[Du Học Mỹ] Tổng Hợp Bài Luận Trên Common Application

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

For the 2024–2025 application, we’re asking these short answer essay questions:

1. What field of study appeals to you the most right now? (Note: Applicants select from a drop-down list.) Tell us more about why this field of study at MIT appeals to you.
2. We know you lead a busy life, full of activities, many of which are required of you. Tell us about something you do simply for the pleasure of it.
3. While some reach their goals following well-trodden paths, others blaze their own trails achieving the unexpected. In what ways have you done something different than what was expected in your educational journey?
4. MIT brings people with diverse backgrounds together to collaborate, from tackling the world’s biggest challenges to lending a helping hand. Describe one way you have collaborated with others to learn from them, with them, or contribute to your community together.
5. How did you manage a situation or challenge that you didn’t expect? What did you learn from it?

Depending on the question, we’re looking for responses of approximately 100–200 words each. There is also one final, open-ended, additional-information text box where you can tell us anything else you think we really ought to know.

Stanford University

Short questions:
1. What is the most significant challenge that society faces today? (max 50 words)
2. How did you spend your last two summers? (max 50 words)
3. What historical moment or event do you wish you could have witnessed? (max 50 words)
4. Briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities, a job you hold, or responsibilities you have for your family. (max 50 words)
5. List five things that are important to you (max 50 words)

Short Essays:
1. The Stanford community is deeply curious and driven to learn in and out of the classroom. Reflect on an idea or experience that makes you genuinely excited about learning (max 250 words)
2. Virtually all of Stanford’s undergraduates live on campus. Write a note to your future roommate that reveals something about you or that will help your roommate – and us – get to know you better. (max 250 words)
3. Please describe what aspects of your life experiences, interests and character would help you make a distinctive contribution as an undergraduate to Stanford University. (max 250 words) 

Harvard University

1. Harvard has long recognized the importance of enrolling a student body with a diversity of perspectives and experiences. How will the life experiences that shaped who you are today enable you to contribute to Harvard? (max 150 words)
2. Describe a time when you strongly disagreed with someone about an idea or issue. How did you communicate or engage with this person? What did you learn from this experience? (max 150 words)
3. Briefly describe any of your extracurricular activities, employment experience, travel, or family responsibilities that have shaped who you are. (max 150 words)
4. How do you hope to use your Harvard education in the future? (max 150 words)
5. Top 3 things your roommates might like to know about you. (max 150 words)

California Institute of Technology (Caltech)

Your STEM Future: Academic Interests
1. Why did you choose your proposed area of interest? If you selected ‘other’, what topics are you interested in pursuing? (max 200 words)

Your STEM Present: Curiosity
2. Regardless of your STEM interest listed above, take this opportunity to nerd out and talk to us about whatever STEM rabbit hole you have found yourself falling into. Be as specific or broad as you would like. (max 150 words)

Your STEM Past: Prior Experiences
3. Please enter your STEM experience essay here (max 200 words)

Creativity in Action
The creativity, inventiveness, and innovation of Caltech’s students, faculty, and researchers have won Nobel Prizes and put rovers on Mars. But Techers also imagine smaller-scale innovations every day, from new ways to design solar cells to how to 3D-print dorm decor to experimenting in the kitchen. How have you been a creator, inventor, or innovator in your own life? (max 250 word)

Besides, you have 250 words total to answer two of the four questions below.
1. Hobby: What is an interest or hobby you do for fun, and why does it bring you joy?
2. Teach: If you could teach a class on any topic or concept, what would it be and why? 
3. Identity: What is a core piece of your identity or being that shapes how you view and/or interact with the world? 
4. Concept: What is a concept that blew your mind or baffled you when you first encountered it?

University of Chicago

Writing questions:

Choose one of the seven extended essay options below and upload a one- or two-page response. Please include the prompt at the top of the page. Past extended essay prompts can be found on our website.
1. In an ideal world where inter-species telepathic communication exists, which species would you choose to have a conversation with, and what would you want to learn from them? Would you ask beavers for architectural advice? Octopuses about cognition? Pigeons about navigation? Ants about governance? Make your case—both for the species and the question. – Inspired by Yvan Sugira, Class of 2029
2. If you could uninvent one thing, what would it be — and what would unravel as a result? – Inspired by Eitan Fischer, Class of 2027
3. “Left” can mean remaining or departed. “Dust” can mean to add fine particles or to remove them. “Fast” can mean moving quickly or fixed firmly in place. These contronyms—words that are their own antonyms—somehow hold opposing meanings in perfect tension. Explore a contronym: a role, identity, or experience in your life that has contained its own opposite. – Inspired by Kristin Yi, Class of 2029
4. The penny is on its way out—too small to matter, too costly to keep. But not everything small should disappear. What’s one object the world is phasing out that you think we can’t afford to lose, and why? – Ella Somaiya, Class of 2028
5. From Michelin Tires creating the Michelin Guide, to the audio equipment company Audio-Technica becoming one of the world’s largest manufacturers of sushi robots, brand identity can turn out to be a lot more flexible than we think. Choose an existing brand, company, or institution and propose an unexpected but strangely logical new product or service for them to launch. Why is this unlikely extension exactly what the world (or the brand) needs right now? – Inspired by Julia Nieberg, Class of 2029
6. Statistically speaking, ice cream doesn’t cause shark attacks, pet spending doesn’t drive the number of lawyers in California, and margarine consumption isn’t responsible for Maine’s divorce rate—at least, not according to conventional wisdom. But what if the statisticians got it wrong? Choose your favorite spurious correlation and make the case for why it might actually reveal a deeper, causative truth. – Inspired by Adam DiMascio, Class of 2025
7. And, as always… the classic choose your own adventure option! In the spirit of adventurous inquiry, choose one of our past prompts (or create a question of your own). Be original, creative, thought provoking. Draw on your best qualities as a writer, thinker, visionary, social critic, sage, citizen of the world, or future citizen of the University of Chicago; take a little risk, and have fun!

Other writing questions: 
How does the University of Chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future? Please address with some specificity your own wishes and how they relate to UChicago.

University of Pennsylvania

1. Write a short thank-you note to someone you have not yet thanked and would like to acknowledge. (We encourage you to share this note with that person, if possible, and reflect on the experience!) (150-200 words)

2. How will you explore the community at Penn? Consider how Penn will help shape your perspective, and how your experiences and perspective will help shape Penn. (150-200 words)

Cornell University

We all contribute to, and are influenced by, the communities that are meaningful to us. Share how you’ve been shaped by one of the communities you belong to. 

Remember that this essay is about you and your lived experience. Define community in the way that is most meaningful to you. Some examples of communities you might choose from are: family, school, shared interest, virtual, local, global, cultural. (max 350 words)

University of California, Berkeley (UCB)

Please respond to any 4 of the 8 questions below.

We realize that not all questions apply to all applicants, so be sure to select the 4 questions that you believe give us the best information about you.

All 8 questions are given equal consideration in the application review process. Responses to each question should be between 250-350 words.

Option 1: Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes, or contributed to group efforts over time.

Option 2: Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.

Option 3: What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time?

Option 4: Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.

Option 5: Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to overcome this challenge. How has this challenge affected your academic achievement?

Option 6: Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom.

Option 7: What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?

Option 8: Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California?

Yale University

Why Yale? 
What is it about Yale that has led you to apply? (125 words or fewer)

Short Takes
Please respond in no more than 200 characters (approximately 35 words or fewer), to each of the following questions: 

1. What inspires you?

2. If you could teach any college course, write a book, or create an original piece of art of any kind, what would it be?

3. Other than a family member, who is someone who has had a significant influence on you? What has been the impact of their influence? 

4. What is something about you that is not included anywhere else in your application?

Yale Essays: Please respond to one of the following prompts in 400 words or fewer. Please indicate the number of the prompt you choose. 

1. Reflect on a time you discussed an issue important to you with someone holding an opposing view. Why did you find the experience meaningful?

2. Reflect on your membership in a community to which you feel connected. Why is this community meaningful to you? You may define community however you like.

3. Reflect on an element of your personal experience that you feel will enrich your college. How has it shaped you?

Princeton University

Your Voice

1. Princeton values community and encourages students, faculty, staff and leadership to engage in respectful conversations that can expand their perspectives and challenge their ideas and beliefs. As a prospective member of this community, reflect on how your lived experiences will impact the conversations you will have in the classroom, the dining hall or other campus spaces. What lessons have you learned in life thus far? What will your classmates learn from you? In short, how has your lived experience shaped you? (500 words or fewer)

2. Princeton has a longstanding commitment to understanding our responsibility to society through service and civic engagement. How does your own story intersect with these ideals? (250 words or fewer)

More About You

Please respond to each question in 50 words or fewer. There are no right or wrong answers. Be yourself!
1. What is a new skill you would like to learn in college?
2. What brings you joy?
3. What song represents the soundtrack of your life at this moment?