University of Chicago Essay Prompts: Shallow Thinkers Need Not Apply

If you can write a good essay about one of these topics, you probably don't need a college education:

Essay Option 1

"At present you need to live the question."—Rainer Maria Rilke, translated from the German by Joan M. Burnham.

Essay Option 2

The short film Powers of Ten begins with an aerial shot of a couple picnicking in a Chicago park. The camera zooms out ten meters. It then zooms out again, but the degree of the zoom has increased by a power of ten; the camera is now 100 meters away. It continues to 1,000 meters, then 10,000, and so on, traveling through the solar system, the galaxy, and eventually to the edge of the known universe. Here the camera rests, allowing us to examine the vast nothingness of the universe, black void punctuated sparsely by galaxies so far away they appear as small stars. The narrator comments, "This emptiness is normal. The richness of our own neighborhood is the exception." Then the camera reverses its journey, zooming in to the picnic, and—in negative powers of ten—to the man’s hand, the cells in his hand, the molecules of DNA within, their atoms, and then the nucleus both "so massive and so small" in the "vast inner space" of the atom.

Zoom in and out on a person, place, event, or subject of interest. What becomes clear from far away that you can’t see up close? What intricate structures appear when you move closer? How is the big view related to the small, the emptiness to the richness?

Essay Option 3


Essay Option 4

Argonne National Laboratory and Fermilab (both national laboratories managed by the University of Chicago) have particle accelerators that smash bits of atoms together at very high energies, allowing particles to emerge that are otherwise not part of the everyday world. These odd beasts—Z bosons, pi mesons, strange quarks—populated the universe seconds after the Big Bang, and allow their observers to glimpse the fabric of the universe.

Put two or three ideas or items in a particle accelerator thought experiment. Smash 'em up. What emerges? Let us glimpse the secrets of the universe newly revealed.


University of Chicago Essay Prompts: Shallow Thinkers Need Not Apply — 4 Comments

  1. I’m vacillating between “OMG” and “That sounds like fun.” Oh dear. Gives a little too much away…

  2. Perhaps the most widely used shopping area is Las Olas Boulevard. Situated down the banks of an river, the boulevard promises a thrilling range of shops, boutiques, jewelry stores, gift shops and galleries and museums. If you don’t sense that walking, you will find the use of choosing a water taxi, electric bikes, the Sun Trolley or a rickshaw. After a stressful day’s shopping and browsing, you may relax for the numerous steakhouses, Mexican eateries, sushi bars, French bistros or Italian trattorias.