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Boston University undergraduate degree programs

Tuesday, 4. August 2015 - 15:20

To be considered for a Trustee Scholarship:

• Submit the Common Application for admission to one of the undergraduate degree programs at Boston University along with other supporting credentials by December 1.

• Boston University Trustee Scholars are encouraged to develop well-informed and well-reasoned views of important political, social, and artistic issues. We select students who have a sense of how to present persuasive arguments in support of their views. With that in mind, please select one of the questions below and respond with an essay explaining your perspective in 600 words or less. Please complete your essay on the Common Application as part of your application to Boston University.

1. David Brooks, a columnist for The New York Times, recently wrote:“I don’t know if America has a leadership problem; it certainly has a followership problem. Vast majorities of Americans don’t trust their institutions. That’s not mostly because our institutions perform much worse than they did in 1925 and 1955, when they were widely trusted. It’s mostly because more people are cynical and like to pretend that they are better than everything else around them. Vanity has more to do with rising distrust than anything else.”In your opinion, does America have a followership problem? Does it have a leadership problem? If so, what do you think should be done about this?

2. The author Saul Bellow wrote: “For a very long time the world found the wonderful in tales and poems, in painting and in musical performances. Now the wonderful is found in miraculous technology, in modern surgery, in jet propulsion, in computers, in television, and in lunar expeditions. Literature cannot compete with wonderful technology.”Do you agree? Why or why not?

3. In a paper delivered in 2013 called “The Future of Employment,” the Oxford economists Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne estimate that in the coming two decades 47 percent of all jobs in the U. S. are at risk of disappearing due to computer- and robot-driven automation. They predict intensified polarization between the rich and the poor as a consequence, with the most jobs lost occurring among low-skill and low-wage positions and an ever-larger share of income held by a relative few. In your view, does this represent progress with its inevitable costs or a disturbing trend that must be slowed? Should governments intervene in any way to affect this process and its effects?

• Submit official results of either the SAT or the ACT Plus Writing. For the Accelerated Medical and Accelerated Dental programs, additional SAT Subject Tests are required. Please see the Program Requirements page. All tests must be taken no later than November.

Contact us

Boston University Admissions
881 Commonwealth Avenue
6th Floor, Admissions
Boston, MA 02215
USA
intadmis@bu.edu
Phone: 617-353-2300 | Fax: 617-353-9695

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www.bu.edu
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undergraduate degree programs