 or good evening or afternoon or whatever it is out there. Welcome to the Score Channel. I'm your college counselor. My name is Meacham. And today we are going to do some supplemental essays. It's a Saturday and I like alliteration. So supplemental Saturdays, that's the plan. I got three different supplemental essay groups lined up for you today. We're gonna check out the University of Miami's diversity essay, which is like a very new trending essay, the diversity essay. So what I'm gonna show you for the University of Miami will also help you for other colleges that are asking you about your diversity and how that will like fit in with their diverse community. This is a big popular question this year after the affirmative action thing happened in the United States. So you're gonna see a lot of those essays and we can definitely make good use of the advice here for that. We're also gonna talk about Cornell's supplemental essay with the Any Person, Any Study thing that they ask about. And we're gonna look at the new prompt for NYU. They have a new prompt this year for like inspirational quotes and then they ask you about those. And I was working with somebody yesterday on those and I was kind of like inspired to talk about them today. So I got about an hour and changed. So I'm gonna show you how to go through these. And I wanna start off with the diversity essay for Miami and I wanna take a look at the text there. I've copied these into some things here. Hang on, that's gonna be down here. Yeah, so if you take a look at what it's actually saying, right? Obviously these types of essays, these diversity essays, right? They start off usually with some sort of like presentation about the area and the diversity on campus, right? So it says the University of Miami is a distinctive community with a variety of cultures, traditions, histories, languages, background, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so take a look at, this is where we're starting to get into the actual content. We need to like really filter out some of the extra BS in these supplemental prompts. Like some of these are really full of just a lot of extra unnecessary words, right? The University of Miami is a values-based, purpose-driven, post-secondary institution that embraces diversity and inclusivity in all its forms and strives to create a culture belonging where every person feels valued. Okay, again, there's a lot of like, okay, we get it, you're diverse, you like diversity. Okay, so please describe how your unique experiences, challenges overcome or skills acquired would contribute to our distinctive university community. That's really the question. Now, there's a couple of things in here that we can look for from the university to get a better idea of what we can talk about here. And in particular, I wanna highlight something from the prompt that I think is actually important to look at, and that's this here, this values-based, purpose-driven thing, like that right there, we can touch on that a little bit, take a look at what values the university might have and maybe incorporate some of those into this essay. The other thing that we wanna look at here is this distinctive university community, okay? We can tie, I think the trap with this kind of essay is to start talking about your experiences, start talking about your activities, maybe you feel like you should go for a supplemental essay about an activity that you've done or something. That's not really what this is about. What we're looking for here is to show the university that we are a good fit for the university, and so they're telling you something about their community that would indicate what kind of person should be there. And so we wanna show them that we are that kind of person, you know? So, yeah, I'm taking a look at some of your guys' stuff in the chat, by the way, say hi, good to see ya. Unique ability instead of cultural diversity. You know, I think that could be a good option. Now, you don't have to necessarily focus too much on your own diversity aspects here. And I'm gonna show you why, okay? Because with these diversity essays, don't fall into the trap of being like, oh, let me just tell you how I'm diverse or how I'm different, I'm from this country, I'm from this city, I speak this language. Like, that's sort of the low hanging fruit and really what we wanna get into are deeper differences and the community that we're gonna talk about. I got my coffee, I need it today. So, okay, so what I wanna show you here is, first of all, I'm gonna go and do a little bit of Googling here and show you what that looks like. So, I wanna look for the University of Miami values. Like, let's see what values they have, right? Now, I gotta be careful when I look around this because sometimes there's different values and mission statements and stuff. This says HR working at the university. So, I think this is a little bit more for the people that work there. I might wanna keep scrolling and make sure I'm looking at the right one and also don't get confused with the Miami University of Ohio. So, mission statement and core values, this seems like where I wanna be. So, okay, let's take a look at some of this stuff and see if I can find any useful content that I might wanna include here. So, they say their mission is to transform lives through education, research, innovation, service, okay? It's all good. Freedom of inquiry, right? I might wanna like, I'm gonna make some notes in my doc. Freedom of inquiry is a good thing. Let's see what else is in here. Foundations for ethical citizenship, service to others. So, clearly service to others is something that they care about too. And we see there's, okay, they even talk about their healthcare system. That's nice. Transform the world through innovative education, impactful research, translation of knowledge into solutions. Okay, so what I'm getting here is there are a couple of different things that are really important to them. First of all, I mean, they seem to really care about this idea of academic freedom, right? To think about different things. That's the first thing they say. So, that's a solid point to bring up. Research, if that's something that's really important to you, clearly that is important to them. And I think there's this, again, this idea of search for knowledge, search for truth, right? So, they clearly care a lot about academic freedom and being able to like pursue the different avenues that each person would be interested in. They also re-emphasize their diversity factors here in this second paragraph, a distinctive community with a lot of variety and stuff like that. So, I think what I see right now is a couple of points that I might wanna talk about, like freedom of inquiry, service to others. I'm looking for some aspects here that I might wanna mention. So, that's the first half of this equation. Now, if we go back real quick to my doc, there's something else I wanna look at here, which when it talks about the distinctive university community, here's the thing. This is where you want to get specific about the communities that you would like to engage in. So, what I'm gonna do is look a little bit for student organizations and see if I can find some like different things here. Usually there's a page that lists all of the different kinds of like student organizations and things that they do. So, find a student org, for example, or service organizations. I think I would like, I'm gonna open up the service organization separately as well because they did mention service being like a really big deal and I might wanna look at some of these organizations that they have and think about ones that I would like to participate in and that is what is gonna make this essay stand out. You need to not just talk about yourself and how you're diverse or how you're different, but specifically how you contribute to their community and the best way to contribute to their community is to get involved in that community. And so, by looking at these organizations that they have, it's gonna make it a lot easier for you to do that. One of the things I noticed here is like, okay, we're talking about the Butler Center for Service and Leadership. So, I can mention that as well and maybe look at some of these things. Let's see, education stuff might be something that I would be interested in. Oh, this is kinda neat, written in my soul, teaching children teens how to use poetry as an outlet. I like that one, I might mention that a little bit. So, that was, yeah, that was called written in my soul. Okay, for poetry, poetry and mental health kind of thing. I think that's cool, I could maybe mention that. You know, if you have another interest here, maybe you wanna do art for kids, you wanna do like, you know, some medical stuff, the emergency response team, like, you know, they have hurricanes out there and stuff, maybe that's something you could do. Special Olympics group, you pup with this, aw, it's training dogs, that's cute. So, these are some service organizations and I also wanna look at their other student clubs and stuff, like just see what else is out here that I might want to do. So, there's so much stuff here. There's a lot, there's probably hundreds of items here. So, it might be good for you to filter a little bit, see if there's anything that grabs your attention. But I'm just gonna scroll through for a little bit just so you all can kinda see just some of the things that are out here. What's up, Jane? Thanks for saying hi. Santos, love you too, man. Welcome to the party. Okay, Alliance of Latin American Students, for example. What else? There's a bunch of the Greek life stuff in here too. So, you know, whether you're interested in that or not, it's up to you. Okay, there's alternative breaks, kinda like has some stuff, I guess, during your break time. I'm looking more for like, I kinda wanna see if there's any like, things related to any of the video games I like to play, because then that would be kind of fun. You know, you think about stuff you actually want to do. It doesn't have to sound great. You could just be real. Let's see, ooh, the Peruvian Students Association, cool. I might wanna make a note of that, you know? I could throw that in there. Yeah, I'll write that one down. And again, I'm just looking for some things that I might wanna be interested in doing, because this is how I'm gonna make it clear that I'm gonna contribute to that community. Like, that's the goal here, is I want them to see that, okay, I'm gonna participate in this thing, and that's where I'm gonna have an opportunity to show my diverse perspectives and the things that I know. So I think that's where, a lot of times we overlook these specific things about the university. Supplementals should always be more specific to the university. Don't just copy, paste a bunch of stuff about your diversity to respond to all these diversity essays. Like, you need to actually get a little bit deeper, you know, and look at what the university offers and what they're looking for. So yeah, there's some other stuff. Ooh, generational wealth stuff, that's kinda cool. I like that. Cain's invested would be kinda neat. I like that, I invest in stuff. Maybe I would do that. Let's see, what else is in here? I'm not gonna go through every single one of these. I'm gonna, I gotta keep moving here today, but let's see what else there is. I like some of this stuff. Okay, the Council of International Students and Organizations is cool. Data in the Liggs Debate Team. Ooh, I like that too. I can get in on the debate team. Yeah, I'll play debate team. That'd be fun. I would do that. All right, I got like three right now in my head. I think I might just go with those and I'll, we'll start showing you how to write this stuff a little bit. I just, one more maybe. Oh, that's kinda cool. They have like a, the EQ Collector. That's kinda cool. I like that. There's a lot of different interests here. Like, if you, and even if you don't find something here that you like, you could propose making your own when you're on campus. So, if you don't see something that really appeals to your interests, talk about making a club or something, because that would actually really help you, you know, in terms of looking different from other people. That's a good strategy too, is to like propose new ideas for the campus, because that's a great way to make an impact. The Heralogy. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, I like that. It seems like it's more dedicated to black hair, but that's still pretty cool. Yeah, Hindu Students Council, History Club, Hockey Club. Man, there's so much here. Okay, I think that's about where I'm gonna leave it. I don't see, I'm gonna stop there. All right, we'll go back to my thing here. So, what I basically got is, I understand there's a lot of emphasis on service to others. There's a lot of emphasis on this idea of freedom of inquiry, you know, and I think that there's also like some opportunities to talk about two of these, maybe a couple of these activities. So, looking at like this Keynes invested thing and debate team thing, I think that those are two that I might wanna focus on a little bit, and I could talk a little bit about how my experiences relate to those things. And the idea of these values being really important to them is something I wanna show them that are important to me. So, what I'm gonna focus on here, again, they ask about unique experiences, challenges overcome, or skills acquired, right? So, I might wanna share a little bit of my, you know, again, my unique background or some of the things that I've dealt with in these contexts, right? So, what I wanna do on this essay, I'm gonna frame this kind of by starting out as like, I wanna focus on the values that, you know, like, oh, hang on, there we go. Values, I wanna establish those values from the university that I appreciate, right? And then what I wanna talk about a little bit here are, I'm gonna do like two paragraphs kind of for like the different things, you know? So, at 250 words, I find that's usually a good three paragraphs, okay? Each one being about, you know, 70, 80 words usually will get you, you know, to like close to that number and then you can adjust. You can always write more and cut down. But that's, you know, what I think about this. My favorite game, RJ, would probably be Rocket League in terms of just number of hours played. It's borderline stupid. I have spent way too much time on Rocket League and I would love to do that. In fact, I wanna actually look real quick and just see if they have a Rocket League team at the university. It looks like they do not. It looks like the Miami, Ohio team has a lot of, oh, wait, hang on, hang on, hang on. I may have found it. It does look like they have eSports. Oh, they do, they do have a Rocket League eSports team. All right, maybe I'll add that in there. All right, I'm not probably good enough to play Rocket League eSports, but I would like to try it, it'd be fun. All right, so yeah, what I wanna do is talk about those values that I appreciate about the university to start out and then I wanna get into a little bit of like each of these items. So I would probably make a whole paragraph about the Keynes invested thing and then another one about debate and we'll see if I have time for Rocket League maybe. But what I wanna try to do is connect those values to those activities and my experiences. So I'm trying to put three things together. There's the values and like things that the university cares about. There's me and then there's these things that they offer which will allow me to combine myself and the values. That's sort of what we're trying to do is blend these things together. So what I wanna do is start out by focusing on those values and I wanna kinda make sure that I'm, you know, staying focused on those things with regards to the university, right? So freedom of inquiry and service to others, right? Now, I'll start out with this one and I wanna again explain a little bit of my context to this and how I think I could maybe, you know, put that into practice later. So I'm gonna start out with this one and focus on it. I think in segue probably into the debate thing because I think that's the activity that best connects to the idea of freedom of inquiry. You know, if you're debating you gotta be able to like look up a lot of information present any kind of arguments and stuff like that. So I wanna weave in a little bit of my own personal experience here too, you know? So I think for me, okay. So there's a quick little intro on this one value that they talked about and now I wanna use that to segue to the debate team because again, I think that's a good place to talk about this topic. Like I'm trying to look for that connection between value, myself and the university's offerings. Cause again, we gotta think about how we're gonna impact that community and that is really through those activities and those groups and things. So I could say, I'm not gonna say passionately, I already said passion. I'm not gonna say permanently. Yeah. Okay. So I wanna touch a little bit on how I wanna also be respectful of different communities cause I think that's important when we're talking about diversity in general. Okay. Let me see where on my word count is that right now. 145. Yeah, this is good. This is about where I wanna be. So again, I established some value stuff that I think I would resonate with that the university will appreciate and I touch on how that can be connected through another activity. And I drop a little bit of a hint of some of the things that I have done. I make a little reference to some of the things that I've done here but I'm not trying to go too far into my activities. Again, I wanna stay focused on what they wanna hear which is about their community and about diversity and about my integration. So not just me bragging about my CV, right? So do a supplemental review. I'll be honest with y'all. It's gonna be hard for me to do that right now because I've got a trip to Columbia coming up and I'm gonna be away from my desk for like about a week and change. And then I come back before the deadlines are due and I'm gonna be focusing a lot on the score people. So I cannot promise that I will be able to check supplementals. If you wanna send something over, send it over. I will try to get to it when I have chance. Can your letter of recommendation have 500 words? Sure. Not a lot, but you could. And then practice on Crash Course, no, Rob. I got news about that, by the way. I'm gonna do another stream next week and actually go through a whole test and like explain the answers and go through like some of the, I guess the tips that I would give you to answer those questions. Like do a little review for the November test next week before I go to Columbia. So we're gonna talk about that there. And yeah, should you play test optional? I mean, you could. You could apply test optional. They're not gonna make a big deal. Now 3.5 GPA is a tough sell for an IV, man. Not gonna lie. Like if you're applying to IVs with a 3.5 GPA, you're gonna have a hard time no matter what. Like their perfect academics or very close to perfect academics are basically the minimum standard. And then they start looking at everything else. So I'm not gonna lie to you. Like that's a tough sell at 3.5. And then, yeah, I can show you where to put these essays on a comment app. Actually, it's really, really easy. Usually they're in different places. Like this one for NYU that I'll show you right here. Hang on. Like they're usually in a writing section in the questions section. Sometimes there's like a section that says writing supplement. But that's generally how that goes. We'll talk about that in a bit. So yeah, emission process timeline and stuff. Tadik, I made videos about that months ago. Check it out. I've talked about that a lot. You should be already ready to apply. You should be almost done. Anyway, okay, so go back to my essay here. I wanna touch on now another activity and another thing. So I wanna get back into this Keynes invested thing. And I wanna link it back to service as well. So they talked about this value for service and leadership and stuff. And I think that that's something else that I can touch on and connect to my background. There was a, yeah, there was that written in my soul one. Maybe that's a good place for this. I think that would be a good one. All right, let's see where we are now. We're at 252. Okay, so I think this is about as much as I can do. I'll have to trim this down. But basically, this is what I'm trying to show. Again, we're not really focusing on diversity that much. Again, don't fall into the trap of focusing so much on your diversity. Again, we're just trying to focus on what the university has to offer and how we're gonna get involved in that community. So I've talked a little bit about my unique experiences and skills acquired through here. I talked about the debate stuff shows a little bit of my skills. My experience is growing up as a Jehovah's Witnesses. That stuff is in there, right? But it's not the whole focus. I'm not trying to just brag about my CV or focus solely on my unique characteristics that make me so diverse and therefore I will fit well with the diverse community. I wanna get specific. I need to look at specific things that you Miami does and has interest in and then I can work on it. So right now I'm at 252. I think this is a decent first draft right now. So I just wanna look at a few ways where I could cut some words. There's a lot of ways you can do that. I think like right here, this could be profoundly. I could even put that right before the verb because that's kind of where that should go. And now we're at 250. I just made three words turn into one. I could probably keep doing this and get us down to a little bit more. So I said a burning passion for the truth. Look forward to finding more of it at you Miami. Okay, I think that's about as short as that's gonna get perfect place for me to both explore the truth and integrate. This is a little bit silly and redundant. Like obviously this is, well, I mean, I guess I said the debate club so it's not that redundant, but all right. I think I could take out the on the stage detail. That doesn't really add anything. Firmly fought for the truth in both parliamentary debate and MUM. Okay, that's good. Wait, tell me how to discuss a few points of respect. Can't wait. All right, this is good. And then this idea of going out and service, sharing a little bit of my, I don't have a lot of room to talk a lot about that stuff. So I just need to summarize it quickly. And this is the best summary that I can give you. It's like Saturday morning, knocking on doors, telling people about Jesus. This is basically what I did growing up. So I think that's good. And I wanted to let them know that I have different perspectives today, but I still care a lot about helping other people. And that's something that I think is good for them to see. And so, I wanted to speak about one of them in particular. I feel like this sentence could maybe go. I don't necessarily need this right here because it's kind of like redundant by then explaining the rest with written in my soul. I think that's something that, you know, I could maybe tweak, but at this point I'm at 247. I think I'm gonna leave this here. I think this is solid for now. So this is the idea. I'm trying to touch on a couple of values, touch on a couple of activities they have to offer, explain why I'm gonna fit in well because of those values and because of some of my experiences with those activities so that I can then be seen as a good candidate for Miami. That's the strat, okay? All right, so, Emission process, oh, sorry, I already talked about that. Could standardized test scores make up for the shitty GPA? Not necessarily. Remember, your GPA is representing several years of work. A test score represents a Saturday. Okay, so a test score doesn't automatically make up for that. Now, can it help? Yes. Can a really high test score signify that maybe you're better than your GPA allows? Sure, and remember, your GPA is also relative. It depends too on what other people in your school are doing. If you have a 3.5 and that's the best grade in your school, that's gonna help you a lot because then the university looks at that and says, oh, okay, this school's really tough on the grades. You know, that happens. Sometimes if you're an international student too and your country's scaling of grades doesn't do you any favors, that can be taken into consideration as well. That's a problem that we're having here in Peru right now. So it's not the end of the world if you have a lower GPA but it has to be taken in context and your test scores can provide some of that context but having a 1600 doesn't automatically mean that you're like a 4.0 GPA. It's not the same thing. They're two very different things. And so most, again, most admissions counselors don't care about the standardized test that much. They're not huge fans. Some of them are. Some universities love it but most of them don't want to take those. That's not their preferred way of seeing your talents and your abilities. So just understand that. It's not the most important thing. All right, so there's my Miami one. Somebody asked for my WPM on my words per minute. I can do about 120 most of the time. Like if I'm in the zone, if I'm just writing from scratch, I can get it up to like 140, 150 if I'm just translating, copying something. So, all right, let's go to, I wanna go to NYU. I wanna talk about NYU because this is a new prompt and I think it's pretty interesting and I wanna talk about how this works and what I think people are doing wrong with this. So right away, NYU starts out with an interesting series of words. It says we're looking for peacemakers, change makers, global citizens, boundary breakers, creatives and innovators. So they're saying a bunch of different words here, types of people that they're looking for. Which one of those are you? I would encourage you to start by thinking about that. Which one of these would you like to sort of sell yourself as, right? Boundary breakers sort of resonates well with me. I feel like that's something that I align with a lot. Global citizen also. I think I'm much more globalized than most Americans. Could talk about that. Those are a couple that get my attention. So I wanna think about those. That's gonna sort of set the theme for this essay, right? And how I wanna show them that I fit with that, okay? Now, the other thing here is these quotes. So they're asking us to pick a quote that inspires you or share one. I personally don't think sharing another quote is a great idea because it's gonna take away your space. Cause you have to put the quote in there to share it with them. And that could reduce your amount of space to talk about things. Plus, there's something that all of these have in common which is that they're all NYU commencement speakers or honorary degree recipients. Like there's something in common with all these people and I feel like if you take another quote and it doesn't fit in there, that could be a problem. So what I want you to do is really try to like, just stick with the quotes here. So I'm just gonna look at these and see if any of these really inspire me. Used to people telling us there's no solutions and then creating on our own. So we do what we do best, we do something else. I don't know, that quote's too long to get my attention, honestly. I don't like it. I encourage your discomfort that you must contribute, that you must make your voice heard. That is the essence of good citizenship. I kinda like this one. I encourage your discomfort. That's an interesting concept. I think a lot of times we look for comfort and I could resonate with that. If you knew how to fly but you never knew how to walk, wouldn't that be sad? No, it would be awesome. I would love to be able to just fly everywhere. That's a dumb quote. You have the right to want things and to want things to change. Yeah, I'm with you there. It's hard to fight with a fight ain't fair. Life isn't fair, Taylor Swift, quick complaining. All right, so seeing as I've crapped on three of these, I'm gonna go with the second one. So that's the one I'm gonna go, Sherilyn Eiffel, Eiffel, weird name. Okay, now, here's where I think that we need to approach this essay prompt very differently from how we approach some other prompts. I'm talking about this quote. I have never heard of this person. I have no idea who Sherilyn Eiffel is and I wanna learn about her. I wanna talk a little bit about her and then why I care about this quote. And so I'm gonna make some notes down here. So we've got the encourage your discomfort quote. That's the one I wanna use and I need to look up who this, Sherilyn, I don't even know if I'm spelling her name right anymore. Sherilyn, double N. All right, so we're gonna look her up a little bit. We're gonna find out some things about her. Sherilyn Eiffel. All right, so let's take a look at this. We've got, okay, she's an American lawyer. All right, that's cool. Let's see, she got her Wikipedia page, nice. Okay, Chair in Civil Rights at Howard University, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, that's nice. Oh, wow. Seventh President since third of Marshall. That's good company to be in. The name does times, wow, one of the times 100. That's a pretty big deal. All right, younger than 10 children went to Vassar College, went to NYU School of Law. So here's why this is important guys. Like, look at what we're seeing here. We're looking at an NYU alum. And so obviously she was a good fit for the university. She's the kind of person that they want. We wanna show that we can be like her. We wanna show that we can like think the same way she does or have similar interests or similar approaches to things. So this is where like what I wanna do is connect some of my experience to hers if possible or see where I could find that. So I'm not getting a ton of information about like some of her like experience. I'm looking at this. So on the courthouse law and confronting the legacy of lynching, that's pretty strong. I don't know. Let's see. Any other like major, okay. So voting rights and judicial selection is interesting. I think that could be, that could be voting rights is something that could be good here. Let's see if there's any other like, you know, bios about this person that are maybe running around here that I might be able to get some more information on her. Let's see. So at the ACLU, okay. Voting rights cases. So that seems to be a big deal with her. Voting rights cases, that's interesting. Okay. Law clinics, challenging the legal barriers to it. Okay. That's kind of cool. All right. Clinic on reparations, legacy of lynching again was mentioned in here. Yeah. I'm not going to try to equate that experience. I'm not black. I don't have that life experience. I don't want to like try to make it seem like I know what that is about. Cause I truly don't. And police violence. Okay. That's a good one too. I like that. I'm curious about her work on that. And then is this America? Ooh, coming up. I actually, all right. That's kind of cool. So she's got something by this. All right. So it's clearly she seems to be talking a lot about some of the like, you know, racial conflicts, police violence, voting rights. Like there's certain issues that are clearly big issues to her. The idea of this one in particular kind of gets my attention as something I kind of care about as someone who has seen some of that in my family as well. I think that there's a need for reform there and I could maybe resonate with that with a personal experience, you know? I kind of want to look at, hang on. Wait, is her name spelled? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Did I look at this wrong on the app? Hang on. One R, two Ns. Two Rs, one N. I've spotted a typo in New York University's prompt. They've messed it up. People, people, they spelled her name wrong. They really did. They really did. Oh boy. Okay, well anyway, I want to see what you said about this. All right, so Time Magazine's got a little thing in here. Yeah, get out of my face. Okay, so, all right. So she says this is when change can happen after the grief and anger. This is good. Okay, so this is kind of like what connects back to that. What I'm trying to do here, everybody, is figure out why she would have said this. Like what is she trying to say? She, you know, this quote, right? This idea of encourage your discomfort, right? Why would she say encourage discomfort? And then we look at this. She's saying that this discomfort, this grief and anger is the condition that we can use to make change, right? These are the conditions in which change can happen. So by attaching that idea maybe to some of the things that I've experienced and some of the things that I would like to see change, I can make a good essay out of this. And so I think now I've got a good idea about who she is. And I'm gonna let them know that they spelled it wrong as well because I think that's important. They should know that they screwed up her first name, which I just, I really cannot believe that this got through. And I'm like, I feel like I'm the first person to notice this so far, but hey. All right, so let's go to my doc and take a look at what I'm working on here. So, all right, we've got her name spelled correctly. And what I wanna look at here is what she said in this article, the conditions in which transformative change can happen and she connects it to discomfort. And that in particular from the George Floyd protests. And so I think what we wanna talk about here is how we can appreciate that discomfort. That discomfort should not be something to be afraid of, but rather should be something that motivates us to change. Now, discomfort with police in my life. And I wanna connect it to myself a little bit to share a little bit of why I care about that quote, right? And then promoting change in that regard and why that might be important to me. So this is kind of what I'm gonna try to build on through this essay here. I think I've got enough to kind of get started. And as a reminder, this is 250 words. So it's again, similar length to the last one. We don't have a lot of space here. I'm gonna just put this down on a separate page so we kind of have it all right here. Okay, so I wanna start off with the, a little bit of a reference to the quote, but talking about that discomfort. All right, and yeah, you can watch all of these live streams. Everything's in the channel. Like I can show you where to look if you want, but it's all there. I don't delete these things. So you can always just go back and watch these anytime you want. So there's like over 150 videos that I've recorded and edited. And then there's probably like 20 some live streams that would matter to you. So the way, I wanna connect this again, why she would have talked about this topic. Why she would say that, right? This comfort provides the conditions for change. I'm just reading a little bit more in this article to see if I can find anything else about it. But all right, so mainly that was her main point here. Okay, so I wanna start off again by just analyzing a little bit of that quote. And I think here that like, I wanna also explain why she thinks that way and show that I've done a little bit of research. I think this is the thing that most people are not doing with this essay. People are going straight, like they're just trying to answer the question quickly so they can then talk about themselves or talk about some activity they've done or like your typical supplemental essay. Like take the moment to look at this person's life. Take a moment to analyze what they said. Think about why they would say those things, you know? That's what I think they wanna see. That's what I feel like would go so much further than what most people are gonna do. Most people are just gonna roll their eyes at the quote and just write their own, the essay they wanted to write anyway. They see the quote as an obstacle. I see the quote as a tool. Like for me, that quote speaks to me and now it's got me, you know, motivated to talk about this stuff. And I wanna now try to attach this a little bit to myself. Actually, I don't like the way I'm going with this. I don't wanna, I think, I like that, I wanna keep my Mike Tomlin bit in there just cause I think it shows a little bit about me and where I'm from and what I care about. Because that is something that Mike Tomlin always says. So, yeah, sorry to be a bit of a bummer with this story here, but this is facts. This is real life. So, this here I think at this point is like kind of where I need to transition a little bit more to me and what I would like to see and what I would like to do about these things. And so I might wanna, you know, try to start contextualizing this a little bit more towards NYU and what their interests are. And this could be a good place to even talk a little bit about maybe some values of NYU or something else. But at this point, I think that, you know, I could also wrap up a little bit by focusing on just how, again, I feel about that idea of discomfort. Like, you know, we're at 234. Okay, 252 again. All right, I think this is good enough here at this point. Cornell's coming up next. I'm gonna do that next, Maharshi. I got 30 minutes before I have a meeting, so that's just enough time for me to knock out Cornell. That one's actually, I think, the easiest one of all these. So, okay. Again, look at what we've got here. So, I've analyzed the author of this quote a little bit and kind of what I see in this and connecting it to some of my research about her. This is going that extra mile. This is something that I can tell you right now, most people are not doing on this essay. I've checked a few of these from other people. I'm not seeing it. You can make yours better by doing that. And then, connecting it a little bit more to you, right? What is the connection between their experiences and your experiences or what they have seen and what you have seen? So, knowing that she cares about police reform, that got me thinking about this experience that I have had in my family. And it's a real experience. That was a real messed up situation. Like, that is, it's literally someone killed somebody and then just did not get in any trouble for it whatsoever. And it's wild to me. As a kid, I will never forget thinking about that just like, but how, like how, like just, it made no sense as a kid. You're like, well, how could, like, it's obvious. Like, this is clear. Like, it was his gun. It was in his house. She made a phone call to the 911, like asking for help. Like, what more evidence do you need? People, like, don't just kill themselves in that kind of context. That's what he claimed. And that's how he got away with it. But like, it was also because he knew the cops. He knew the police and the police did nothing. And no matter how much we asked, they just said, hey, we've done our investigation and we've cleared them of all wrongdoing so there's nothing more we can do unless you have new evidence. And it's like, this is the kind of stuff that, you know, is why we need reform. And so that discomfort that she refers to, like, I get that. And I want to show that I understand that quote on a personal level. So I think that's there. And then, you know, this idea about making change. And some of the things I want to do at NYU, I think is kind of the way I would wrap that up. You know, to just think about why, like, I want to be here, you know. And I could probably make this a little more specific and maybe think about specific names here in that field. If there's any specific individuals who are involved in that, that would be maybe what I would do here to make this a little better, to try to speak specifically about those experts. Like, I always encourage you to get specific with those things. For the sake of time, I'm not going to go look that up right now. But that's generally what I would try to do here just to make this a little bit better. And we are at 252. So I will say instead of saying it's in our nature, it's natural to avoid discomfort. And there we go. Now we're at 250. It's easy to cut down words if you're looking for them. All right. So last one is core now. Let's get to that real quick. Here we go. Okay, so this is the any person, any study. Life experiences will contribute to a learning community devoted to any person, any study. And then this is talking about shaping your perspectives. And we could also do what we did here for Miami and look at some activities from the university that we could talk about. But I also want to think about like my perspectives and some of the things that make my perspectives unique here and thinking about different communities, local or global, right? So one of the things I like to do for this kind of essay is think about what are some of those communities that have influenced me? I would obviously talk about my Pittsburgh upbringing because I think Pittsburgh is something that is deep to me. Hard work is a key value there. I think that's really, really important. We value working really, really hard. We can be stubborn and persistent like with a lot of things, Pittsburgh people tend to be that way. Those are a couple of characteristics I think about for that that I value. Global communities, I would specifically look here at maybe my time in Peru. I could write this as if it was like after a gap year because I did do that. I went to college years after high school. I went from high school to Peru. So I could kind of do that. And then I think that I could focus a little bit on family and friends from here and some of those things that I value. And MacGyvering, I think, is that, I forget how you write MacGyver. Let me look it up. It's Mac, okay, it's MacGyvering, MacGyvering Solutions. I'll explain that what that means. I think these are some good answers that could work here and shaping perspective, right? So some of the things I, and then I would also add like a little bit of my time in Detroit, although I might actually be able to whip that into the Pittsburgh stuff too for a second. All right, so let's just go with this. I wanna see what I can come up with here because I got some ideas. Something unique you can do for this out of the box type things. I mean, like this isn't necessarily a why Cornell. I think that like there's some stuff here that's contributions to a learning community, right? And then there's stuff about your perspective. So I can also touch on some activities that I think that would be a good idea. Let's take a look at some Cornell student organizations and see if we can find something that would be useful. Okay, click here to access our directory. I'm clicking here, okay, cool. So we can see all these different options of different things that I might wanna join or be interested in. Again, this is something you should always check out just because you can weave a couple of these things into your essays and show them that you've done some research about those opportunities. Yeah, load all, I mean all of the groups. Yeah, and just see if I can think about maybe some of these that would align well with the things that I have mentioned here about the places I've been and the people that I'm like familiar with and things like that. Anime club, that's cool. Army ROTC, Artistic Beads, cute. All right, Computer Science Undergrads, Women in Real Estate, man, they got everything here. Badminton, of course. The Bangladeshi Students Association, Best Buddies, Cornell, Beekeeping Club, that's kinda cool. Makes me think of that movie, or that TV show Wednesday. I think that was what it was, she was Wednesday, right? Yeah. Okay, Biomedical, Black Ivy, Blockchain, Book Club, Bowling Club, that could be kind of fun. Yeah, maybe I could go with the Bowling Club, you know? I'll put that in here somewhere. Bowling Club, see where I can use that. Bread Club, actually, that seems like something that could be pretty cool. Actually, something food related would be good to link up with Peru. If I'm gonna talk about Peru, like food, anything food related would be really, really good here. Let's see what else is in here. Let's do a little bit of searching here. Let's see like food and or drink. Let's search that way. Big Red Brewing, nice, they got their own brewery? That's cool, I would be into that. Yeah, I think that's actually a good idea, I should mention that. Big Red Brewing, and maybe something else here. Food Science, Global Tea, Grilling Club, Johnson on Tap, cool. Society of Wine and Juris Prudence, what a combo. So random, Spirit Society, I like that. All right, okay, and I think I could touch on how I might use that. Okay, I got a couple of things, this is good. You think YS essays are enjoyable, Omar? I'm with you, I kinda like essays that, I like the supplemental essays and stuff and how they work. All right, so what I wanna talk about here is any person, any study, and really, I think their point here is that anybody can find somewhere to be, someone can be content here, any kind of person can find a place at Cornell. And so what I wanna talk about is like, what is that? What is any person, and what am I in that context? And how does that connect to some of these experiences? So I wanna start off kinda by contextualizing my take on that quote, right, that any person, any study, right? It means as I would find an institution where any person can find instruction in any study, right? Actually, let's have some fun with that. Us Yinsers work to a fault. We call ourselves Yinsers sometimes, because we say Yins. Yeah, so, okay. Yeah, Mahash, you're saying is this unique showing all the things they do? I mean, I don't know what you're saying is this unique, I don't know what you're referring to there, brother. Don't worry about being unique, worry about being yourself. If you are yourself, you will be unique because every person is different. So that's the key, man. If you're trying to be unique, you won't be unique, okay? Half the time, so don't try, just be, okay? So, all right, so I'm talking a little bit about that Pittsburgh upbringing, you know, and some of the ways that that has affected me, and yeah, now, I may leave this out, I'm not sure. I'm debating, we'll see, we'll see. I might try something else for a moment here because I wanted to touch on that, but I also wanted to touch on, actually, you know what? I think I know how I can do this. Okay, we're good, nevermind, staying with stubborn. I'm gonna just be a little more specific here. All right, so a little bit of that stubbornness, like kind of tying that into this idea of getting out of some poverty, getting into a better situation, you know? I'm kind of imagining that as if I was writing this like a year or two after this, because that's when I graduated and when I like, you know, applied to college. So just for some context, I know this is, I'm referring to something 15 years ago, but I'm kind of imagining myself at like 18, 19, kind of a doing this, so, role with it. So, let me see how my word can is, I'm at 219. Okay, cool, this is a good place to get into this, yeah. All right, and then we'll talk about these things later, but we're gonna go to the family and friends thing. Yeah, this MacGyvering Solutions thing, let's see. All right, and then the Big Red Brewing and Spirit Society, that was something I wanna talk about too. All right, yeah, getting into a little bit of like how I would interact with that community. All right, so, I think that's a pretty good spot to kind of roll with here. I think this is probably a good place to stop right here. I don't know how good it is, it's gonna get. Sir, I suggest me the best university for computer science major for international student. Do not ever ask for the best university. The best university is what's best for you, okay? What's best for you depends on a million different factors. You need to decide what those factors are. What are the most important factors for you? And then furthermore, how much money do you got? Because that makes a big difference. I would have very different answers for somebody who can pay full price or somebody who needs a full ride. And I also just think in general, you, again, there's no such thing as a best university. There are thousands of universities. The best one is the one that's best for you. So you need to define your own terms, define your own values. What do you care about for college? All right, because yeah, doesn't matter what rankings say, those are full of shit. Don't pay attention to rankings. They don't tell you the best anything. So yeah, never thought essays could be that spontaneous. Yeah, this is the thing, like just try to write, try to get it out. I would do some revision, by the way, on these essays. This is not necessarily the final version that I would send, but this is how I'm trying to come up with it. I feel like a lot of times I see a mistake where a lot of people have like this intention to go, okay, I wanna share this experience, and they're gonna like force it into the essay. Instead of just letting the essay tell you what to write, you know, I'm trying to just let the essay come to me. So here I just do a little bit of outlining to get started, like I'm thinking, okay, what aspects do I wanna talk about? And again, I'm looking at key phrases from here. So there's life experiences. And then we talk about contributing to a learning community, right? But then also how those have shaped my perspective. So I need to share two sides of this thing. One is how the communities in my life have affected me. And another is how I would maybe like to affect some communities. And so I think for me, it actually makes more sense to start with this part, like how those Pittsburgh and Peru communities have shaped me because then it's gonna be more clear how I would contribute to a learning community. And I can make that a little easier for them to understand. So I wanted to highlight a couple of values, a couple of things that I got from my communities. And so by establishing, and I wanted to establish first, this idea of a warm welcome, this environment where anybody can thrive, but everybody has to find their own place. You know, it's not automatic. And I think that I've already figured out mine. So I'm letting them know that like, I have done my research, I have looked into this. I'm not just expecting for you to pick me up and put me in the perfect spot. I as an individual need to take some steps to find that spot, to find that place in your community. And so that's what I wanted to establish here that I'm looking for that. And so I want them to see those characteristics. So for me, I think that the work ethic factor is something that really I identify strongly with from Pittsburgh. It's something I've seen in my whole family. My grandpa was a coal miner. The dude would do like, you know, 16 hours in a coal mine and then come home. I mean, my dad never missed work, except for those two times I can remember him on the couch in the morning. I've, it's rare. My mom has worked hard her whole life. Like she's insane. She does stupid numbers of hours even to this day. And like, I have always had that same attitude. So I want them to see that. I think that that's an important aspect of who I am. And one of the reasons that I can be successful, especially at a rigorous institution like this, you know? So I'm letting them know, like I'm not worried about the academic side. That's just what we do, baby. Like we work till the bone. We work to perhaps the point where we cause problems. Like I didn't have space to get into the fact that my parents got divorced because my dad worked too much, but that's another story for another day. So I'm at 372. I do need to trim a little bit. And we're stubborn bunch. Yeah. So I think I can take out this as a family because we've already said our situation. Plan to continue, plan to do the same. I could say just do the same at Cornell. And then, yeah, I can take out that as a way. And then, yeah, this stuff. Let's tighten that up. Took a while to adjust. Let me, still gotta get rid of it. All right, so I could say learning here instead of to learn, let me improve. Expose me to, incredible. Yeah, that could be better. That's one, two words less. All right, we're at 355. I still need to get rid of five words. I think I could get rid of this. I think that's pretty obvious. Yeah, and then it helps the transition here because I say strides to improve our situation still life has ways of ruining your plans. So, okay, I think I've given them enough info, 347. Let's go, everybody, we're done. So yeah, let's talk about, let me, I'm just looking at your questions here, chat. I got a couple minutes before I gotta go. So let's just see if you got any questions here. How can I write UChicago essays? How do I be quirky? You don't have to try to be quirky. You don't have to be quirky. The idea is that the prompts are weird. The prompts are strange, but I think the key is to try to answer them in your own way and really make your own interpretation of those prompts. I did a live stream last year with last year's UChicago prompts. So you could look that up. I might do it again. I'm gonna see if I can do another Supplemental Saturday next week while I'm in Columbia because I got a better laptop that should be able to handle it. So we'll see. I haven't tried streaming on that laptop yet. So we'll see if I can handle it. But I wanna do that next week, perhaps with all of you and do UChicago. But I think the key thing with UChicago is like, you just need to really come up with your own interpretation for the essay. Like what does the prompts say to you? Why do you care? Okay, and that'll help you out. So yeah, you have 1,407 in the aisles, 80% scholarship. All right, which university is really worth for us? I mean, if you already have an 80% scholarship and you're looking for coverage from the other 20%, then you would still need to look at universities that meet demonstrated need for international students. And there's only about 40, 50 of those that'll do that that also have computer science, even a smaller number. So that limits your options a little bit. And then I would say though, if you have cash from the family that could also cover that stuff, then you have more options if that 80% scholarship can be used anywhere. I would have to see a little bit more about that stuff. Omar, I think it really is important to align with the preferences. Like understand what kind of person the university looks for. What are the values of that university? We looked at that for, you know, U Miami. Like what are some of their values? What are some of their, the things they care about? Because if you can align with what they care about, you're more likely to get in. The point of these essays is to show them that you are a good fit. And we do that by connecting ourselves, you know, to the things that they look for. So in the Miami case, I looked at values and I said, okay, I see that they value these things. I am going to, you know, touch on those things in my essay with NYU. I looked at the profile of Marilyn, the, or Sherilyn, the person that they quoted. Like she clearly is the kind of person they're looking for. She is a change maker. She is a boundary breaker. She is those things. And so I analyze her and I look at how I might have a similar passion for a similar thing and can connect myself to herself, you know? So that's what I'm trying to do with these essays is show them that I'm a good fit. Same here with Cornell. It's like, okay, I've looked at your community. I have seen some things in your community that I would like to partake in. And I think that these attributes of me also will be unique and will fit in for your community. And again, I've touched on both a local and a global community by touching on my growing up in Pittsburgh and my experience in Peru. And so by combining those things, again, that's what they're looking for. They like to see globally minded citizens, people with diverse perspectives, people who have the ability to blend perspectives and combine ideas, you know? So that's what they're looking for. And I think that it's important for you to show that stuff and actually be that stuff. It's not just trying to show it. It's like, this is who I am. It should be real. And if not, maybe you're applying to the wrong school. So think about that. All right, so that's all the time I got for today because I got a meeting in a couple of minutes. I gotta go. It's been fun. Next week, there's gonna be an SAT crash course stream where I'm gonna go through their second test, like question by question and help you guys understand the answers and go through all the strategies. We're gonna do a nice practice session on Wednesday. And then we should have another supplemental Saturday before this whole month is over. And yeah, so thank you so much for being here. I will see you later. Have a good day.