有人說，芝加哥大學是一所有趣甚至“古怪”的大學，它的“古怪”或許就體(ti) 現在這些補充文書(shu) 身上。最近芝加哥大學更新了今年的補充文書(shu) 的題目，內(nei) 容大不相同，但還是熟悉的“燒腦配方”，還是熟悉的“中二味道”，對這種狀態，芝大一直是極有自知之明的存在：“芝加哥大學長期以來一直以我們(men) 挑釁性的文書(shu) 問題而聞名。” 官方吐槽，最為(wei) 致命。
provocative 意思是 挑釁的，氣人的。
許多人一路披荊斬棘，提高了GPA和托福成績，做了大量的活動，結果到了寫(xie) 文書(shu) 這裏搞了心態。“燒腦”還是“中二”？讓我們(men) 來看看今年的文書(shu) 題目是怎樣的？
2022-2023芝加哥大學補充文書(shu)
01問題一（必寫(xie) ）
翻譯：就你現在所知，芝加哥大學如何滿足你對學習(xi) 氛圍、社區和未來的期望?請具體(ti) 說明你自己的願望以及它們(men) 與(yu) 芝加哥大學的關(guan) 係。
解讀：這個(ge) 問題是芝加哥大學補充文書(shu) 裏的“老人兒(er) ”了，基本不會(hui) 有太大改變的第一問。看似範圍很大，但其實就是一個(ge) Why school的文書(shu) 題目。
為(wei) 什麽(me) 想來芝大學習(xi) ？
你的目標是否和芝大的教學是否匹配？
芝大能提供的資源如何能夠在最大程度上幫助到你？
招生官不隻是想看你的申請原因，他還想在你的文書(shu) 中感受到更真實與(yu) 更個(ge) 性化的內(nei) 容。重點是在你的學術興(xing) 趣如何與(yu) 學校吻合，而不是生活方式上的吻合。
02問題二：拓展文書(shu) （必寫(xie) ，以下題目中選擇一個(ge) ）
選項1
翻譯：Was it a cat I saw?（我看到的是一隻貓嗎？），Yo-no-na-ka, ho-ka-ho-ka na-no-yo（日語為(wei) “世界是一個(ge) 溫暖的地方”）。Może jutro ta dama da tortu jeżom（波蘭(lan) 語為(wei) “也許明天那位女士會(hui) 給刺蝟蛋糕”）。分享任意一種語言的回文結構的句子（即正讀反瀆都相同的句子），並給它一個(ge) 背景故事。
選項2
翻譯：智齒會(hui) 有什麽(me) 樣的建議？
選項3 
翻譯： 你正在探索火星上的殖民地，突然從(cong) 附近的隕石坑中出現了一群火星人。他們(men) 似乎渴望交流，但他們(men) 是那種不耐煩的人，要求你用一首歌、一張圖片、一個(ge) 記憶、一張證明或其他想法來代表人類。你與(yu) 他們(men) 分享了什麽(me) 來表明人類值得他們(men) 花時間去了解？
選項4
翻譯： 芝加哥大學有90多名諾貝爾獎獲得者。但是，為(wei) 什麽(me) 經濟學獎、物理學獎和和平獎應該獲得所有榮耀呢？您的任務是為(wei) 諾貝爾獎創建一個(ge) 新類別，解釋它是什麽(me) ，為(wei) 什麽(me) 選擇這個(ge) 特定類別，以及獲得這個(ge) 獎項要達到的標準。
選項5
翻譯：成吉思汗駕駛 F1 賽車。喬(qiao) 治華盛頓與(yu) SuperSoaker玩具水槍。尼祿皇帝拿著烤麵包機。達芬奇帶著菲比精靈。如果你可以給任意一個(ge) 曆史人物任何技術，你會(hui) 選誰和選什麽(me) 技術？你為(wei) 什麽(me) 覺得Ta和這項技術能匹配？
選項6
翻譯：還有，一如既往經典的冒險選擇！本著冒險探究的精神，從(cong) 過去的題目中選擇一個(ge) （或創建你自己的題目）。要是原創的、有創意的、發人深省的，並發揮你作為(wei) 作家、思想家、有遠見者、社會(hui) 批評家、聖人、世界公民或芝加哥大學未來一員的最佳特質；冒一點險，玩得開心！
一些之前的經典問題：
Some classic questions from previous years…
Due to a series of clerical errors, there is exactly one typo (an extra letter, a removed letter, or an altered letter) in the name of every department at the University of Chicago. Oops! Describe your new intended major. Why are you interested in it and what courses or areas of focus within it might you want to explore? Potential options include Commuter Science, Bromance Languages and Literatures, Pundamentals: Issues and Texts, Ant History... a full list of unmodified majors ready for your editor’s eye is available here.
—Inspired by Josh Kaufman, AB'18
Who does Sally sell her seashells to? How much wood can a woodchuck really chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Pick a favorite tongue twister (either originally in English or translated from another language) and consider a resolution to its conundrum using the method of your choice. Math, philosophy, linguistics... it's all up to you (or your woodchuck).
—Inspired by Blessing Nnate, Class of 2024
What can actually be divided by zero?
—Inspired by Mai Vu, Class of 2024
The seven liberal arts in antiquity consisted of the Quadrivium — astronomy, mathematics, geometry, and music — and the Trivium — rhetoric, grammar, and logic. Describe your own take on the Quadrivium or the Trivium. What do you think is essential for everyone to know?
—Inspired by Peter Wang, Class of 2022
Subway maps, evolutionary trees, Lewis diagrams. Each of these schematics tells the relationships and stories of their component parts. Reimagine a map, diagram, or chart. If your work is largely or exclusively visual, please include a cartographer's key of at least 300 words to help us best understand your creation.
—Inspired by Maximilian Site, Class of 2020
"Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?" - Eleanor Roosevelt. Misattribute a famous quote and explore the implications of doing so.
—Inspired by Chris Davey, AB’13
Engineer George de Mestral got frustrated with burrs stuck to his dog’s fur and applied the same mechanic to create Velcro. Scientist Percy Lebaron Spencer found a melted chocolate bar in his magnetron lab and discovered microwave cooking. Dye-works owner Jean Baptiste Jolly found his tablecloth clean after a kerosene lamp was knocked over on it, consequently shaping the future of dry cleaning. Describe a creative or interesting solution, and then find the problem that it solves.
—Inspired by Steve Berkowitz, AB’19, and Neeharika Venuturupalli, Class of 2024
Joan of Arkansas. Queen Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Babe Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Mash up a historical figure with a new time period, environment, location, or occupation, and tell us their story.
—Inspired by Drew Donaldson, AB’16
Alice falls down the rabbit hole. Milo drives through the tollbooth. Dorothy is swept up in the tornado. Neo takes the red pill. Don’t tell us about another world you’ve imagined, heard about, or created. Rather, tell us about its portal. Sure, some people think of the University of Chicago as a portal to their future, but please choose another portal to write about.
—Inspired by Raphael Hallerman, Class of 2020
What’s so odd about odd numbers?
—Inspired by Mario Rosasco, AB’09
Vestigiality refers to genetically determined structures or attributes that have apparently lost most or all of their ancestral function, but have been retained during the process of evolution. In humans, for instance, the appendix is thought to be a vestigial structure. Describe something vestigial (real or imagined) and provide an explanation for its existence.
—Inspired by Tiffany Kim, Class of 2020
In French, there is no difference between “conscience” and “consciousness.” In Japanese, there is a word that specifically refers to the splittable wooden chopsticks you get at restaurants. The German word “fremdschämen” encapsulates the feeling you get when you’re embarrassed on behalf of someone else. All of these require explanation in order to properly communicate their meaning, and are, to varying degrees, untranslatable. Choose a word, tell us what it means, and then explain why it cannot (or should not) be translated from its original language.
—Inspired by Emily Driscoll, Class of 2018
Little pigs, French hens, a family of bears. Blind mice, musketeers, the Fates. Parts of an atom, laws of thought, a guideline for composition. Omne trium perfectum? Create your own group of threes, and describe why and how they fit together.
—Inspired by Zilin Cui, Class of 2018
The mantis shrimp can perceive both polarized light and multispectral images; they have the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom. Human eyes have color receptors for three colors (red, green, and blue); the mantis shrimp has receptors for sixteen types of color, enabling them to see a spectrum far beyond the capacity of the human brain. Seriously, how cool is the mantis shrimp: mantisshrimp.uchicago.edu What might they be able to see that we cannot? What are we missing?
—Inspired by Tess Moran, AB’16
How are apples and oranges supposed to be compared? Possible answers involve, but are not limited to, statistics, chemistry, physics, linguistics, and philosophy.
—Inspired by Florence Chan, AB’15
The ball is in your court—a penny for your thoughts, but say it, don’t spray it. So long as you don’t bite off more than you can chew, beat around the bush, or cut corners, writing this essay should be a piece of cake. Create your own idiom, and tell us its origin—you know, the whole nine yards. PS: A picture is worth a thousand words.
—Inspired by April Bell, AB'17, and Maya Shaked, Class of 2018 (It takes two to tango.)
“A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.” –Oscar Wilde. Othello and Iago. Dorothy and the Wicked Witch. Autobots and Decepticons. History and art are full of heroes and their enemies. Tell us about the relationship between you and your arch-nemesis (either real or imagined).
—Inspired by Martin Krzywy, AB’16
Heisenberg claims that you cannot know both the position and momentum of an electron with total certainty. Choose two other concepts that cannot be known simultaneously and discuss the implications. (Do not consider yourself limited to the field of physics).
—Inspired by Doran Bennett, AB’07
Susan Sontag, AB’51, wrote that “[s]ilence remains, inescapably, a form of speech.” Write about an issue or a situation when you remained silent, and explain how silence may speak in ways that you did or did not intend. The Aesthetics of Silence, 1967.
—Anonymous Suggestion
“…I [was] eager to escape backward again, to be off to invent a past for the present.” —The Rose Rabbi by Daniel Stern
Present: pres·ent
1. Something that is offered, presented, or given as a gift.
Let’s stick with this definition. Unusual presents, accidental presents, metaphorical presents, re-gifted presents, etc.—pick any present you have ever received and invent a past for it.
—Inspired by Jennifer Qin, AB’16
So where is Waldo, really?
—Inspired by Robin Ye, AB’16
Find x.
—Inspired by Benjamin Nuzzo, an admitted student from Eton College, UK
Dog and Cat. Coffee and Tea. Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye. Everyone knows there are two types of people in the world. What are they?
—Inspired by an anonymous alumna, AB'06
How did you get caught? (Or not caught, as the case may be.)
—Inspired by Kelly Kennedy, AB’10
Chicago author Nelson Algren said, “A writer does well if in his whole life he can tell the story of one street.” Chicagoans, but not just Chicagoans, have always found something instructive, and pleasing, and profound in the stories of their block, of Main Street, of Highway 61, of a farm lane, of the Celestial Highway. Tell us the story of a street, path, road—real or imagined or metaphorical.
—Anonymous Suggestion
UChicago professor W. J. T. Mitchell entitled his 2005 book What Do Pictures Want? Describe a picture, and explore what it wants.
—Inspired by Anna Andel
“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.“—Miles Davis (1926–91)
—Inspired by Jack Reeves
University of Chicago alumna and renowned author/critic Susan Sontag said, “The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.” We all have heard serious questions, absurd questions, and seriously absurd questions, some of which cannot be answered without obliterating the very question. Destroy a question with your answer.
—Inspired by Aleksandra Ciric
“Mind that does not stick.”
—Zen Master Shoitsu (1202–80)
Superstring theory has revolutionized speculation about the physical world by suggesting that strings play a pivotal role in the universe. Strings, however, always have explained or enriched our lives, from Theseus’s escape route from the Labyrinth, to kittens playing with balls of yarn, to the single hair that held the sword above Damocles, to the Old Norse tradition that one’s life is a thread woven into a tapestry of fate, to the beautiful sounds of the finely tuned string of a violin, to the children’s game of cat’s cradle, to the concept of stringing someone along. Use the power of string to explain the biggest or the smallest phenomenon.
—Inspired by Adam Sobolweski
Have you ever walked through the aisles of a warehouse store like Costco or Sam’s Club and wondered who would buy a jar of mustard a foot and a half tall? We’ve bought it, but it didn’t stop us from wondering about other things, like absurd eating contests, impulse buys, excess, unimagined uses for mustard, storage, preservatives, notions of bigness…and dozens of other ideas both silly and serious. Write an essay somehow inspired by super-huge mustard.
—Inspired by Katherine Gold
People often think of language as a connector, something that brings people together by helping them share experiences, feelings, ideas, etc. We, however, are interested in how language sets people apart. Start with the peculiarities of your own personal language—the voice you use when speaking most intimately to yourself, the vocabulary that spills out when you’re startled, or special phrases and gestures that no one else seems to use or even understand—and tell us how your language makes you unique. You may want to think about subtle riffs or idiosesyncrasies based on cadence, rhythm, rhyme, or (mis)pronunciation.
—Inspired by Kimberly Traube
In 2015, the city of Melbourne, Australia created a "tree-mail" service, in which all of the trees in the city received an email address so that residents could report any tree-related issues. As an unexpected result, people began to email their favorite trees sweet and occasionally humorous letters. Imagine this has been expanded to any object (tree or otherwise) in the world, and share with us the letter you’d send to your favorite.
-Inspired by Hannah Lu, Class of 2020
You’re on a voyage in the thirteenth century, sailing across the tempestuous seas. What if, suddenly, you fell off the edge of the Earth?
-Inspired by Chandani Latey, AB'93
The word floccinaucinihilipilification is the act or habit of describing or regarding something as unimportant or of having no value. It originated in the mid-18th century from the Latin words "floccus," "naucum," "nihilum," and "pilus"—all words meaning “of little use.” Coin your own word using parts from any language you choose, tell us its meaning, and describe the plausible (if only to you) scenarioses in which it would be most appropriately used.
-Inspired by Ben Zhang, Class of 2022
Lost your keys? Alohomora. Noisy roommate? Quietus. Feel the need to shatter windows for some reason? Finestra. Create your own spell, charm, jinx, or other means for magical mayhem. How is it enacted? Is there an incantation? Does it involve a potion or other magical object? If so, what's in it or what is it? What does it do?
-Inspired by Emma Sorkin, Class of 2021
Imagine you’ve struck a deal with the Dean of Admissions himself, Dean Nondorf. It goes as follows: you’re guaranteed admission to the University of Chicago regardless of any circumstances that arise. This bond is grounded on the condition that you’ll obtain a blank, 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, and draw, write, sketch, shade, stencil, paint etc., anything and everything you want on it; your only limitations will be the boundaries of both sides on the single page. Now the catch… your submission, for the rest of your life, will always be the first thing anyone you meet for the first time will see. Whether it’s at a job interview, a blind date, arrival at your first Humanities class, before you even say, “hey,” they’ll already have seen your page, and formulated that first impression. Show us your page. What’s on it, and why? If your piece is largely or exclusively visual, please make sure to share a creator's accompanying statement of at least 300 words, which we will happily allow to be on its own, separate page.
PS: This is a creative thought experiment, and selecting this essay prompt does not guarantee your admission to UChicago.
-Inspired by Amandeep Singh Ahluwalia, Class of 2022
Cats have nine lives, Pac-Man has three lives, and radioactive isotopes have half-lives. How many lives does something else—conceptual or actual—have, and why?
-Inspired by Kendrick Shin, Class of 2019
If there’s a limited amount of matter in the universe, how can Olive Garden (along with other restaurants and their concepts of food infinity) offer truly unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks? Explain this using any method of analysis you wish—physics, biology, economics, history, theology… the options, as you can tell, are endless.
-Inspired by Yoonseo Lee, Class of 2023
A hot dog might be a sandwich, and cereal might be a soup, but is a ______ a ______?
-Inspired by Arya Muralidharan, Class of 2021 (and dozens of others who, this year and in past years, have submitted the question “Is a hot dog a sandwich,” to which we reply, “maybe”)
“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” – Jessamyn West
-Inspired by Elizabeth Mansfield, Class of 2020
以上便是今年芝加哥大學的補充文書(shu) 題目。我們(men) 可以看出，雖然芝大每年的文書(shu) 題目千變萬(wan) 化，但招生人員想要看到的，還是充滿新意與(yu) 創造性的內(nei) 容。在閱讀這些題目的時候，記下一些瞬間迸發的靈感和直覺，有時候會(hui) 有助於(yu) 你應對一些具體(ti) 又古怪的題目。那麽(me) 有沒有一些策略可以來應對這些題目呢？
03應對策略
以下是幾個(ge) 關(guan) 鍵的策略，大家可以借鑒：
1、非常規的主題通常需要非常規的風格
芝加哥大學的文書(shu) 屬於(yu) 一種創意性的寫(xie) 作，而不是枯燥分析的議論文。也就是說，在有一個(ge) 明確主題或重點的情況下，你可以打亂(luan) 常規文章的節奏，把文字寫(xie) 的更形象生動會(hui) 更加吸引招生官。你可以在你的文章中加入一些鮮為(wei) 人知的術語，或者另一種語言的句子，把它們(men) 解釋清楚，融入到你的文章中。
2、展現你的學術形象
文書(shu) 的重點主要還是向招生官介紹你自己，尤其是向他們(men) 展現你將如何在學術環境中表現、貢獻的形象。芝加哥大學招生不想要一個(ge) 隻會(hui) 說“我愛物理”的學生；他們(men) 想要一個(ge) “我非常喜歡物理，以至於(yu) 我熬夜到淩晨 4 點閱讀卡爾·薩根的《宇宙》，我用肉丸向我的朋友們(men) 圖解木星的衛星，我學了多元微積分，因為(wei) 我打算學習(xi) 機械並專(zhuan) 注於(yu) 航空航天材料的工程。” 這樣的學生。不但要表明你愛，還要說清楚你為(wei) 什麽(me) 愛，怎麽(me) 愛。
3、不要害怕以自我為(wei) 中心
你文書(shu) 的主題是向招生官介紹你的途徑，而這篇文章的主角一定是你自己，所以不要害怕文章看起來以自我為(wei) 中心，用第一人稱去描述過去發生的事物是如何塑造你的個(ge) 性，以及你的興(xing) 趣是如何對你產(chan) 生影響的。
好了，今天的分享就到這裏啦。
【競賽報名/項目谘詢+微信：mollywei007】
評論已經被關(guan) 閉。