申请美国大学的同学都知道，每年除了CA系统里的通用申请文书外，多数美国大学都会要求提交补充文书，这补充文书中往往包含了丰富的信息，也是学校进一步了解申请者的途径。
而在众多美国大学中，芝加哥大学的文书题目一向以趣味性和独特另类著称，创意题目十分考验学生对于题目的理解力，让申请者们又爱又恨。
上周末，芝加哥大学官网公布了2019-2020申请季的附表文书题目。
芝加哥大学介绍说：每年我们都会向新录取的和当前的大学生发送电子邮件，并向他们询问论文主题。我们收到了数百个回复，其中许多都是雄辩的，有趣的，或者是彻头彻尾的古怪。
正如您从归因中看到的那样，以下问题的灵感来自于来自UChicago学生和校友的提交。
2019-20 UChicago Supplement
Question 1 (Required)
How does the University of Chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future? Please address with some specificity your own wishes and how they relate to UChicago.
根据你现在对芝加哥大学的了解，芝加哥大学如何满足你对于学习，环境，以及未来的展望?请用具体事例来阐述你和芝加哥大学的联系。
Question 2: Extended Essay (Required; Choose one)
Essay Option 1
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?
猫有9条命，吃豆人有3条命，放射性同位素有半衰期。其他观念上的或者现实的生物有多少生命？为什么？
—Inspired by Kedrick Shin, Class of 2019
Essay Option 2
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.
如果宇宙中的物质是有限的，橄榄园(连同其他餐厅以及他们对食物无限的概念)怎么能提供真正无限的汤、沙拉和面包棒呢?用任何你想用的分析方法来解释这个问题——物理、生物学、经济学、历史、神学……你可以看到，选项是无穷无尽的。
—Inspired by Yoonseo Lee, Class of 2023
Essay Option 3
A hot dog might be a sandwich, and cereal might be a soup, but is a ______ a ______?
一个热狗可以成为一个三明治，麦片也可以成为汤，但是一个______一个______？
—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”)
Essay Option 4
“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” – Jessamyn West
“小说揭示了现实掩盖的真相”——杰萨明·韦斯特
—Inspired by Elizabeth Mansfield, Class of 2020
Essay Option 5
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?
芝加哥大学在世界各地都有国际校园中心，但我们还没有任何行星间、星际或维度间的校园……建议在时间或空间，在这个或任何宇宙的一个地方，设置一个新的芝加哥大学校园。这个地方会开设哪些课程?在那里学习的学生有什么样的文化体验?
—Inspired by Peter Jasperse, Class of 2022
Essay Option 6
“Don’t be afraid to pick past prompts! I liked some of the ones from previous years more than those made newly available for my year. Also, don’t worry about the ‘correct’ way to interpret a question. If there exists a correct way to interpret the prompt I chose, it certainly was not my answer.”
“不要害怕挑选过去的题目！比起新的这些文书题目我更喜欢前几年的。另外，不要担心解释问题的“正确”方式。如果有正确的方法来解释我选择的提示，那肯定不是我的回答。“
—Matthew Lohrs, Class of 2023
一看题目就蒙圈了，有没有？
就是这样，还有更烧脑的，我们看一下往年的题目：
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.
（https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/academics/areas-study）
—Inspired by Josh Kaufman, AB'18
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
有没有感觉自己脑子不够用了，已经完成标化考试的同学，要尽快着手你的文书写作了，合理规划好自己的时间，尤其是遇到这么烧脑的题目，更要提前准备了。
原文出自：
https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/apply/uchicago-supplemental-essay-questions
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