Kurt Vonnegut once remarked, "Here's a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons...All they do is show you've been to college." I've great respect for Vonnegut (his "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt" makes my bruises flush in spots I didn't even know existed), but as a long-time paramour of the artful punctuation mark, I must disagree. The semicolon is softness; it is an alighting on the ground without skidding to a halt; a suspense; a...

I imagine a Williams tutorial to be so driven by intellectual discourse and full to the rim with infuriatingly convincing, but opposing ideas, that I expect to find myself thrown into silent thought, asking myself "cat caught your tongue?" A pink-ribboned bobtail cat, that is—Hello Kitty, my ideal classmate (turns out she's a girl, too). Appearing everywhere from crinkly red candy wrappers to sparkle-branded purses, she'd be well-grounded in worldly matters, something I wish for in a classmate as...

Swarthmore Bathtub Debates: Winter 2015 Prompt: An army of angry puffins has broken out from the spines of Puffin Books. Finding college students most responsible for the readership that kept them trapped in bookcases for years, they have annihilated all higher education except the Swat Bubble and two other institutions. Representing Swarthmore is the prospective student _______, who will argue for its conservation. Speech: Swarthmore is the place I can truly imagine myself at, and I hope the puffins can see it...

"Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself." –Mark Twain Jazz hands. I've the earliest memories of flashing them under white stage lights, shuffled in line from shortest to tallest like little Matryoshka dolls. My preschool teacher, as enthused as a pageant mom, waving us cues as we strutted around to the feel-good hit of the year, "You Are Born To Be Loved." I never quite knew what I was doing. "That's called sign language, darling, for...

Stanford What matters to you and why? I am six. Pools of mudfish swim by my ankles, now slick and red with rashes, and when I scoop up the water with a hut!— The pink basket convulses with life, ready to burst. Eyes fixated on the muffled pop-pop of fish breaths, floating about like round balloons and splintering the shimmer of my reflection, I walk home with it. At the dinner table, I find every one of my darlings shucked...

Describe an extracurricular activity Red ink runs in my veins. Stitching through broken syntax, reattaching rampant clauses with coordinating conjunctions, propping up the dangling modifier by a tasteful ellipsis, I jab through the Gordian Knot to tease out some life, the closest I'll get to a neurosurgeon. That's what I, an editor, do. Yet I edit to be an artist, not a surgeon. I like to cut through the wired jungle of grammar and create lexicons of my own; I...

Why Major In Pansori, a traditional Korean one-woman operatic chant, there is no value in rich flourishes of the voice. A changja, or singer, must wail at cave walls for years before she can rupture her throat, spit blood, and descend from the mountain, ready for song. In her hoarse narration of the oppressed masses, there is no pretense. When the changja falls to her knees as the character falls to his knees, or staggers back as a blind character...

Common App Essay: I wanted my common app essay to be more of an experience that the admissions officer can go through so I didn't want to type out the moral message of the story or a tidy conclusion (which I coincidentally hate doing). Essays that included the characteristics I previously mentioned sound forced, unnatural & induce the gag reflex (at least for me). Hence I decided to do a flash fiction type of story telling. The main theme of my...

Because I went through the application process alone, I made a lot of mistakes early round while applying restrictive early action to my dream school that I was ultimately denied at. My writing voice wasn't confident...

All my interviewers were fairly recent college grads--just keep in mind what kind of things you'd like to reveal about yourself before going in, and relax! I almost had a nervous breakdown in my first college...

During April, my top two contenders were Stanford and Oxford. Both are excellent schools, of course, but for anyone who's going through the same dilemma as I was (US vs UK), here's what made me decide: 1. Intellectual exploration in means of depth vs breadth --> I wasn't too certain whether I'd be willing to commit myself to the study of literature for all three years (and be bound to it, since there are no minors/double majors at UK schools). At Stanford, I'd be able to explore other interests and interests that I don't even know about yet. There's...

I had a whole resume & thank you card & homemade pie sent in when I asked for recommendations! Your teachers are doing you a...

A couple programs I've heard is good: TASP (definitely), Notre Dame, Duke TIP, JHU CTY, Iowa Young Writers, Kenyon Review Young Writers, UVA Young writers, Juniper Young Writers. What I took away from my summer camp experience is...

I'm from a place not too accommodating towards building a resume for college. So naturally, I became overeager. If there were opportunities, I grabbed them. If there weren't, I made one. This habit, I think, will take me far in the future. Also, I like to think that I did my own thing. During freshman year, I was pulled into the MUN/debate vortex for a while because it seemed like everyone else was doing it and it seemed like an advantageous route for gaining admission to top schools. Well, I wasn't good enough at debate to be noticed, and...

Don't if you don't have to. Since a lot of kids did it (since before 9th grade!), I felt the pressure to as well. Thing is, private college counseling was too expensive to be an option in the first place. I truly believe that I would not have written the unique essays...

Possibly a Ph. D in the humanities or law school, although being an editor of a...

I was originally going to apply to Penn early decision because I'd fallen in love with it over the summer. Because Penn was not need-blind towards internationals, however, I was wary of the possibility of being accepted and having to commit. Also, I wanted to have other options in the bag--I didn't want to regret anything. And although I was deferred and denied at my early school, I don't have...

2 letters, several phone calls...