Cultural studies
Admissions officers are spending February reading variations by aspiring first-years-on themes suggested by last year's admitted class.

Option 1: Iris Kellett, County Kildare, Ireland
"I often think how lucky I was to have been an only child. I had enough business sense, even at an early age, to realize that had I had brothers and sisters, I would have been lucky to get a share of a single family pony, instead of which I was, for a short time, the proud possessor of three." Compose an essay about your relationship with one or more siblings. If you are an only child, elaborate on the perspective of Ms. Kellett, telling us how you felt-rich in ponies or love, bereft of the siblings you imagine would have enriched your life.

Option 2: Jonathan Shepard, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida
Each new incarnation of Survivor makes us wonder about this thing called television and these creatures called human beings. Produce a version of Chicago Survivor. Use as your location the lush Gothic campus, laboratories, libraries, gymnasia, and residence halls of a major American university. Make your rules, identify some players (select from all of human history), and take us through a trial and its results. Profundity will be rewarded and true wit will certainly count in your favor, but too much familiarity with the actual show may be a strike against you.

Option 3: Jeremiah Vanscoyoc, Deshler, Ohio
In a pivotal scene of a recent American film, a teen-aged videographer records a plastic bag blowing in the wind. He ruminates on the elusive nature of truth and beauty and suggests that beauty is everywhere-often in the most unlikely places and in the quirky details of things. What is something that you love because it reflects a kind of idiosyncratic beauty-the uneven features of a mutt you adopted at the pound, the feather boa you found in the Wal-Mart parking lot?

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