我帶過的小 R，是台北人，但外婆是台南人。她家族裡只有外婆說台語——爸媽都說國語、小 R 自己也不太會台語。Diversity Essay 她原本要寫「中華文化的多元」，被我退回。
最後她寫的是這個——
My grandmother's lullabies were in Taiwanese. My mother's bedtime stories were in Mandarin. By the time I started kindergarten, I already understood that one language could not love me in two ways. When my grandmother died in 2022, my mother stopped saying "thank you" in Taiwanese at the morning market. I started learning it on Duolingo the next month, halfway between mourning and fluency.
I was the only student in my Taipei AP class from Kaohsiung. At first, I thought this was just a logistic detail. But by the time I rode the high-speed rail back home for Lunar New Year, listening to my classmates compare which Taipei boba shops had the best brown sugar, I realized my "home accent" had already faded. My grandmother on the train asked if I had become a Taibei lang. I didn't know how to answer.
By the time I was 12, I could distinguish 0.02mm machining error by the sound of the lathe. My father's factory makes the mold cavities that produce smartphone vibration motors—a fact I learned by listening to him explain to a Korean buyer why our tolerance was 0.005mm tighter than his last supplier's. I have never seen a Korean buyer leave my father's factory without ordering more. I also have never seen my father raise his voice.
這 100 字裡有：
具體技術細節（0.02mm、tolerance、lathe）
真實國際商業情境
對父親的觀察 + 自己的學習
沒有一個 cliche 字
他最後上了 UMich Engineering，admissions reader 在 feedback 裡寫「this kid grew up in a factory and it shows」——這就是 diversity 的力量。
The first time I noticed my classmates were lying, I was nine. The teacher asked "who broke the vase?" and three children said "not me" with their faces tilted slightly down. I didn't understand the question's grammar—nobody had said "yes, I broke it"—but I knew, with the same certainty I knew Pi was 3.14159, that all three had broken it. I didn't say anything. I just wrote down the pattern.
My mother left Hanoi in 2001 with two suitcases and a marriage broker's phone number. By the time I was born in 2007, she could speak Mandarin fluently but still said cảm ơn by reflex after the morning market. I grew up between two grandmothers—one in Tainan, one in Hai Phong—who had never met and never would. My Mandarin homework had Vietnamese annotations in the margins. My Vietnamese was learned over phone calls. I have two mother tongues, neither of which I speak perfectly.
讀完，adcom 立刻看見一個他從未在申請書上看過的台灣。
九、5 個必避的死亡寫法
無論你選哪個角度，這 5 個寫法是 diversity essay 死刑：
死亡寫法
為什麼
「我愛 bubble tea / 夜市」
觀光客視角
「I am proud to be Taiwanese / Chinese」
抒情無內容
「Taiwan is a small island but...」
教 adcom 地理
「I can speak Mandarin, English, and a little Taiwanese」
履歷重複
「My parents sacrificed so much for me」
全亞洲學生都寫
特別第 3 點要強調——不要在 essay 裡介紹台灣。Adcom 已經知道台灣是哪裡。你寫「Taiwan is an island of 23 million people」是把 essay 字數浪費在 PR 上。
