my upenn supplemental essays + advice! | the university of pennsylvania

last week I shared my common app essay and today I'm sharing my pen supplements hi guys so if you didn't watch my other videos I applied to pen last November and I got an in December for early decisions so I was really lucky with that pen had to supplement essays that I had to write on top of the common app so I thought I would share those with you today and I thought I would share these essays to just help you guys who have an apply to college yet with your college process and maybe show you what worked for me just a little background I had pretty good stats for all of high schools but they were nowhere near perfect and oh so I by no means had amazing extracurriculars I was good at the extracurriculars that I did and I did along them but I wasn't amazing at any particular one and I wasn't like nationally ranked or even like really state rank that much for any of my extracurriculars but if you want more insight into that watch my old video and let's get into it so like I said before there's two supplement essays that I had to write specifically for Penn and one was more academic based and the other one was more community based the first on the academic one the prompt was how did you discover your intellectual and academic interests and how will you explore them at the University of Pennsylvania please respond considering the specific undergraduate school you have selected and the word cap on that was 450 words the constant question of what do you want to be when you grow up always do and I don't know for me as I had no direction however I've always had a passion for math whether it's third-grade multiplication or multivariable calculus the process of learning new concepts have been an endless source of aha moments although my future was unclear I knew math at play an integral part then last fall my uncle was diagnosed with stage three pancreatic cancer and given three months to live this rocked my world before death was a foreign concept unable to touch anyone in my life bothered by my ignorance I scoured the depths of WebMD and learned about the characteristically diagnosis however along with shortfalls I discovered biomedical engineering through davidís adores work on identifying pancreatic cancer - chip technology seeing the impact biomedical innovation can have on real life such as my uncle's opened up a row for me where math and medicine collide the School of Engineering and Applied Science would provide me with the education and opportunities needed to facilitate innovation were up top stem research opportunities in high school I devote my time to debate where I experience the rigors and excitement of puzzling together information into credible arguments at UPenn I will apply the research skills I've honed at the George Stephenson foundation educational laboratory and bio makerspace open to independent research the makerspace will allow me to delve into the costs of eczema a condition I've lived with since infancy with UPenn single campus I will seek out students of other schools such as the paramon School of Medicine for collaboration this cooperation will be invaluable as a single problem such as eczema will be approached by a diverse array of academic perspectives with this research I hope to utilize it in 10 health texts Rothberg catalyzer a two-day maker thon for innovative medical devices however all the research ventures I take on will lead to the senior design research project where I will implement the engineering skills I am asked with finding solutions to complex medical problems regarding specific courses I look forward to taking engineering entrepreneurship because unlike most engineering courses this class discusses the real-world feasibility of bringing innovation to society another course I look forward to taking is bioengineering signals and systems which is taught by David Isadora himself through leading class discussions and pursuing office hours I hope to collaborate with him for future research opportunities regarding disease diagnosis I believe that the application of knowledge through research and collaboration is the cornerstone of innovation and at Penn I intend to pursue both in the bigger this essay took me from start to finish probably two or three weeks I'm a really big procrastinator so I kind of put it off until the second week of October when I was kinda like my application is due in two weeks was brutal for those two or three weeks like every day after school I would work on it originally when I first wrote my whole entire draft it ended up being like 600 words and I had to cut cut it down by 150 words which was really tough for me for supplements like this since the war account is so limited I really had to pick and choose what I wanted to talk about so even before I wrote the essay at all I had a Google Doc and I'm not kidding you I read every single thing I could find online about pen I went on the pen website and I clicked on every single link I looked through it every single Club and I think one of the advantages I had applying early decision was that I was only applying to about three or four schools in the early around so I really had a lot of time to really get to know pen especially since I didn't even get to visit the campus before I applied you know other people who applied a Regular Decision where they had to write these Y blank essays for almost every single school they were applying to and they have to research every single school and I think it would have been really hard for me personally to really research to the extent that I did if I applied regular also in the supplement I really tried to bring in elements of within the classroom and also outside of the classroom regarding the in-class element of the supplement I made sure to mention a few key courses within my major that I would take if I went to Penn that I didn't think would be found in a lot of other colleges I tried to bring a personal element into the whole supplement by mentioning my uncle and his pancreatic cancer and also mentoring David Isadora was a professor at Penn and was also making groundbreaking research in cancer diagnoses regarding that outside of the classroom element I made sure to mention you know the bio makerspace and also the health health tech Rothberg catalyzer the makers on that I mentioned in my supplement because I thought it was important to show that even out of the classroom I would be making these strides to try to pursue my own personal endeavors and lastly since research and Penn civil campus is such a big part of Penn's identity I made sure to really emphasize that within my supplement to show that yeah my goals and my values aligned with the universities on to the second prompt this was more community-based in the was at Penn learning and growth happens outside of the classroom to how we'll use for the community at Penn consider how this community will help shape your perspective and identity and higher identity and perspective will help shape this community and the work cap on this was 200 words I'll just get into it right away and just like the first one I'll kind of take you to the process I had and the thoughts I had while writing this essay at Penn I intend to join pancakes a club of student cookie lovers cake bakers and everyone in between the prospect of exchanging recipes and maybe even my brownie recipe a hit amongst neighborhood moms excites me after all food is a universal language that everyone can bond over covered in a filmer flour baking scones and working at the metropolis and bakery would be a day well spent additionally I hope to further my dorm involvement at Penn as an RA I've guided my advisees through both stress and celebrations however small observations like seeing them act and form trades fulfil me most as these are the moments they see the dorm as a home although this much involvement is difficult within a college dormitory I hope my experience will help create the same sense of community I found in high school perhaps my s'mores cupcake will inspire students pizzas on sugar consumption maybe my brownie will relieve an advisees homesickness regardless I hope my involvement will produce a happier Penn community even if it's just a cookies worth in return maybe Philly will even find its way to my heart through their acoustics and shoe sleep eyes so this was the hardest essay for me to write personally in my whole application to Penn including the common app essay and the other academic supplement I think this is because first of all the workout was so small and limited that I found it really hard to convey what I really wanted to talk about and second of all in the beginning of my process writing this essay I was too concerned about how I wanted to portray myself to the College app reader and I think that was really difficult for me to kind of get out of that mentality and just write about what I really care about and what I actually truly think I can bring to the community in the beginning I tried to write about my volunteering where concerning the volunteering Club I was a part of at school but even in high school it wasn't a huge part of my life so when I was trying to write about it I found her first of all really difficult to right and second of all when I went to my English teacher afterwards to get his feedback he said it's not he was really straight up with me he said it didn't sound like me he couldn't tell that I was really passionate about it and that was probably because in high school I didn't devote the majority of my time to it so I had to scrap that whole thing a week before my application was due and I was in like crunch time like in a week I had to grind this out and it was so hard for me to write about it initially I really tried to mention about you know all these like good things that I do for the community community but after talking to my English teacher I kind just had to step away from that and just really think what do I have to offer to the community it's not a great thing to mention was again my love for baking and also my love for baking for others because usually even when I bake I only eat like 5% of what I bake and since I was really passionate about that I found it really easy to write about and also I thought it was a great way to kind of connect my common app essay to this supplement to further show that I really do love baking and then the next thing I really honed in on was being an RA in my high school dorm the description I gave in the common app application didn't really show my passion for and how much I really cared about living in the dorms and how much a big part that played in my high school experience and since I didn't get to mention that and you know my other essays I thought this is a great way to talk about it and the dorms I lived in the majority my friends lived there the majority of my friends were also fellow Ras and we all cared about the dorms collectively and we also knew everyone this is a great place to talk about that since I was giving so much to the community and I really talked about what that community has given to me personally to also I tried to make this essay sound a lot more like harder than my other one since the other ones first of all were so serious and second of all because I don't necessarily think that community always has to be so serious I think the basis of a community is inherently about those small interactions you have within that group and I think that's what really creates a bond between people and I thought a great way to bring that idea into my essay was to talk about how I would love to bake for my advisees and work in a bakery because I chose small actions of giving can brighten someones day up totally and make a bigger impact than someone might think on the surface level so that's the end of my video I really hope you guys enjoy my supplements or found them helpful feel free to comment down below what you thought of my supplements or any other topics you want me to address and other videos I really like making these videos and I really want to make content that you guys actually truly want to see I'm open to anything that I feel like I can give my insight on for anyone applying to colleges soon best of luck to you everything's going to work out great in the end I promise you I know it's stressful right now but looking back on it I'm so glad that I put in the amount of effort I did into the application because I think it's really nice to see that effort payoff so yeah comment like subscribe I read every single comment and it always brings on my day to see more comments roll in so yeah I hope you guys enjoyed it have a great day [Music]

Channel: haley kang

Views: 84,827

Keywords: upenn, university of pennsylvania, supplemental essays

Id: NFLJ7KLphqc

Length: 11min 50sec (710 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 19 2020