College Application Essays - Part 2
Pomona College- prodigal son returns, hopefully?
1. At Pomona, we celebrate and identify with the number 47. Share with us one of your quirky personal, family, or community traditions and why you hold on to it.
Enrico Fermi employed his legendary estimation skills to determine the Trinity Test bomb’s strength. I use his approximation methodology for less…bombastic uses. Running through estimates and probabilities in my head, I prefer gamifying mundane routines into complex rituals, discerning the ordinary’s logical extremes:
How many Bob Dylan songs can I listen to before reaching home from school? How many laughs can be shared before a stranger starts feeling…familiar? If the bus breaks down before an exam, how many auto-rickshaws will pass at 8:30 AM on a Monday morning?
In the multiplicity of irrational probabilities embedded within flexible realities, I find comfort…and creativity. Wouldn’t you reinvent the wheel if you knew it could be re-envisioned to fly?
If I walk on my hands, how long would it take me to get to the Stanley Quad from Bridges?
Guess there’s only one way for us to find out…
Q3) What do you love about the subject(s) you selected? If Undecided, share more about one of your academic passions.* (150 words)
My curiosity about the human mind has always circled back to a single question: what’s the most effective way to get to know a person?
Psychology probes into humanity’s mysteries. Wishing to unravel this complexity, I became a cognitive detective, orchestrating investigations through everyday interactions.
That’s how “50 Questions” was born. With a simple premise, each question ramps up in intensity, pushing both parties to know themselves and share more. Mustering the courage to approach strangers, I’ve prompted conversations with increasing confidence.
What are you most afraid of losing?
Which group is larger: people who trust you, or people you trust?
If only you could see a statistic over everyone's heads, what would it indicate?
In the end, these questions are simply ways to understand how people think and act. Hoping to find a creative path into the human mind, I’ve ended up arriving at the heart as well.
2. Reflecting on a community that you are part of, what values or perspectives from that community would you bring to Pomona?
“Great! Now, Utkarsh, can you spell this?” asked my Cupertino kindergarten teacher, pointing at a clownfish.
All but four, with glitter-caked hands, I confidently waddled to the center, and sang:
“PEEE—AYCHHH—EYEEE—ESSS—AYCHHH. Phish!”
I was really proud of having deduced the “ph—” usage. In fact, I’d just heard it the previous night: “Pass the phish-phry, Utkarsh.”
However, the classroom erupted into laughter, while I stood there, scratching my head. Ms. Blossom chuckled politely. “Nice try! But it’s spelled F-I-S-H.”
Hailing from Bihar, India’s poorest state, I inherited a vocabulary of mispronounced Anglo-Saxon words that elicited innocent laughter from my kindergarten classmates in America, but judgmental derision in India.
“Biharis are uncultured.”
“They can't speak English.”
“They steal our seats in the name of the government’s reservation system.”
Conditioned to feel shame about my origins, I began to lie:
“I’m from Delhi— and you?”
For years, I witnessed my parents unabashedly own their Bihari English. Finally, I started embracing it, too, with gleeful self-awareness. Coalescing the sum of my experiences, choices, and thoughts through ventriloquism, I began performing “Phishing,” a humorous act navigating the inferiority complex and cognitive dissonance I’d grown up with.
Every neuron and synapse I yearn to study echoes my glitter-caked desire to understand and be understood. At Pomona, I’ll demolish the walls of bias—of socio-economic prejudice, of neurotypical modeling, and of culturally blind diagnoses. From the rubble, I’ll rebuild a different world, where we transcend postcodes and stereotypes, and truly see each other for who we are.