<p>I think it’s very confusing because they’ve change it relatively recently and their website isn’t up to date with how they give out more scholarships than before. FinAid in general is very confusing, and often times contradicting, even on Emory’s own website.</p>
<p>I wonder if they care as much about ACT as SAT scores for Scholars. My SAT was decent (1550/2230), but my ACT was better (35). However, nobody when posting their stats ever seems to mention poor little ACT.</p>
<p>the 75 semi’s who get 2/3 are actually considered “finalists” because they’re included in the emory scholars program.</p>
<p>haha I think they weight it equally, but it seems that once you get past a certain score, the rest of the package is weighted more. you’re making me more nervous because I got a 1530/2290 and I thought when I first applied that I’d def. make semi but now…not so sure!</p>
<p>1 more hour till midnight…</p>
<p>The SAT writing threw me off. I had originally planned on sticking with just my ACT, but I had to take the SAT for National Merit Semi’s. I ended up staying up the entire night before goofing around, and while I can do math and CR half-awake, my writing sample was the most convulsed piece of garbage I’ve ever written. My third grade self could have done better :(</p>
<p>I never bothered retaking because I figured Emory wouldn’t care about writing, but now I’m starting to second guess that assumption.</p>
<p>I dunno, it was weird. My essay was a pretty awful piece of crap…every time I took it, but I got a 690 (the sophomore idiot one), 760 and 750. I think they don’t relayl have a set standard of evaluation because uh…my essay wasn’t that hot but I got a 10 twice.</p>
<p>hah, your sophomore idiot one was higher than mine.</p>
<p>Another thing is that my handwriting is like a three year old and whenever I try to do timed writing, I end up writing very slowly to make it legible and get not even half the volume of material down as others. Then my letters look really wide like I’m just learning to write and I have 2.5 paragraphs down :(. However, when I wrote my college essays, I had plenty of time to type them, and they turned out 100x better.</p>
<p>Writing is the bane of my existence. I’ll stick with Neuroscience.</p>
<p>Same… love math, fail writing. Oh well, I heard Emory doesn’t care about writing score.</p>
<p>jmw: did you write about neuroscience in any of your essays? cause i did too! uh oh!</p>
<p>LOL, haha. It’s okay; my idiot sophomore year I got a 540 on math…which a lot of friends got higher than that when they were in the 7th grade. T_______________T;; math is the bane of my existence. The really weird thing is I ended up with pretty much the same score over all…so you would think I’m equally good/bad at all three sections (760 m 770 v 760 w), but in actuality, my reading/writing is 100x better and easier for me. </p>
<p>we all have an achilles’ heel
some have more than others</p>
<p><em>raises hand</em>
let’s trade emory scholars essays!
because I don’t have anything better to do than
sit infront of the computer waiting for emory to ruin my life</p>
<p>My why emory essay mentioned the major was what made me notice Emory in the first place. My Emory Scholars one was about how neuroscience can be harnessed to make the world a better place and all that jazz. (I promise, it didn’t sound as cheesy though)</p>
<p>I bet they get tired about people writing about their majors and career goals though. If I did it all over again, I’d write my long essay on maybe a burrito, and spare them my hippy bullcrap.</p>
<p>Scholars –</p>
<p>“When I’m stressed, it’s like a phosphorylation cascade in the cell – the stress is amplified.” </p>
<p>It was 3:00 A.M. on an early Friday morning and I firmly believed that I did not belong to the conscious world. But even as the still silence of night enveloped me, the shifty shadows of sleep proved yet elusive. </p>
<p>I lay listening to a mechanical lullaby. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Finally, as the lulling music failed to quench thoughts of coming days (with the ever frightening deadlines looming on the horizon – yearbook, papers, and college applications), my fingers groped for my cell phone. With the voice of a fellow insomniac clasped to my ear, I relayed the cause of my neurons’ frantic activity. </p>
<p>My declaration met with a teasing accusation of “dork!” for even my sleep-deprived mind could not help but incorporate a tidbit of biology into our conversation. </p>
<p>Really, it’s difficult to convey the extent of my excitement as I learn why my fingers prune in sea water, which proteins are synthesized in the rough endoplasmic reticulum, and how paracrine signaling plays a role my cells’ growth. </p>
<p>Love is separate from passive appreciation; my passion manifests itself in an attachment to my subjects of study, causing me to find cells in metaphase “cute” and to sing to my bacteriophage in an attempt to help it infect more E. coli. </p>
<p>The attraction of the lab lay also in its kindred spirits, less verbose than myself, but similarly seized by moments of dorky lines – “Michelle! Let me teach you the chemistry behind Tris-HCL buffers!” </p>
<p>And though the graduate students and even my professor never failed to remark on and complain about my seemingly endless stash of stories and comments, I learned to understand the “typical” reserved scientist. As a result, lab bowling on July 3rd and Friday scrabble tournaments compile a sizable portion of my fond memories at the research lab. </p>
<p>When my day ended early or a reaction took particularly long, I liked wandering around the University of South Carolina campus. There, I realized that it was not for me; though the campus itself was reasonably pretty, its abrupt and harsh juxtaposition with the city streets were too much for my beauty-loving soul. How could my camera possibly capture the magic of the school with blaring traffic at its back? </p>
<p>On rainy days I would drive to the large, glass-paned library nearby. There, depending on my mood, I would situate myself on a couch in the children’s room, or sprawl on my stomach on the floor, or sit hunched over the conventional table, always with some new conquest in my hands – Steinbeck, Dickinson, Tolstoy, Austen, Byron, Ellison, Moliere, and Chopin; plays, novels, documentaries, biographies, and research papers alike found their way into my hands. </p>
<p>On very hot days, I would amble over to a sushi restaurant or hole-in-the-wall sort of place for nigeri sushi, chicken salad sandwiches, wings, sweet tea, and soft-serve ice cream. Full of lipids, proteins, and carbohydrates to fuel my mitochondria, and lethargic from my metabolism, I would return to the lab, ready to win my Nobel prize. </p>
<p>My second intellectual interest is the spinning of tales and weaving of stories, otherwise known as creative writing – both true and the antonym of true, but always with the essence of truth. </p>
<p>It is with such skill I first set out to write this essay, bravely (I like to imagine) trucking through fields of grass and memories, and tubs of Jell-O and self-appointed fancies. I have fought with the evils of ThesaurusMan and scraped a victory against his impressive vernacular. I have drowned, time and time again in comma splices and missing articles, only to come up dry and CTRL-W the document. I have become a prodigy of Rumpelstiltskin, sitting before the mocking screen to weave (but not spin) together my life’s story. Here is my room of golden straw. </p>
<p>In the end, there is only so much that can be understood about me without actually knowing me. And that is the enigma that defines my humanity.<br>
I can not be dissected. </p>
<p>Why Emory –</p>
<p>Many things first attracted me to Emory –its proximity to home, the numerous scholarship
opportunities, and small student to faculty ratio. At closer glance, however, I realized that many
other aspects of the school fit me as well. </p>
<p>I enjoy research –Emory is a research institution. I love diversity and have many multi-cultural
friends –Emory is five miles north of downtown Atlanta, a hub of culture and art. And I play co-
ed softball with my church, which I could continue to play in intramurals at Emory. </p>
<p>But most significantly, the quirks of the school draw me closer: Dooley the skeleton, the primate
exhibit, and the Tibetan monks speak to my personal interests. I feel like Emory is a place where
I could meet interesting people to add to my file cabinet(refer to personal essay), where I could
prowl the grounds with my eye glued to the eyepiece of Jazz (my Nikon D50), and where I just
might have the best four years of my life. </p>
<p>Yeah, my why emory was pretty…cheesy, and my scholars essay makes me sound like I’m on crack.
go figure! And I spelled intramurals “intermurals” in the why emory essay I sent</p>
<p>I got a little lost in your scholars essay, but Emory will probably like it :)</p>
<p>I’m a little iffy about mine because it included a paragraph that was VERY similar to the paragraph in another essay I wrote for commonapp, which I just now realized also got sent to Emory. Duh. Oh well, maybe they won’t notice?</p>
<p>yeah…for some reason, when I wrote it at like my inspired state of 2 AM, I was really hungry…so there was a huge thing in there about food. and I forgot to specifically state that I’ve done 3 summers of research in graduate labs, which I’m hoping they’ll glean from my application. xD</p>
<p><em>shrugs</em> I think you’ll be fine…cause…they have so much stuff to read anyway, it’d hav to be either SUPERAMAZING! or completelygross for them to remember that paragraph being familiar.</p>
<p>I hope so. And don’t worry about forgetting your research, they look at your stats/accomplishments along with the scholars application.</p>
<p>Oh, are we sharing? Par-TAY! Yours was hecka cute, aznnincompoop 
loved it!</p>
<p>Emory Scholars:</p>
<p>“The scary thing is that if our society were actually to become like that, with everybody conditioned under superficial happiness, we could never escape. And frankly, the current apathy of the general public could foreshadow such a future…”</p>
<p>“Yeah, but there would always be some sort of dissenting party who would prevent such an extreme from being implemented. We’d never let ourselves eliminate free thought altogether!”</p>
<p>“Well –“</p>
<p>Silence, then the sound of heavy panting and running footsteps. I could see my cross country running partner Julia out of the side of my eye as she sprinted next to me, goading me, forcing me to push through the pain. Then – the tree, I just had to get past the tree – one final free-for all sprint, and relief. I slowed down and spat out a “good job” between exhausted pants, and we began jogging back down the hill, soon to start yet another hill repeat. </p>
<p>In the meantime, however, our conversation on the feasibility of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World genetically-engineered society coming true continued where we left off:</p>
<p>“Well, what if there was some random elitist party who did it underground, without anybody knowing? And honestly, isn’t the type of stability in Brave New World what we would deem as ‘progress’ for our society? Isn’t everybody happy?”</p>
<p>“But –” </p>
<p>I have always been a literature junkie. When I was a kid, my parents would have to yell at me to force me to put my book down at dinnertime (they’ve long given up since). Looking back upon high school, many of my most vivid moments involve literature in some way. Before tests last year, our entire class would cram into the classroom during brunch and zealously reiterate all points of analysis in a furious shouting match. When my friend and I approached our lit teacher as she was walking to her car to ask a simple question about Albert Camus’ The Stranger, we ended up plunking ourselves down in the middle of the parking lot when it (naturally) evolved into a 3-hour debate over the extent to which one should live for him or herself. Even as I inwardly cringed for the welfare of the book, I’d get deliriously exhilarated watching my friends get so worked up as to stab a novel multiple times with pens or write “****” in bright red all over a page.</p>
<p>Literature, in essence, is a study of human life; to quote my current AP English teacher, to study literature “is to apply psychology and sociology to fake people.” Moreover, literature is such an open forum for anything and everything; it’s been my jumping point into all other fields of study, and a catalyst for further pursuit of knowledge. After all, it’s never just about the text. Enthralled by the society that Huxley created, I began looking into the science behind hypnopedia and genetic mutations. Reading Invisible Man by Ralph Waldo Ellison began a longtime fascination with race and gender as social constructs, one which ultimately led me to attend the Telluride Association Summer Program (TASP) seminar on “Race, Space, and the American Self.” Now my mind spends its free time attempting to piece together the social order of the world, and fails miserably, of course. I’ve never been a particularly religious person, but after reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck, I requested a Bible from the local Mormons which I’m slowly making my way through; I’ve also decided that I’m going to name my future twins Caleb and Aron, even at the risk of determining the fate of their lives forever. </p>
<p>Sadly enough, my penchant for literature has begun to invade all aspects of my life. Julia and I spend our time in cross country (when we’re not dying) fervently debating the finer points of the books we’re reading in AP English. After reading The Stranger, we discussed the absurdity of the world during warm-up and cool-down, between intervals, and any time we ran anything less than “race pace.” The entire cross country team now knows what “existentialism” is, somewhat to their annoyance. But feeling a tad selfish, we decided to open up our conversations to the entire school, and are now Grand Master Poets of Dead Poets Society (named after the movie), a literary and philosophical discussion club. Like the students in the movie, we hope to start holding secret meetings where we congregate in small rooms in the dark of the night; I have a feeling that the Club Commission at our school would be somewhat against that, but we’ll see.</p>
<p>For now, I’ll just have to look forward to cross country practice tomorrow. Having just read chapters 9-15 of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, I’m already overflowing with thoughts about Mr. Rochester’s extremely Victorian interaction with Jane and am ready to put them out there once we start our warm-up. </p>
<p>Why Emory:</p>
<p>“We are moving, we are growing, we are heading somewhere,” says a professor in the Emory Video Visit. From all of my sources I have heard the same thing: Emory students are a driving force in society, in college both to learn how to think and learn how to change the world. With countless opportunities outside the classroom, and an intimate setting inside the classroom, Emory’s number 1 and 2 reasons “Why Emory is the Right Choice” (the seemingly paradoxical statements “We’re small” and “We’re big”) would give me the college environment I am looking for – one that will allow for me to thrive among a large throng of students while receiving enough personalized attention to make me feel like an individual and not a number. </p>
<p>An Emory alumnus once told me that Emory spends a “ridiculous” amount of money on flowers, so that they are always in bloom on campus. To me, that says that Emory cares enough about its students that it strives not only to provide a rigorous academic environment, but also a beautiful campus to live upon – one that I as a prospective Emory Eagle would be proud of. And like those flowers, I would grow and flourish in the nourishing environment that Emory provides for its students – the endless internship opportunities provided by Atlanta, the SIRE program where I can work hand-in-hand with a professor as an undergraduate student, the intimate small college feel within a larger school overflowing with resources for learning, the dynamic community of students dedicated to reaching out into the world, and much, much more.</p>
<pre><code>Ultimately, what I see in Emory is a place for me to explore: myself, knowledge, life, love, learning. As a combination of both a liberal arts institution and a research university, Emory would give me the best of both worlds. With almost 50 percent students of colors and the host of countless organizations, it is a mixing pot rich with varied voices and perspectives. It has phenomenal school colours, a mascot that has both the alliteration and perfect length, and an amazing unofficial mascot (one of my of life aspirations is now to become Dooley and wander around campus scaring prospective students and shooting professors with water guns). It’s small, it’s big, it’s caring, it’s quirky, it’s diverse. Emory is, after all, a place that will allow me to move, to grow, and to head somewhere.
</code></pre>
<p>Haha that ^^ essay sounds so corny, as I reread it. Lol.</p>
<p>:) I love how we’re like, consoling each other. That’d be awesome if we all ended up at Emory – we’d have this CC bond.</p>
<p>aww tako your essay is super cute too
I LOVE east of eden - that’s definitely my favorite steinbeck book.
though I hate the modern existential books, I can relate
to your dinner book reading habits.
I remember in elementary school, that’s all I did during recess!</p>
<p>jmw-
Their website was updated just a few weeks ago (Dec. 19) with the following explanation:[Emory</a> Scholars](<a href=“Admission | Emory University | Atlanta GA”>http://www.emory.edu/ADMISSIONS/admission-aid/emory-scholars.htm)
they explain the proicess well, I think</p>
<p>I don’t have my essays handy right now, but reading yours’, it makes me jealous of the schools you got to go to. Macrophages, research labs, deep discussions with teachers… Pfft! I was happy because we’ve only had 1 bomb threat this school year and fights only cause massive crowds blocking the halls twice a week or so. Heck, we’ve already done like 2 science labs this year because the school figured out how to orders supplies after all these years! We’ve got like 3 school clubs, which erratically meet. And least week, the school I went to before rezoning was released early because everybody thought there was a school shooting because people decided to blow up firecrackers in the school (Yes, this is like the third time it’s happened in 2 yrs.)</p>
<p>Yeah, so I’m bitter.</p>