加国头条 i4cc.ca ｜【企鹅文书】用北美思维解读芝加哥本科文书

芝加哥大学一直以她provocative essay闻名，写出一篇受录评委喜爱文书的关键就是要用北美人习惯的思维模式去撰写文书。在本文中，你会看到最不一样的文书解析思路和最能启发你的sample answer。

第一题：

Cats have nine lives, Pac-Man has 3 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

题目解析：“Lives”这个词有很多的意义。不管是神话（猫有九条命），人为设计（pacman游戏的三次机会）还是私译的说法（半衰期），这世界上的每一物都有“命”这一说。这道题故意激发你对“命”的解释和理解，海底捞针的在找稀奇的想法和解释。

第二题：

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

题目解析：如果世界上的万物都是用有限的matter组成的，那么类似于food infinity的概念是建立于什么逻辑基础呢？你能怎么去解读这个抽象的矛盾呢？

第三题：

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”)

题目解析：如果我们定义一个热狗为“三明治类型食物（拥有两片面包夹内心）”，或者视cereal（和牛奶）为一种汤，那你还能想到其他的新烁的归类么？记住，这个是个persuasive essay topic哦！

第四题：

“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” – Jessamyn West
—Inspired by Elizabeth Mansfield, Class of 2020

题目解析：“故事里深藏着我们生活中不愿去想的话题”。我感觉其实这个题目只说了上半句，但下半句却有很多种方向去对答。你选择的回答方向将会是这道心理学题目的精髓。

第五题：

UChicago has international campus centers around the world, but we don’t have any interplanetary, interstellar, or interdimensional campuses… yet! Propose a spot in time or space, in this or any universe, for a new UChicago campus. What types of courses would be taught at this site? What cultural experiences await students who study there?
—Inspired by Peter Jasperse, Class of 2022

题目解析：幻想科学从70’s开始就促进了科学发展和进步。跨星球，跨星际和跨维度的（抽象）时代早晚会从理想而变成实际。当然，芝加哥大学是开发最新技术和想法的孵化器。如果你穿越到了那个时代，你会设计一个什么样的课程呢？发挥你的想象力和充分利用你的表达能力吧！

Bonus Sample answer for question 1!

Untold lives within Life

Birth, the beginning of life. We commonly believe that each of us has only one life, but is it true? I think that statement is debatable at best. As a biology student, I have long been intrigued by the concept of cells as independent units of life that works together to form complex organisms, such as people. These ubiquitous lives represent not only themselves but also a greater hierarchy of life. So, as a complex organism, am I really living one life or trillions of lives simultaneously? The omnipresence of this matrix of life, or lives, transcends the fixed notion that a life can be easily defined. Whether it is mythologically intriguing like the cat, affixed in a computer program like Pac-Man or conceptually represented through a radioactive isotope; I think we can all think of a life as a currency of progressive existence in the abstract stream of conscious reality.