常春藤之路 ivytrack.org
标题: 华裔女孩被八所常春藤名校录取！她的申请作文里写了什么？ [打印本页]
作者: 胡老师 时间: 2017-4-5 15:58
标题: 华裔女孩被八所常春藤名校录取！她的申请作文里写了什么？
华裔第一代移民萧靖彤（Cassandra Hsiao）当天得知，自己收到了八所常春藤盟校的录取通知书。
据悉，哈佛（Harvard）、耶鲁（Yale）、普林斯顿（Princeton）、哥伦比亚（Columbia）、康乃尔（Cornell）、宾大（Upenn）、布朗（Brown）、达特茅斯（Dartmouth）都向萧靖彤抛出了橄榄枝。
此外，萧靖彤还收到斯坦福大学的录取通知，此前她已经获得了加州大学伯克利分校、约翰霍普金斯（John Hopkins）、南加大(USC)、西北大学的录取通知。
萧靖彤来自加州核桃市，毕业于橙县艺术学校（Orange County School of the Arts）。
萧靖彤母亲出生在马来西亚，父亲出生在台湾，她五岁时移民美国。
在谈到自己被这么多顶尖大学录取的感受时，萧靖彤说，自己还在“消化”这些好消息，“当你在电子信箱中里收到来自这些大学的邮件时，我看见一个一个的“yes”,一个一个的“恭喜”，这太不现实了。
我昨天自己哭了好一会儿，我和我的父母一起庆祝、这么多好大学都愿意录取我，这是我莫大的荣幸。”
当被问到父母是什么感受时，萧靖彤说：“他们似乎已经上了月球。他们是自己能够真正实现这个目标的重要部分。没有父母的支持，不可能做到。”
在被问到在申请大学论文中关注重点是什么时，萧靖彤说，自己的父母都是移民，英文不是他们的第一语言，而自己在一个移民家庭里生长也十分有趣。
“而当自己在家外说一些在家里使用的词汇时，外面的人会嘲笑我，但这些东西对于我来说是十分正常的，所以我把这些经历都写到申请作文里去了。”
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萧靖彤在作文中写道：“虽然我家中有多种语言，但我们彼此之间的爱与信任，让交流从未成为障碍。”
据“世界日报”报道，18岁的萧靖彤共申请14所大学的写作或新闻类学系，目前全部录取。
萧靖彤有感而发说：之所以申请这么多，主要是亚裔学生能力强，竞争激烈，很怕无法被录取，担心自己没选择。
萧靖彤说：“我接下来会去这些学校一一参观，再作决定。” 不过她透露自己一直很喜欢哈佛大学，七年级时她曾去过哈佛参观。
Read Cassandra’s essay in full
In our house, English is not English. Not in the phonetic sense, like short a is for apple, but rather in the pronunciation – in our house, snake is snack. Words do not roll off our tongues correctly – yet I, who was pulled out of class to meet with language specialists, and my mother from Malaysia, who pronounces film as flim, understand each other perfectly.
In our house, there is no difference between cast and cash, which was why at a church retreat, people made fun of me for “cashing out demons.” I did not realize the glaring difference between the two Englishes until my teacher corrected my pronunciations of hammock, ladle, and siphon. Classmates laughed because I pronounce accept as except, success as sussess. I was in the Creative Writing conservatory, and yet words failed me when I needed them most.
Suddenly, understanding flower is flour wasn’t enough. I rejected the English that had never seemed broken before, a language that had raised me and taught me everything I knew. Everybody else’s parents spoke with accents smarting of Ph.D.s and university teaching positions. So why couldn’t mine?
My mother spread her sunbaked hands and said, “This is where I came from,” spinning a tale with the English she had taught herself.
When my mother moved from her village to a town in Malaysia, she had to learn a brand new language in middle school: English. In a time when humiliation was encouraged, my mother was defenseless against the cruel words spewing from the teacher, who criticized her paper in front of the class. When she began to cry, the class president stood up and said, “That’s enough.”
“Be like that class president,” my mother said with tears in her eyes. The class president took her under her wing and patiently mended my mother’s strands of language. “She stood up for the weak and used her words to fight back.”
We were both crying now. My mother asked me to teach her proper English so old white ladies at Target wouldn’t laugh at her pronunciation. It has not been easy. There is a measure of guilt when I sew her letters together. Long vowels, double consonants — I am still learning myself. Sometimes I let the brokenness slide to spare her pride but perhaps I have hurt her more to spare mine.
As my mother’s vocabulary began to grow, I mended my own English. Through performing poetry in front of 3000 at my school’s Season Finale event, interviewing people from all walks of life, and writing stories for the stage, I stand against ignorance and become a voice for the homeless, the refugees, the ignored. With my words I fight against jeers pelted at an old Asian street performer on a New York subway. My mother’s eyes are reflected in underprivileged ESL children who have so many stories to tell but do not know how. I fill them with words as they take needle and thread to make a tapestry.
In our house, there is beauty in the way we speak to each other. In our house, language is not broken but rather bursting with emotion. We have built a house out of words. There are friendly snakes in the cupboard and snacks in the tank. It is a crooked house. It is a little messy. But this is where we have made our home.
来源：TheTed/BusinessInsider/美国中文网/美国学子；编辑整理：看米国的
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