Unique Why Penn Essay

stuckinthemuck15
Sat, 06 Jan 2007 03:15:52 +0000

If the offer is still open, I’d like to see the Why Penn essay.

Mine wasn’t by any stretch creative. I had several lines discussing my interest in the Cognitive Science department and its interdisciplinary emphasis on linguistics and philosophy, then lauched into a short paragraph on my the root of my interest (love of foreign culture, esp. film and language and ethical implications of neurotech advances, respectively) and briefly referenced the Center for Cognitive Science. Think I tacked on a few lines on cinema studies afterwards.

In retrospect, it may have been a better point to touch upon actual applications (development of speech therapy, etc) in addition to so-called “neuroethics” and I’m not sure that they will perceive the features I discuss to be wholly specific to Penn- after all, similar majors can be found and I have used earlier drafts of the same essay several times to discuss similar programs with slightly different requirements or facilities; ironically though, that essay happened to be the most truthful. Penn is the only school I’ve applied to with a program who requirements seem that specifically geared towards introducing the student to that broad range of disciplines in which cognition is central as opposed to offering a concentration in only one aspect and placing less emphasis on its relationship to the other disciplines (e.g. concentrating in neuroscience as it relates to speech without touching upon ethics or vice versa). Eh, that was all, uh, tangential, I guess. Sorry to thread hijack. Carry on. runs