets of foam. A cold December wind wafts a strange infusion of ramen and leftover pizza. On the wall in the far back, a Korean flag hangs besides a Led Zeppelin poster. I found purpose balancing the fuselage or leveling the ailerons to precisely 90 degrees. I loved cutting new parts and assembling them perfectly. But at times I still had to emotionally support my mom to avoid sudden India trips, or put my siblings to bed if my parents weren’t home at night.

The Cambridge-MIT Exchange

The Cambridge-MIT Exchange Heres the long-awaited guest blog entry on the Cambridge-MIT Exchange (CME)! For background on the program, check out the CME website. CME is MITs flagship junior year abroad program, allowing MIT students to matriculate as a full student for a year at Cambridge University in Cambridge, England. Read on for Amandas experience A Year at Cambridge A guest blog by Amanda Frye, MIT 06 Spending a year at Cambridge has been an incredibly wonderful experience, although there have been a few difficult moments. I remember a few years ago, when I was a freshman at MIT, I thought, I would never do a program like that. I would hate to leave MIT for a year. There are things that I have missed about MIT. Ive missed friends, social opportunities, the Shakespeare Ensemble that I did many theatrical productions with. However, I know now that next year I will be just as homesick for the friends Ive made here and the team that Ive rowed with for our college crew. Seeing another academic system, one where much more emphasis is placed on long-term retention of learning, has been a good experience. I think in some ways Ive been able to develop a healthier lifestyle here at Cambridge, one where I go to bed early and wake early to go out on the river and row. My friends here constrain their work to 9-5 Monday through Friday, and they use the evenings and the weekends to go out to pubs or formal halls (formal dinners where students and professors dress up in evening clothes and have a three course meal). In general, being at an academic institution with over 800 years of tradition gives you a different sort of feeling. I hope that I will be able to use some of these experiences next year when I return to MIT to make my time there more productive. Of course, you are all trying to decide whether you should come to MIT or not. I would say that the Cambridge-MIT exchange is a great reason to go to MIT, whether or not you plan on studying abroad your junior year (and of course I would encourage any of you to study abroad your junior year!). Having classmates, and friends, that came from Cambridge University was a really neat experience my sophomore year, and I think that I was more likely to meet foreign students at MIT than at other colleges. The reason? The exchange program is really excellent because it integrates the foreign student (either from Cambridge or MIT) completely into their new university. From what Ive seen, this is an unique experience on an exchange programs. Many American universities send students on exchange for only a semester, which would never really give you a good feeling for what Cambridge, where everything is organized on a year-long schedule, is like. I know other exchange students who were placed in housing completely made up of exchange students, isolating them from meeting British students. The MIT program put me in a college just like any other Cambridge student, and the majority of my friends here are British. Finally, we have had amazing support from MIT and from Cambridge, with staff at both institutions asked to make sure we are happy and doing well. Even if you dont go to MIT or go on the exchange program, do try to get over to England sometime! Ive really enjoyed going to London, even just for the day, to see amazing theater, eat at really nice restaurants, visit tourist sites like the London Eye, St. Pauls Cathedral, and Samuel Johnsons house, and do some shopping in some of the numerous markets. In Cambridge there are lots of fun things to do as well, like punting down the Cam (the river here), seeing the Kings College Choir sing, and visiting the various colleges, trying to find the areas used in the Harry Potter film. If you do come, though, just make sure not to wear anything referring to Oxford theres a bit of a rivalry here! Formal Hall with Myself and a Friend Tourists, and Students, Punting outside of Kings College Kings College Gate, a landmark in Cambridge The view out of my window (the Eagle pub)