Newest College Application Essays

As I sauntered with my father through the pine forest, I strained my neck to gaze at his face. I was only six, and my father hadn’t visited Mirgorod in a year. As the forest ended, we entered a meadow, full of wildflowers and butterflies....

Smooth Strathmore bristol board, Prismacolor colored pencils and brush tip markers, and most importantly, a Sakura Pen-Touch white paint marker. These are some of the materials that were scattered around my bed as I was creating what was bound to...

My mom doesn’t deserve all the credit for ensuring I completed my first race. Three million checklists, a royal guard and a savage bloodhound were among the influencers. They hadn’t featured in my vision of a perfect marathon though—the wind...

I was waiting at the dinner table for the right moment and decided to serve it just before dessert, “I need 10,000 rupees to start a venture.” As my parents lost their appetite, their faces flashed curious amusement at a 15-year-old’s odd request....

One hundred degrees, one hundred dollars raised. True leadership takes sweat, especially under the blazing afternoon sun smack dab in the middle of downtown. However, it was under these temperatures that I demonstrated my own leadership...

“Where are you from?” The girl, seated to my left, looks my way intently.

I barely look up, refusing to make eye contact, allowing the pronounced seconds to tick by awkwardly. The question hangs heavy in the air.

“Texas....” I finally mutter,...

4:30 pm. The senior citizens at the communal garden are depending on me to fight off the pesky weeds encroaching on their potato fields. My thighs burn as I furiously pedal, and my hoodie flaps wildly behind me like a cape-- a superhero racing to...

I am an artist, and this title manifests itself in the proud paint splotches on my denim Bob Ross-esque button up. Beyond the frequent color stains on my hands and clothing, this title is backed by 10 years of apprenticeship spent beside my dad’s...

The pothole-filled roads after a point were too narrow for my cab but just wide enough for me and a few other pedestrians. Laptop bag in tow, I reached the unplastered structure housing the underserved school. I had spent weeks preparing to train...

“How did you fix it akka?” asked Bhavani. I had spent the last three afternoons inside a small room at their school with Bhavani and eleven other underserved students. We had spent hours debugging a section of the code to no avail. Four mugs of...

I wish someone had been recording the moment we pitched the idea to my physics teacher, Mr. Heese. His forehead crinkled and his brow arched, completing his puzzled complexion as he sat at his desk.

“So you want to start a club… that grills meat?”...

History is a bad driver. It rarely ever indicates when it’s about to take a turn. But on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, I saw it shift gears. “Can I get the afternoon off, ma’am?” our housekeeper Kavita asked my mom. Despite my offer of a Netflix...

Most new couples dream of one day hearing the pitter-patter of little feet running through the hallways of their home—my parents had no idea that this pitter-patter would be quite so loud and destructive. From as early as the age of six, I led my...

Ten bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder huddled around a laptop screen. Our giddy excitement all fell to a hush with the click of a play button. Suddenly, children’s laughter and thick Tanzanian accents filled the room, soon echoed by our own...

“Sit still!” my mom shouted at me in Igbo, as she continued to press the scalding flat iron to my scalp. I hung my head, watching as the puddle of tears in my lap grew larger, each additional tear rolling off my chubby ten-year-old cheek,...

Reverberating voices. Flying spit. Clinking shot glasses. A gaggle of grandpas in furry trapper hats, perched on potato crates, pontificating about Soviet politics in a farm shed. They agreed, yet still managed to yell. As a routine observer of...

Even with her sharp, monosyllabic words that often lack vowels, my mother is a gentle language whose simple phonetic spelling and liberal syntax nurture me. She is my first love and the first proof of my infatuation for words. She is the essence...

Bylo, jest, bedzie. These words were stitched into my six-year-old mind as Babushka’s deft fingers stitched hems into shirtsleeves, needle pausing in midair to conjugate Polish verbs for me, to translate them into my native Russian and Ukrainian....

A major problem we face today is our failure to chronicle the specifics of a given period, region, or ethnic group. Authentic history is derived not merely from authority figures, but from individuals. The contemporary historical narrative—the...

As I walk on stage in front the hundreds of spectators, my heart starts to race. I can feel the roughness of the chalk covering my hands as I stand in front of the barbell, ready to lift it overhead. The silence and anticipation from the audience...

My award winning app, Cappable, built to help people with disabilities find employment had just made a record of sorts. We had faced our 100th rejection.

Cramped into my bedroom, the four members of our team stared at the dashboard. After months...

My pencil sketches of human head sculptures filled countless pads of paper. Desperately, I tried to recreate in each face the intangible aspects of emotion that continuously eluded me. I drew faces over and over, telling myself that with more...

“I want to die.” is the alarming message that appears in my chat-requests at exactly 12:29 AM. The blue-bubble floats on my computer screen, a dialogue waiting to happen. It’s getting late, but I don’t waste time. I click ‘Accept’. The person...

In Chinese culture, your peers are your jie (sisters) and ge (brothers), and older people your au yi (aunts) and shu shu (uncles). In this way, “family” extends to not just kin, but also friends, companions, and even acquaintances.

Every week when...