The Indian Thread (TiT) # 15

[aritct]

<p>@ Noldo – lawl awesome :D</p>

[Shrivats]

<p>:D noldo.</p>

<p>I didn’t quite go that off the wall, but anyway, here’s a bit of my page 217 (quite representative really)</p>

<p>

Let’s be clear about this, as both the future and the present I are quite confused at the moment. The future I is writing page 217 of this autobiography while sitting in the shadow of the Annenberg library about the present I writing this autobiography while in Dubai, confident that he (the present I) will grow into the future I, writing this autobiography in the shadow of the appropriately named Library of Communications.

</p>

<p><em>smirks</em></p>

[inshallah]

<p>Woah. Those are some weird essays…mine wee just straight why I want to do Chemical Engineering and about how I would save the world from the impending doom of water scarcity.</p>

[Noldo]

<p>inshallah – the way you put that, it almost sounds like a superhero comic. ‘Hydration Man!’. (Actually, I had a ‘Particle Man’ comic going for a while, in which a fast-moving neutron rescued unfortunate alpha particles from the dangers of the evil synchtotron. Not sure what that says about me.)</p>

<p>I didn’t go in for ‘why I want to do X and Y’ at all, though, except for the one question on MIT’s app that specifically asked for it (and even there I faffed about with ancient Sumerian literature for a bit, so I’m not sure what they’re going to make of that). Played with prose and weird themes for most of my essays.</p>

<p>Shrivats – that’s – well, I can see why you like messing with the space-time continuum, it seems to be a hobby of yours. ;)</p>

<p>Everyone in general – thank you for being amused by my bad punning. :D</p>

[fuzzylogic]

<p>Ok, I’m going to go ahead with the interview. Anyone have an idea about the type of questions he might ask?</p>

[Lakshya_M]

<p>My essays were morbid and dull. :eek: They seem to represent the state of mind I was in while writing them. This is from my commonapp essay, I wrote about how I’ve been searching for truth. And how that has made me a nihilist, agnostic and moral relativist.</p>

<p>

It has led me to understand that there is no reasonable proof of the existence of a higher ruler or creator, a “true morality” is unknown, and ethics are impossible; therefore, life has no truth, and no action is known to be preferable to any other.

</p>

<p>@fuzzy: It’s more about what you ask him.</p>

[k_twin]

<p>I toyed with the idea of using Page 217 as 2+1+7=10 binary for 2 which goes into duality and twin-ness and the rest of that; but I thought that that’d just be too off the wall I’ll post some of what I later came up with later.</p>

<p>@ fuzzylogic, I’ll give some examples of what my Harvard interviewer asked me a little later.</p>

[badman89]

<p>^ Wow, thats exactly how I feel. David Hume got it 100% correct when he said that you cannot derive an “ought to” from an “is”.</p>

[Shrivats]

<p>Aw shucks Noldo, I just like time travel. The rest of the essay was a bit more clear though. A fine example of understated humour, though I say so myself. (That modesty being noted again).</p>

[Lakshya_M]

<p>@badman89: Was that directed to me or k_twin?</p>

[Shrivats]

<p>@ fuzzy: The interviews vary widely really, depends a lot on your interviewer. </p>

<p>What to prepare: Question to ask him about Harvard
Why should they select you out of 20000 others.
What makes you different?
Where do you see yourself 20 years from now.
What do you feel passionate about.</p>

<p>That sort of stuff.</p>

<p>Oh and I’d advise not mentioning, unless it comes up, that you’ve been accepted to Stanford.</p>

[Shrivats]

<p>Don’t really think it was directed towards k_twin. :P</p>

[Lakshya_M]

<p>Yeah, telling Harvard they’re not your first choice is risky. You know, with all the stuff going on about yield and rankings.</p>

[Shrivats]

<p>My Princeton Interviewer graduated in 1969! Bit awkward it’s going to be, though I definitely know one question that I’m going to ask him (pun alert)</p>

<p>How was the summer of your senior year? (Sorry)</p>

[Lakshya_M]

<p>I have the same person. I have my interview tomorrow, I’ll let you know how it went.</p>

<p>Though I am at a loss about what to ask him. It’s almost been 40 years since he graduated.</p>

[Shrivats]

<p>@ Noldo, if you’re still here that is, I rather preferred this part of my essay actually:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>On this note of benevolent optimism, let me ask you the reader, to stop a second, look up to the start of this page, and read down to where we are presently.</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

<p>Now, what exactly have I said in this essay, I ask?</p>

<p>Nothing.</p>

<p>And, all things being equal, that would be perfectly all right, but, in days of yore, there seems to have originated this misconception that college essays actually need to be about something. So, allow me to present my magnum opus, my thesis if you will, as to what this essay is about.</p>

<p>It’s about me. </p>

<p>Now with that suitably profound remark, let us make a compact you and I, and abandon any further attempts to seek for deeper meaning where there is none.

</p>

[Shrivats]

<p>Ah mine’s the day after. (K still hasn’t received an email from him, I’ve got to ask him about that as well).</p>

[Noldo]

<p>Shrivats – Oh, that’s wonderful. <em>laugh</em> Hopefully, you’ll find a similarly-minded admissions officer to be amused by it! </p>

<p>I can never decide as to my favourite extract of my own essays (the one I posted previously was actually a short answer for Caltech), but I do like this bit of my Common App essay:</p>

<p>

We’re old friends, mathematics and I; two strangers who grew acquainted exchanging small talk over (nonexistent) tea, and ended up knowing each other’s ins and outs and oddities and foibles – though that’s a slightly distorted picture, because mathematics might know me but I certainly don’t know it, not fully; it’s more complex than I am, and larger, and older, and it has the air of someone dark and sardonic raising their eyebrows at me every time I stumble over some trifling matter of arithmetic, or fail to fully understand a minor triviality of particularly abstruse logic. I’ll never know mathematics, not fully, not in the detailed and perfect way that the fact of true understanding confers; its breadth is overwhelming, and all that I can do is grasp at a part of it, some elusive facet of method or theory.

</p>

<p>And the introduction to my Stanford photograph essay: </p>

<p>

Dismissing my immediate (and somewhat facetious) responses, – on first thought, it seems to me that all I shall ever want to acquire in the way of photography is an image of particle tracks in a cloud-chamber, or possibly one of those stop-motion pictures of a bullet bursting through a banana – the photograph that means the most to me is an old, out-of-date (ravaged by time and by the exponential advance of image technology), rather dog-eared picture, one of the first I ever took.

</p>

<p>And I have just realised that both of those are essentially One Giant Sentence. Which might be somewhat scary.</p>

<p>My Princeton interview’s also tomorrow. My interview graduated in 1995, though, so I might find things easier; their interests are somewhat diametrically opposite to mine, though – international relations/MBA. And I’m math/comp sci girl. So I don’t know how well things are going to turn out.</p>

[Shrivats]

<p>I love the tea analogy. Nonexistent though it may be, it’s brilliant. :D</p>

<p>Here’s one of K’s favourite passages from his essays:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>I have heard it said that in days of yore, the College Admission Gods decreed that for one precious essay, applicants would submit just a single page from their illustrious, imaginary autobiographies. Today I’ve decided to honor these Gods, to write the 217th page of this, my autobiography, and feature a humble event which changed my life; as I removed this clutter from upon my desk, this representation of the past, as I underwent a catharsis, and emerged renewed having performed that most hallowed of deeds, having cleansed my desk.</p>

<p>

</p>

[Shrivats]

<p>I think we both need ‘similarly minded adcoms’ who’ll overlook extremely long sentences, as well as slightly, well very slightly, crazed minds and ideas. :D</p>