6 Tips For Writing A Great University Admissions Essay

6 Tips For Writing A Great University Admissions Essay I hope to start answering these questions at St. John’s. My senior year, my class was assigned Kafka’s Metamorphosis. My peers neglected the reading, doing only what they had to do to maintain decent grades. I came to class having read the story and enjoyed it. I am a reader because I am a writer, not the other way around. Index cards, store receipts, and any other paper I can find, covered in notes I took, stick out of the tops of my books. By the time I was in middle school, reading turned into a barren desert where every once in a while a teen fiction novel might roll in like a tumbleweed. It was a tough period not just for me but for our entire family, as we were losing my grandpa to Alzheimer’s while my mother was spiraling into depression. I could no longer hide in the pages of books and I had to face reality as daunting as it seemed. I still tried to read as much as I could but everything seemed pointless and I thought I’d never be able to find meaning in a book again. It embraces individualism and faith as compasses to accomplishment. The third aspectâ€"that of conformismâ€"connects the novel with today and calls on the reader to think and reflect more deeply, to search for a unique identity. The experience of reading the story has taught me that raising questions and finding answers should be an indefinite, life-long process. My grandfather’s love for art shows the significance of individualismâ€"a subject very dear to me. Prior to reading the novel, I viewed individualism as an act of rebellion with little to no effect on the development of personality. My father is a prime example of an individualist, and, for some time, I saw him as an outsider who found many ways to be critical of his environment. Unlike my classmates, I see books as worlds I can get lost in. I saw a statement about our significance in the world. The aforementioned aspects signify what makes Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita great in my opinion. Antigone proved this assumption wrong because Antigone itself was a case study in the actual consequences of ideas discussed by political philosophers. In other words, Antigone humanized the esoteric and function-driven debates I’d studied last year. Finishing the play, I was ashamed that I’d harbored such skepticism at the outset of my reading. My experience with Antigone reminds me why I get excited each time I use calculus in physics or art in cooking, and I look forward to a lifetime of making these connections. Moreover, our relationship has always been strained. Having read the novel I have learned to appreciate individualism as a philosophy. The character of Master, a misunderstood writer of his time, reflects in detail the value of being independent of societal views. I dream of a place where everyone enjoys books differently. There is greatness to be found in every book, but these are some of the writers that challenged what I thought to be true and opened the door to moral questions that will take more than my lifetime to answer. On weekends I struggled to carry twenty books at a time, stacked way up high as I left my local library. At home, I stayed up late with a little light under my sheets trying to finish the last chapter of The Prisoner of Azkaban . I lived my life through books, some were void of meaning, just a way to pass the time, while others crept up on my subconscious and wove their way into my life, forever intertwined with me. The most special books are the ones that like a kaleidoscope give a new view upon another reading. Not only do the literary devices make it a wonder to read, but the way it discusses eternal human problems makes it a great book. The work displays the Soviet society under immense repression and how it affects people’s mindsets. It also addresses the relationship between individuals and their community and time.