[BC] Common Application Draft Essay 01

Because I am in the process of applying to several colleges that use the Common Application, I decided to draft the essay required by Common Application for all the colleges which accept it. Of the six essay topics, I have chosen:

A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.

During the summer of 2011, I enrolled into Berkeley City College for an eight week chemistry class. I took two community college classes during prior summers. However this was my first comprehensive university-level chemistry course, an intense class that many college students would not endeavor during the summer semester. This class condensed sixteen weeks of laboratory experiments, reports, lectures, notes, exams, and quizzes into eight short weeks. While I walked out of the class with an “A,” the laboratory experiments and formal college setting are invaluable experiences that I will bring to the diversity in a college community.

The AP Chemistry class teaches the first two semesters of introductory university chemistry. After taking AP Chemistry, I gathered this eight week chemistry course would be easy since it covers only the first semester. A week later, I noticed the expansive lack of laboratory work incorporated in AP Chemistry. Moreover, the professional laboratory reports were unlike any assignment completed in high school science classes. Simple worksheets and packets evolved into complex ten-page reports with extensive details and calculations. College-level chemistry experiments require the utmost precision and numerous trials to qualify as a complete experiment. All these aspects compacted in two- or three-day experiments with up to three experiments in one week. The amount of laboratory work surpasses any amount of writing I have completed for a class.

The class structure in college classes varies greatly from the high school analogs. The entire lecture section of the class consisted of only lecture; there were no in-class assignments or group discussions. The time in lecture was spent solely on the professor lecturing new material or reviewing homework and exam questions. I experienced a different atmosphere in this college class. The lecture room is different

Student-teacher interactions