college essay on curiosity

Essays About Curiosity: Top 5 Examples and 10 Prompts

Are you writing essays about curiosity? Then, read our guide of helpful essay examples and writing prompts.

Curiosity refers to the strong desire and active interest to learn something. It could start with a burning question that leads to more questions. This series of questioning can evolve into a pursuit that paves the way for discoveries. Curiosity can change how we perceive life and our world. While everyone is inherently curious, how we use our curiosity, for good or bad, shows who we are as people.

Check out our essay examples and topic prompts for your curiosity essay , and stay curious till the end. And when your essay is complete, check out our best essay checkers and take the slog out of proofreading.

1. Curiosity: Why It Matters, Why We Lose It, And How To Get It Back by Christy Geiger

2. did curiosity really kill the cat by mario livio, 3.  why curiosity, diversity, and inclusion are the secrets to successful business transformation by beatriz sanz saiz, 4. the five dimensions of curiosity by todd b. kashdan et. al, 5. curiosity: we’re studying the brain to help you harness it by ashvanti valji and matthias gruber, 1. how has curiosity helped you in life, 2. the benefits of curiosity, 3. how does curiosity lead to scientific discoveries, 4. encouraging curiosity in the classroom, 5. diverse vs. specific curiosity, 6. can curiosity be practiced, 7. curiosity in early civilization, 8. curious animals: what are they thinking, 9. the curiosity rover, 10. negative effects of curiosity.

“…[A]s an adult, we can reach a learning plateau. We feel good to get to a point of understanding and knowledge, but begin to lose our curiosity. We find it easier to live as the expert who knows than the student who grows.”

Adulthood can have a negative impact on our levels of wonder and curiosity. Geiger believes it’s time to regain our childlike curiosity as we move to a tech-driven industrial world where constant innovation and adoption of technologies are required. You might also be interested in these essays about critical thinking.

“Curiosity is the best remedy for fear. What I mean by that is that often we are afraid of the unknown, of those things we know very little about. Becoming curious about them, and making an effort to learn more, usually acts to relieve that fear.”

Who would’ve thought an essay could be weaved out from a common expression of curiosity? This curiosity essay finds that the saying “curiosity killed the cat” started quite differently than we know it today. Its meaning now evolves to echo parts of history when conventional and extremist ideologies would silence inquisitive minds to avoid being challenged and overturned.

“To be a leader in a context of superfluid markets, where everything is connected, an organization needs to constantly explore which are the new “needs,“ which technologies exist, how they can be maximized and where they can be used to innovate boldly to create new experiences, goods and services.”

Curiosity will drive businesses to survive and thrive in this digital age. But, they also need to seek assistance from diversity and an inclusive organization. With these two, businesses can stimulate new thinking and perspectives that can feed into the curiosity of the organization on the ways it can reach its goals and be the market’s next disruption.

“Rather than regard curiosity as a single trait, we can now break it down into five distinct dimensions. Instead of asking, ‘How curious are you?’ we can ask, ‘How are you curious?’”

Kashdan builds on existing curiosity research to identify five dimensions of curiosity : joyous exploration, deprivation sensitivity, stress tolerance, social curiosity, and thrill-seeking. Once you’ve assessed the right curiosity type for you, it might do wonders in catalyzing your curiosity into progress and development outcomes for your goals and well-being.

“It might seem obvious that if you are curious about something, you pay more attention to it, making it easier to remember later – but the effects of curiosity on memory are more complex than this.”

The essay presents new research on how a type of curiosity aiming to bridge information gaps connects with brain functions associated with enhanced learning. As far as education is concerned, the discovery strongly supports the need to create an environment to encourage students to ask questions rather than just give children a set learning program to consume.

10 Writing Prompts For Essays About Curiosity

Narrate an instance in your life when curious questions led to positive findings and experiences that helped you in life. Whether it was acing an exam, learning a new language, or other aspects of everyday life. Elaborate on how this encouraged you to be more interested and passionate about learning. See here our storytelling guide to help you better narrate your story. 

Research shows that curiosity can stimulate positive emotions. Many research studies outline the other benefits of curiosity to our health, relationships, happiness, and cognitive abilities. Gather more studies and data to elaborate on these advantages. To create an engaging piece of writing, share your experience on how curiosity has influenced your outlook on life. 

Albert Einstein is renowned worldwide as a famous theoretical physicist. Throughout his research, he used curious thinking and openmindedness to write his theoretical papers, changing the world as we know it. Curiosity is an essential attribute of scientists, as they can look for solutions to problems from a whole new angle. For this essay, look a the role of curiosity in the scientific process. How does a curious mindset benefit scientific discoveries? Conduct thorough research and use real-life examples to show your findings and answer this question.

School classrooms can be the playground of a student’s imagination and curiosity. In your essay, write about how your school and teachers encourage students to ask questions. Next, elaborate on how the learning prompts promote curiosity. For example, some teachers tell students that it is okay to fail sometimes. This assurance helps students think with new perspectives and solutions without the fear of failure.

When researching the different kinds of curiosity, you will find two categories- diverse and specific curiosity. Look into the different attributes of these curiosity types, and identify which one, in your opinion, is the better type of curiosity to foster. For an interesting argumentative essay, you can research which kind of curiosity you have and discuss whether you have a better or worse approach to curious thinking. Pull facts from online research to support your argument and include personal anecdotes to engage your readers.

Curiosity is an inherent human trait. We are all curious. But like any trait, we can practice being curious to improve our thinking. In this writing prompt, provide your readers with strategies that enhance curiosity. For example, meditation can help stimulate more curious thoughts. 

In early civilization, people answered many of life’s questions with religion. How did humanity shift from heavily relying on gods to believing in science? What part does curiosity play in this shift? Try piquing your curious mind and answer these questions in your essay for an exciting piece of writing. 

If animals solely relied on their basic instincts and functions, there is a high chance they would not survive in our world. According to Primatologist Richard Bryne in his paper Animal Curiosity , some animals can demonstrate curious behaviors that lead to new learning and survival skills. For this writing prompt, peer into curiosity in the animal kingdom and cite animals known to have high intelligence. Is curiosity at the foundation of their high IQs? Discuss this question in your essay.

This essay prompt is about the car-sized Curiosity Rover of NASA. The rover was designed to navigate the Gale crater on Mars and collect rock and soil samples for analysis. In your essay, research and write about why it was named “Curiosity” and its significant contributions to the Mars exploration mission.

Curiosity can have negative undertones from the expression “curiosity killed the cat.” Get to the heart of the matter and look through existing literature on the adverse outcomes of curiosity. One example to cite could be this study which concluded that one kind of curiosity is associated with errors, confusion, lack of humility, and vulnerability to fake news and so-called pseudo-profound bullshits. 

Curious to learn more about effective writing? Check out our guide on how to write an argumentative essay .  If writing an essay sounds like a lot of work, read our guide on how to write a five-paragraph essay .

Yna Lim is a communications specialist currently focused on policy advocacy. In her eight years of writing, she has been exposed to a variety of topics, including cryptocurrency, web hosting, agriculture, marketing, intellectual property, data privacy and international trade. A former journalist in one of the top business papers in the Philippines, Yna is currently pursuing her master's degree in economics and business.

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, how to express intellectual curiosity in college essays.

I want to write a college essay that highlights my intellectual curiosity and love for learning. Can anyone share some examples or tips on how to write an engaging essay on this topic? I'm a little stressed about getting this right, thanks!

While it is understandable that you want to showcase your intellectual curiosity in your college essay, it's important to choose a specific story or experience that best represents this aspect of your personality. Many college applicants would consider themselves intellectually curious, so it's crucial that your story is personal and detailed enough to show what makes your curiosity distinct. Here are a few tips and examples to guide you in writing an engaging essay on this topic:

1. Focus on a specific experience or realization: Rather than trying to cover every single instance where you've exhibited intellectual curiosity, choose one particular event, realization, or even a project that sparked your interest and led you to dive deeper into a subject. Use this experience as the focal point of your essay, and demonstrate how it showcases your innate love for learning.

Example: You encounter a challenging math problem that you are unable to solve initially, but rather than giving up, you devote your time and energy to working it out and advancing your math skills.

2. Show, don't tell: As with any essay, it's essential that you use vivid, descriptive language and anecdotes to show your intellectual curiosity, rather than simply stating that you have a desire for knowledge. Explain the process of learning or exploration, and describe the emotions you experienced as you pursued your interests.

Example: Describe the late nights spent reading research papers or attending seminars, the joy of uncovering a new concept, or the frustration of encountering an unfamiliar theorem and how you overcame it.

3. Discuss the impact and personal growth: To illustrate the broader importance of your intellectual curiosity, explain how your passion for learning has influenced your life and personal growth. Focus on the skills you've developed or the lessons you've learned, and make connections to your goals and aspirations for college - admissions officers need to understand why this story is relevant to understanding what kind of college student you'll be.

Example: By immersing yourself in independent research on a scientific topic that fascinates you, you discovered a potential career path or academic interest that you might otherwise not have considered, inspiring you to pursue advanced studies in that field.

Finally, consider either taking advantage of CollegeVine's Free Peer Essay Review Tool or submitting your essay for a paid review by an expert college admissions advisor through CollegeVine's marketplace. Sometimes, getting a more objective set of eyes on your essay is just the thing that takes it from good to great.

Remember, overall your college essay is an opportunity to showcase who you are as an individual, beyond test scores and grades. By providing specific examples and anecdotes, and relating your intellectual curiosity to your personal growth and future college experience, you can create an engaging essay that leaves a lasting impression on admissions officers.

Happy writing!

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Character Traits — Curiosity

Curiosity Essays

What makes a good curiosity essay topics.

When it comes to writing a curiosity essay, the topic you choose can make all the difference. A good curiosity essay topic should be thought-provoking, engaging, and unique. It should spark curiosity in both the writer and the reader, and leave room for exploration and discovery. But how do you go about choosing the perfect topic for your curiosity essay?

One way to brainstorm and choose an essay topic is to start by thinking about your own interests and passions. What topics or questions have always piqued your curiosity? What are you eager to learn more about? By starting with what genuinely interests you, you are more likely to find a topic that will captivate your readers as well.

It's also important to consider the scope and depth of the topic. Is it broad enough to allow for meaningful exploration and analysis, but not so broad that it becomes overwhelming? A good curiosity essay topic should strike the right balance, providing enough material for a compelling essay without becoming too unwieldy.

Furthermore, a good essay topic should be relevant and timely. Is there a current event, trend, or issue that has sparked your curiosity? Choosing a topic that is relevant to the present moment can add an extra layer of interest and urgency to your essay.

Ultimately, What Makes a Good essay topic is its ability to inspire curiosity, provoke thoughtful exploration, and engage the reader in a meaningful way. A good curiosity essay topic should leave the reader with a sense of wonder and a desire to learn more.

Best Curiosity Essay Topics

Here are 20 curiosity essay topics that are sure to spark interest and captivate readers:

• The psychology of curiosity: What drives our desire to explore and learn?
• The lost city of Atlantis: Fact or fiction?
• The mystery of the Bermuda Triangle: What lies beneath?
• The science of dreams: Exploring the subconscious mind.
• The enigma of crop circles: Hoax or unexplained phenomena?
• The search for extraterrestrial life: Are we alone in the universe?
• The ancient art of alchemy: Unlocking the secrets of transmutation.
• The riddle of the Sphinx: Deciphering its ancient mysteries.
• The power of intuition: How do we know what we know?
• The quest for immortality: Is eternal life within reach?
• The phenomenon of déjà vu: Exploring the mysteries of memory.
• The art of illusion: How do magicians deceive our senses?
• The allure of conspiracy theories: What drives our fascination with the unknown?
• The secret language of symbols: Uncovering hidden meanings in art and culture.
• The legend of the Loch Ness Monster: Myth or reality?
• The paradox of time travel: Is it possible to journey to the past or future?
• The enigmatic world of quantum physics: Exploring the mysteries of the subatomic realm.
• The power of superstition: Why do we believe in luck and omens?
• The science of laughter: Exploring the psychology and physiology of humor.
• The allure of forbidden knowledge: Why are we drawn to the forbidden?

Curiosity essay topics Prompts

Here are 5 creative prompts to inspire your curiosity essay:

• Imagine a world without curiosity. How would our lives be different?
• Write about a time when your curiosity led you to a surprising discovery.
• Choose a historical mystery that intrigues you and explore possible explanations.
• If you could ask any question and receive a definitive answer, what would you ask?
• Reflect on a topic or question that has always sparked your curiosity, and explore why it fascinates you.

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Curiosity College Essays Samples For Students

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How to Write the Haverford College Essays 2023-2024

Haverford College has two, short supplemental essays: one about your intellectual interests, and one about Haverford’s Honor Code. As a small, academically rigorous school just a short train ride from Philadelphia, Haverford attracts a competitive pool of applicants, so you want to make sure your essays stand out. In this post, we’ll break down both prompts, and explain how to write strong responses to each one.

Haverford College Honor Code

Before we dive into the essays, we want to provide some background on the Haverford Honor code. Here’s what you need to know.

Haverford College has one of the oldest and one of the very few student-run Honor Codes in the U.S. Our Honor Code is not a set of rules, but rather a statement of shared values centered on the concepts of trust, concern, and respect.

Our Honor Code serves as an educational tool in and of itself and provides a powerful framework for our community, emphasizing and supporting qualities we see as essential to a Haverford education. Among other things, the Honor Code at Haverford shapes:

Academic Freedom: The Honor Code fosters an atmosphere emphasizing academic integrity, collaboration over competition, and the cultivation of intellectual curiosity. Differences and disagreement are respected, valued, and embraced, and open discourse is seen as fundamental to the academic endeavor.

Student Agency: The Honor Code upholds a culture in which students are deeply trusted to take substantial ownership of their education and to profoundly shape and define the Haverford community. Student ownership is reflected in self-scheduled exams, in the fact that every student completes a Senior Thesis, in shared responsibility for the residential experience, and of course in oversight of the Honor Code itself.

Community: The Honor Code establishes a supportive environment for living and learning, where the community experience plays a central role in one’s education. The inherent value of every community member is recognized, and diversity in all respects — including diversity of background, experience, and perspective — is nurtured, celebrated, and embraced.

Leadership and Engagement: The Honor Code allows every student to find and develop their own voice, to practice ways of improving community and acting on issues of importance, to learn methods of problem solving and conflict resolution, and to examine the ways they can and will impact the world beyond Haverford.

Before delving into Haverford’s supplementary essays, it is extremely important to have a solid understanding of Haverford’s Honor Code and its role in Haverford’s community. At first glance, Haverford’s Honor Code may appear to be an explicit set of rules that are designed to govern the lives of students, forcing them to comply with specific guidelines and standards. However, the goal of the Honor Code is not to restrict students, but rather to allow for more freedom.

The Honor Code fosters a community grounded in honesty, fairness, and respect. These values create an environment where students feel not only comfortable, but confident sharing their own ideas, opinions, and beliefs. Diversity in thought, belief, culture, and perspective are not only recognized, but accepted and celebrated.

The values of the Honor Code afford students an unprecedented level of control over their education and community. Since it is expected that students adhere to a high degree of honesty and integrity, students are trusted by the administration as well as their professors and peers. For instance, Haverford students don’t have RAs in their dorms, are allowed to take tests without proctors, and are able to schedule their own final exams. These freedoms and privileges can exist because of the values of the Honor Code. 

Haverford’s Honor Code also presents an opportunity for self-governance. At Plenary, an all-student “governing” session, students can debate and vote to revise the Honor Code. In this way, students have the autonomy to change and improve Haverford’s campus. 

While Haverford’s Honor Code is taken seriously, consequences for infractions are not seen as punishments, rather as opportunities to instill lifelong lessons. Consequences are decided upon by the Honor Council, composed of students, not members of the school administration. It is the hope of the Haverford community that through this process, students will take ownership for their bad decisions, learn from them, grow as community members, and realize that they have the power to control their circumstances both inside and outside the classroom.

As you write your supplemental essays, keep Haverford’s values in mind. Incorporating their values into your essays not only shows that you did your research, but also creates connections between yourself and the Haverford community. For instance, Haverford’s collaborative environment could enable you to work with your peers to understand complicated mathematical theorems. Or, Haverford’s respectful and accepting community could empower you to debate the best policies to solve climate change. Regardless of the interests you choose to express in your essays, it is always a good idea to connect your thoughts to Haverford’s Honor Code and core values. 

Haverford College Supplemental Essay Prompts

Prompt 1: Tell us about a topic or issue that sparks your curiosity and gets you intellectually excited. How do you hope to engage with this topic or issue at Haverford? (150-200 words)

Prompt 2: We have highlighted for you some of the values that shape the Haverford community. What are some of the values you seek in your next community? How do Haverford’s values, as demonstrated through our Honor Code, resonate with you? 

As you think about how to answer this question, you might draw from how you have been influenced by other communities you have been a part of, experiences you may have had within your communities, or opportunities you have had to shape or even change your communities. (150-200 words)

Tell us about a topic or issue that sparks your curiosity and gets you intellectually excited. how do you hope to engage with this topic or issue at haverford (150-200 words).

This prompt is an excellent opportunity for you to showcase your interest in a specific subject or topic. Although it is not a “Why Major?” prompt, as you have the freedom to write about any of your intellectual interests, not just your intended major, the overall structure of the essay will be similar: you want to select one of your interests, which could be as obscure as Victorian fashion or as common as math, and explain why and how your topic excites your intellectual curiosity, as well as how you’ll be able to continue learning about it at Haverford.

Starting your essay with an anecdote is a great way to show your interest in your topic to readers, rather than simply telling them about it. For example, you could begin by telling the story of how you became interested in art after your first visit to an art museum. Or, you could describe what thoughts and emotions you experience when creating art. Since you’re dealing with a low word count, your story should be pretty simple, as you don’t have the space to flesh out something complicated.

The next part of your essay should focus on the deeper reason why you are so interested in your topic or subject. In other words, what specifically about your topic makes you excited to learn more? Maybe you love science because it explains how everything in the world works, from plants growing to playing tennis. Or, maybe you’re passionate about music because it has the power to inspire and connect people.

While this essay is a short one, you ideally also want to explain, at least briefly, what you do to satisfy your curiosity about this topic. Do you read every available book on Egyptian pyramids? Do you debate the most successful political campaign strategies with your family at dinner? This extra detail will give your reader a clearer sense of how your interest in your topic manifests on a daily basis, which will make your interest feel more tangible and genuine.

Finally, you want to connect your interest in your topic to your potential future as a Haverford student. Hop onto Haverford’s website, and do some research on classes, clubs, or other opportunities at Haverford that will allow you to keep learning about it. Since you probably won’t have much room left by this point, you want to pick just one or two things, as otherwise the end of your essay will feel cramped and rushed.

For example, you could talk about how the College Year in Athens study abroad program would deepen your understanding of Greek mythology, by allowing you to see firsthand many of the sites that were most important to the Ancient Greeks. 

Alternatively, you could write about how the clubs Charcuterie Union and Food for Thought would expand upon your interest in cooking, and help you develop a more comprehensive understanding of the role food can play in different people’s lives.

We have highlighted for you some of the values that shape the Haverford community. What are some of the values you seek in your next community? How do Haverford’s values, as demonstrated through our Honor Code, resonate with you?

Brainstorming Your Topic

This prompt tells you pretty much exactly what it wants to know: the values you’re looking for in a college community, and how those values align with Haverford’s. However, while the questions are clear, answering them thoughtfully may take some time, as you’ll need to reflect on what your values truly are.

With a question as open-ended as “What do you value in your communities?” sometimes asking yourself related, slightly more focused questions can help you brainstorm more efficiently. Here are some examples of those kinds of questions:

• What are some of your favorite communities you’re a part of? What makes you love them so much?
• When you think about your friends, what qualities do many of them share?
• Look at your complete college list—why are you applying to this particular set of schools, out of all the colleges in the United States and across the world?

The actual values you choose are much less important than those values being genuinely important to you. One applicant might write an excellent essay about trust, while someone else might write an equally strong one about open-mindedness. But if you try to force a connection to something that isn’t really one of your primary values, your reader will be able to tell you aren’t being fully authentic.

Finally, as you’re brainstorming you’ll likely come up with a list of several different values. But because this essay is so short, you’ll want to focus on just one, or two at the most, once you start writing. Otherwise, you won’t be able to give each value the attention it needs, and your essay will end up feeling all over the place.

Tips for Writing Your Essay

In your actual essay, the most important thing to do is connect the value or two you’re focusing on to Haverford’s values, specifically those laid out in the Honor Code. If you’re having a hard time doing that, you may want to go back to the drawing board. For example, valuing a good sense of humor is a wonderful thing, but doesn’t connect super well to anything in the Honor Code.

A better thing to focus on would be, say, speaking up about what’s important to you. You could easily connect that value to the following two lines of the Honor Code:

• “The Honor Code allows every student to find and develop their own voice, to practice ways of improving community and acting on issues of importance.”
• “The Honor Code upholds a culture in which students are deeply trusted to take substantial ownership of their education and to profoundly shape and define the Haverford community.”

Once you feel confident that you’ve linked your own values to Haverford’s, you want to think about how to clearly explain that link to admissions officers. Here, Haverford is once again being considerate, and telling you pretty much exactly how they want you to do that, in the second paragraph of the prompt.

To summarize, that paragraph is telling you to use concrete examples and anecdotes to explain how you came to have this particular value. In other words, show, don’t tell, because otherwise, your reader won’t really understand what you having this value says about your personality as a whole. Plenty of people value outspokenness, but the point of the college essay is to distinguish yourself from other applicants. So, you want to show what the value you have chosen means in the context of your life specifically, and why that value’s importance in your life has inspired you to apply to Haverford. 

For example, you could talk about how you hated attention as a kid, and preferred to just spend time with your family’s pets. But during the pandemic, seeing people adopt pets for company without knowing how to take care of them frustrated you to the point that you started your own YouTube channel, to explain how to avoid making common first-time pet owner mistakes. To your surprise, the channel became extremely popular, and many people wrote comments thanking you for your help. Speaking up is still hard for you, though, and being on Haverford’s campus, where outspokenness is encouraged, will help you continue to get better at it.

Mistakes to Avoid

Because this prompt is so explicit about what it wants, it’s pretty hard to get totally off-track. The only thing you really want to be wary of is using your space in an inefficient way. 200 words will disappear quickly, so you want to make sure you’re being thoughtful about how long you spend addressing each part of the prompt.

Otherwise, you may end up accidentally using 160 words explaining how you came to have the value you’re focusing on, and then have to cram in the connection to Haverford at the very end. There’s no one correct breakdown of how long you should spend on each point of your essay, as ideally one thing flows naturally into the next. Just make sure the connection to Haverford gets enough room to breathe, as, since that part is likely going to come at the end, it’s at the most risk of getting cut short.

Where to Get Your Haverford Essays Edited

Do you want feedback on your Haverford essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools.  Find the right advisor for you  to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

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Home » Tufts University » How Do You Show Intellectual Curiosity In College Essay?

How Do You Show Intellectual Curiosity In College Essay?

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Intellectual Curiosity Use anecdotes, such as a classroom experience or time you performed independent research, to illustrate your passion for learning . You might also relate a question that inspired you. This is another essay where it’s important to show, not tell.

How would you describe intellectual curiosity?

Here is an intellectual curiosity definition: Intellectual curiosity is a person’s willingness and desire to learn new things and dig deeper than the surface . Intellectual curiosity makes learning a much more natural process, instead of just a duty or a chore.

How do you demonstrate intellectual?

8 Ways to Increase Your Intellectual Capacity

• Expand your horizons. Expanding your horizons unlocks the world to you by introducing you to possibility.
• Be imaginative.
• Pleasure reading.
• Train your brain.
• Consistently learn.
• Physical activity.
• Get enough sleep.
• How you dress.

How do you satisfy intellectual curiosity?

10 Ways to Stimulate a Student’s Curiosity

• Value and reward curiosity.
• Teach students how to ask quality questions.
• Notice when kids feel puzzled or confused.
• Encourage students to tinker.
• Spread the curiosity around.
• Use current events.
• Teach students to be skeptics.
• Explore a variety of cultures and societies.

How do you show your passion in college essay?

A better guideline: write about what you’ve spent a lot of time on . Start by looking at what you’ve spent the most time on, then figure out which activities you particularly enjoyed, and then remember how you became interested in those activities and detail why they are important to you.

What is intellectual curiosity essay?

How would you describe your intellectual ability.

Intellectual capacity is your ability to think, learn, plan, and execute with discipline . A helpful analogy is to think of it as your processor or operating system—building this capacity allows you to do more in less time and with less energy.

What are examples of intellectual skills?

Memory, comprehension, reasoning, analyzing, and problem solving are examples of intellectual skills that companies desire for their workers. Strength, stamina, coordination, psychomotor, and sensory skills are the top elements needed for physical work.

What sparks your intellectual curiosity?

There are many different things that a person may say when asked what sparks their intellectual curiosity. For some it may be along the basis of greed or want of knowledge. Others may just simply love to learn, and their pleasure from learning is what sparks their curiosity.

How do you demonstrate curiosity in the workplace?

The space for inquisitiveness can be created in small and unexpected ways without any elaborate changes to your lifestyle.

• Slow down to create time for research and reflection.
• Be open to the opinions and ideas of others.
• Practice asking “why” and other good questions.
• Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

What are colleges looking for in essays?

As part of the college application process, colleges ask prospective students for a personal essay in order to learn more about them. They want to see context on each student’s background, positive traits that the student could bring to campus, and examples of the student demonstrating those qualities .

What should you not write in a college essay?

Many essays included things that you should not do in your college admissions essay including: Never rehash your academic and extracurricular accomplishments . Never write about a “topic” Never start with a preamble.

What makes you a strong candidate for college essay?

Whether reflected in the essay or the thoughtful confluence of the academic course load and extracurricular activities, a successful applicant should highlight an ability to overcome obstacles and garner results . It’s about proving you can produce outcomes, both on the part of the student and the university.

How can I be curious in college?

Encourage them to notice which activities or questions spark their interest, and then feed their curiosity with books, podcasts, documentaries, YouTube videos, music, projects, or any other medium that lets them plunge into their topic of choice. Strive to be enthusiastic about your student’s interests.

What is an intellectual experience?

Common Intellectual Experiences (CIEs) refer to any curricular and/or co-curricular program designed to build a student cohort focused on a common, broad theme .

How do you describe someone’s intelligence?

Some common synonyms of intelligent are alert, clever, and quick-witted . While all these words mean “mentally keen or quick,” intelligent stresses success in coping with new situations and solving problems.

What are intellectual skills for students?

Intellectual skills are defined as the methods an individual can use to evaluate or organize information and data . In the 1950s, educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom created a model of intellectual skills that defined abilities such as application, analysis and synthesis as building on basic knowledge.

How can students improve their intellectual skills?

Teach students to develop divided attention for multitasking . This will help in developing highly functional cognitive skills. Practicing mindfulness a few times a week for children help in concentration. Processing speed is the time taken by the mind to process information or command.

What is an example of curiosity?

The definition of curiosity is anything strange or rare, or having an interesting in learning or knowing something. An example of a curiosity is a little known and interesting fact about a subject . An example of curiosity is always asking questions, reading books and going out to try to learn about the world.

Why is curiosity important for learning?

Encouraging students to embrace their curiosity is an important part of education. Curiosity is key to learning. In fact, studies show that, when we’re curious about a subject, we are much more likely to remember information we learned about that subject .

Why do you want to go to this college essay?

Tips for Writing the “Why This College” Essay Make a list of the reasons you decided to apply . Research unique opportunities related to your academic and extracurricular interests. Pick your top academic reasons for applying, and your top extracurricular/social reasons.

By Cary Hardy

Hi there! I'm Cary Hardy, an education expert and consultant. I've worked with students of all ages and backgrounds, and I love helping them unlock their full potential. I'm also a big believer in lifelong learning- there's always something new to learn!

I got my start in education as a teacher, working with students in grades K-12. After several years of teaching, I transitioned into the world of educational consulting. I've since worked with schools and districts all over the country, helping them improve their curriculums and instruction methods.

I'm passionate about helping people achieve their dreams, and I believe that education is the key to unlocking everyone's potential. Thanks for reading!

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Is tufts university a party school, what percentage of tufts students get into medical school, is tufts a fun college.

Reinstating the SATs Will Only Make Rich Kids Richer

A t America’s wealthiest colleges, the SAT is back with a vengeance, and it’s easy enough to see who will suffer: socioeconomically disadvantaged students of color.

Over the past few weeks, Dartmouth , Yale , Brown , and Harvard have all announced that they will require standardized test scores from all applicants next fall after suspending their use during the pandemic.

Between the spring of 2020 and the winter of 2021, the number of four-year universities and colleges with test-optional policies doubled from 713 to 1,350 including, notably, all eight Ivy League schools. Colleges touted the shift as progressive. “Students have never been treated as numbers,” Colorado College posted on its website. “Our test-optional policy allows our team to identify the most qualified candidates for admission while also increasing access for first-generation, low-income, and traditionally underserved students.” Even Harvard was on board. “People somehow think that if you don’t have test scores it’s very hard to evaluate an application, but you have teacher reports, you have grades,” Harvard’s admissions dean Bill Fitzsimmons said in 2022. “There’s an enormous amount of academic information.”

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in SFFA v. Harvard , which effectively ended race-based affirmative action, it was possible to envision career-defining standardized testing heading for the scrap bin of history, too. After all, the SAT and ACT have long been known to correlate closely with wealth. One recent study found that students from families in the top 1% of the income distribution are 13 times more likely than students from the bottom 20 percent to score 1300 or higher on the SAT. Just 2.5% of students from the lowest income quintile manage to reach 1300.

If colleges wanted to preserve diversity—and could no longer consider an applicant’s race—surely they could no longer place great weight on a metric that functions principally as a marker of the applicant’s wealth.

Not so fast.

Elite colleges are whistling quite a different tune than they were just two years ago. The reimplementation of standardized testing has coincided with a spate of personal anecdotes , research , and articles extolling their putative benefits. Christina Paxson, the president of Brown University, recently touted the SAT and ACT for revealing “useful information about whether students will, on average, be academically successful at Brown.”

Read More: I Took the SAT Again in My 50s. Turns Out I Had Learned Nothing

One could understand the need for standardized testing at public colleges, where more than a third of entering students fail to graduate within six years. But it’s a curious argument to be advanced by Brown, where the six-year graduation rate is 96% and for Pell Grant recipients is 93%.

Another line of defense is that the SAT is the best friend of the downtrodden. Harvard economist David Deming said , “My worry is that if we get rid of the SAT, you’re getting rid of the only way that a low-income student who’s academically talented has to distinguish themselves.” It’s again a curious argument to be made, especially by schools like Brown and Harvard, each of which counts itself among the 38 American colleges where more students come from families in the top 1% of the income distribution than the bottom 60%. This is true even though Brown has an endowment of $6.6 billion and Harvard the nation’s largest— $50.9 billion .

It's even more curious, still, given that in the same letter in which Paxson announced the return to standardized testing, she reaffirmed Brown’s commitment to early decision—which has long been known to hurt poorer students who can’t afford to commit to a college without comparing financial aid packages—and to the preference it affords to the children, of alumni, donors, faculty, staff, and athletic recruits—pathways that overwhelmingly benefit rich, white applicants, otherwise known as “ALDC” applicants. At Harvard, for example, 43% of white students are “ALDC.” Research shows that about three quarters of these students would have been rejected without their ALDC status.

Read More: The Case Against Private College Admissions Counselors

So what’s really going on?

To understand, one need only take a closer look at the most widely cited study by Deming and his colleagues Raj Chetty and John Friedman. Standardized test scores, the story goes, are a much better predictor of college success than high school GPA. What are their principal markers of “college success?” Attending an “elite graduate school” and “working at a prestigious firm.” The outcome they’re looking at is the accumulation of wealth not knowledge. Is it any surprise that rich kids both outperform lower-SES kids on the SAT and at getting investment banking jobs at Goldman Sachs and consulting jobs at McKinsey?

What if these researchers and college administrators instead adopted this definition of success: the student maintained a college GPA of over 3.0, learned and grew as a person, and got a significant benefit in terms of economic mobility? By this standard, virtually every socioeconomically disadvantaged kid admitted to one of these prestigious, highly endowed colleges is a success.

But this interpretation of the data and definition of the object of college would be decidedly inconvenient and mask the true object of elite colleges: to make rich kids richer.

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EMCON students sweep 2024 AAHN essay contest

Both undergraduate and graduate winners are emcon students..

Two Elaine Marieb College of Nursing students have won the 2024 Sarah B. Pasternack Nursing Student Essay Contest . Ameneh Arzheh (PhD Nursing) and Shaely Lora-Brito (BSN) won the respective graduate and undergraduate categories in the contest. They will each receive a $500 prize and will read their essays during a Nursing Archives Associates meeting later this spring.

Both students responded to the prompt: "Why is understanding nursing history important to the future of nursing?" Lora-Brito opens likening the history of nursing to the unfolding pages of a diary.

"Understanding the history of nursing is like unfolding the pages of a diary that holds the secrets to the soul of healthcare... Knowing the history of nursing isn't just a look back into the past; it's a guiding light that illuminates the way to the future." 

Lora-Brito goes on to discuss the historical importance of Mary Eliza Mahoney, the first African-American licensed nurse, writing, "Mahoney's story teaches us that nursing is not just about the skills and knowledge we acquire but also about the values we embody and the changes we strive to make, not only in healthcare but in society as a whole."

Arzheh also opens with the perspective that understanding history allows us to shape the future of nursing with an informed lens, with a specific focus on nursing theory.

"Nursing theory played a pivotal role in establishing the profession's unique identity... Nursing theories contribute significantly to shaping the profession by offering unique worldviews that enrich our understanding of nursing practice."

Using theory by which to evolve the profession and industry, Arzheh writes, helps shape nurse self-awareness, too. "This self-awareness becomes a catalyst for developing a deeper and more empathetic connection with patients," Arzheh argues.

Only two winning essays are selected each year for this prestigious contest. The winning essays will eventually be published in full on the Nursing Archives Associates website. The contest is in honor of Sarah Pasternack, MA, RN, who "served as the President of the Nursing Archives Associates for more than 20 years. She received the Living Legend Award from the ANA Massachusetts in 2014. Sarah was an Assistant Professor at Boston University School of Nursing and a Nursing Patient Services Director and an Advanced Practice Nurse in Patient Safety and Quality at Boston Children’s Hospital," according to AAHN .

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Marian Zazeela, an Artist of Light and Design, Dies at 83

She pivoted from painting to lighting exhibitions, performance art, graphic design and minimalist music, performed with her husband, the composer La Monte Young.

By Walker Mimms

In avant-garde New York, one of the most pilgrimaged sites has been the “ Dream House ,” a sensory environment that since 1993 has occupied the third story of a walk-up on Church Street in Lower Manhattan.

From the ceiling of that small, carpeted room, theater lights treated with red and blue filters combine to throw auras of deep magenta on opposing walls. Four split discs of aluminum hang from the ceiling at torqued angles. As visitors enter and lie down, these mobiles spin slowly, catching light and casting morphing shadows of cursive E’s and wishbones.

Instead of being absences of light, the shadows are positives: The lights are angled so that as one mobile shines red, its corresponding shadow speaks in blue, and vice versa.

Behind this novel optical inversion was the artist and musician Marian Zazeela, who died in her sleep on March 28 after an illness, said her longtime student Jung Hee Choi, who did not specify a cause. Ms. Zazeela was 83.

Ms. Zazeela never gained the renown of James Turrell or Dan Flavin, light artists who equaled her curiosity about altering optical perception in controlled environments. That oversight may have owed less to the ephemeral nature of her works than to the fact that hers were exclusively collaborative.

Accounts vary as to how she first met her husband, muse and “Dream House” co-creator, the minimalist composer La Monte Young . In one version, Yoko Ono introduced the two at a restaurant in New York’s Chinatown, and his choice of beverage, an orange soda, charmed Ms. Zazeela. In another telling, the musician Angus MacLise , who lived above Ms. Zazeela on Avenue C, introduced them as Mr. Young spoke passionately about the traditional “dream music” of the Malaysian Temiar people.

People close to them say that from 1966 to Ms. Zazeela’s death, the couple never spent a day apart.

As a singer and player of the Indian tamboura, and later a disciple of the Indian classical singer Pandit Pran Nath, Ms. Zazeela performed with her husband in hundreds of concerts. One early ensemble was the Theatre of Eternal Music, which they formed in the early 1960s with Mr. MacLise and John Cale. The group is credited with introducing drone — a defining element of Indian classical — to the American musical consciousness.

Ms. Zazeela’s vocal improvisations, entwined with Mr. Young’s over a tone oscillator mimicking the tamboura’s basal drone, can be heard in their 1969 LP nicknamed “ The Black Record .”

In an interview with Red Bull Music Academy in 2018, Mr. Young described Ms. Zazeela as “the first person who really encouraged me deeply.”

But in six decades of collaboration, her most singular influence was graphic. Across concert posters and LP sleeves, many of which the Museum of Modern Art now holds , her designs combined Celtic complexity, Arabic curvatures and a ritualized numerical precision uncommon even for the baroque 1960s.

Favoring rich purples, pinks, charcoals and pleasing low contrasts, Ms. Zazeela’s visuals allowed Mr. Young’s compositions to be photogenic, synesthetic and sensuous. Among the works were the founding scores of minimalism and some of the most cerebral and uncompromising in Western music.

Marian Susan Zazeela was born on April 15, 1940, in New York City. Her father, Herman Zazeela, was a geriatrician at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and at the Neustadter Convalescent Center in Yonkers, N.Y. Her mother, Helen (Heyderman) Zazeela, was a schoolteacher. The family lived in the Bronx.

After graduating from the High School of Music & Art in Manhattan (now the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts), Ms. Zazeela studied painting at Bennington College in Vermont under the minimalist sculptor Tony Smith and the hard-edge painter Paul Feeley . There, in 1958, she saw on temporary display Barnett Newman’s “Vir Heroicus Sublimis,” a broad red canvas cut with stripes of varying contrast, which she said had “a profound conceptual impact on my developing imagination.” She graduated in 1960.

After a term at the Atelier Henri Goetz in Paris, Ms. Zazeela returned with “the complete De Sade, a Miro engraving, and a husband,” as she wrote in the debut issue of the literary magazine Kulchur, referring to Abdallah Schleifer , the magazine’s founding editor, whom she married in Paris in 1960.

That December, she debuted her paintings at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan; she had painted large canvasses with calligraphic curves in abstract blasts, then filled their backgrounds with fields of contrasting color, leaving drippy margins of blank space around each brushstroke.

But after visiting an exhibition of Abstract Expressionism at the Guggenheim Museum in 1961, she complained of artistic boredom, writing in Floating Bear magazine, “maybe we’re at an impasse in Great American Painting.”

Performance art offered alternatives. That year, Ms. Zazeela designed a stage production of Amiri Baraka’s novel “The System of Dante’s Hell.” Modeling for the photographs in Jack Smith’s “ The Beautiful Book ” (1962), she inspired and appeared in his 1963 film, “ Flaming Creatures ,” a screening of which the police raided for its nudity and indecency. She also starred in a screen test for Andy Warhol in 1964, appearing in makeup and a beehive hairdo and refusing to blink for four minutes while a stream of tears collected at her chin.

After Mr. Schleifer moved to Morocco, Ms. Zazeela drove to Mexico with Mr. Young and the poet Diane di Prima and obtained a unilateral divorce from Mr. Schleifer during the trip. She and Mr. Young married in 1963.

She is survived by Mr. Young and her sister, Janet Posner.

As she moved on from painting, Ms. Zazeela calibrated motifs, frames and letterforms with Rapidograph pens and very sharp pencils on sheets of Color-Aid paper. Printed on overlapping, projectable transparencies for the Theatre of Eternal Music in 1964, some of the designs influenced the light show in Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable.

Throughout that time, Ms. Zazeela and Mr. Young kept turtles , made yogurt and observed a 26-hour clock.

Though she ceased creating new graphic works by 2003, Ms. Zazeela oversaw hundreds of re-installations of her works with Mr. Young, sometimes under the patronage of Heiner Friedrich and his Dia Art Foundation. Each version of their “Dream House” required bespoke calibration of Ms. Zazeela’s overlapping lights and Mr. Young’s 35 fixed sine wave frequencies, a soundscape designed to produce an awareness of infinity.

Since 1981, the awakening to Ms. Zazeela’s individual voice within the partnership has been gradual. Her calligraphy and drawings, which had been rarely shown in the original, were exhibited in Germany in 2000 and then at Dia: Beacon in upstate New York from 2019-22. When Ms. Zazeela died, she had just unveiled archival drawings at Artists Space in Manhattan, where they remain on view until May 11.

“I often work with repeated elements that I draw over and over and over again. In our separate media we’re engaged in many similar activities with differing results,” she explained in a 1984 interview with the public radio station KPFA in Northern California, referring to the intense repetition in her husband’s music. “I find the music extremely inspirational. I guess I hold the record for attendance at La Monte’s concerts.”

In the Artists Space exhibit, one drawing from 1964 seems to re-enact their embrace at the far end of the alphabet. One must view the black page at an upward angle, in the reflected light, to decode its superfine graphite inscriptions: a square of high-shouldered Y’s orbiting a circle of identically arched Z’s — two bands without end.