Newest College Application Essays

Bottled water. Houses. Waste management. Cows.

The past few years has seen a rise in Chinese investment overseas. Spearheading the movement towards further globalisation in the wake of the United States’ increasing protectionism, China is boosting...

My first love was food—a love I hold in common with all the women in my family. When my mom started a catering company, I discovered that not only was I obsessed with the preparation and transformation of ingredients, I was freakishly good at it....

The plane landed, and immediately seat belts flew off and iPhones came out. It had been six hours since the plane took off, and therefore six hours since my phone had internet. I had to check every social media platform for anything I could've...

On a typical, busy summer day, I stand at one of the Save the Bay's Aquarium’s touch tanks, spitting out facts (did you know that horseshoe crabs have been around since before the dinosaurs?!) and making sure that all children uphold the...

At the perfect time for a girl fresh into high school to receive a cringe-inducing nickname destined to stick, I acquired the moniker “potato.” When I picked up a picture of myself as a five-year-old and nonchalantly commented that I looked like a...

My love for math came about through a sort of associative learning. I didn’t start loving math because it was math, but because it was the class I always had with my best friend Krystyna. It began in third grade when our class was separated into...

Maybe my primitive attempts at making “medicine” from crushed berries in my backyard as a child were a foreshadowing of my current interests. More recently, AP Biology, where we explored the inner workings of life and the small details that shape...

When I was in seventh grade, my biological mother—who was then living in Luxembourg—was involved in a serious car accident and had to be put into a medically induced coma. After somewhat recovering from the physical and mental trauma she...

I opened the Snapchat video to see forty faces of my Savannah summer musical castmates shouting, “WE’LL MISS YOU, ‘THAILAND’!!” You see, in America, I’m a foreigner, even though I was born here. I am a child of international diplomacy, raised for...

Every single time I step onto a stage, I feel as though I could faint. The only noise that breaks through the silent auditorium is the stepping of heels against the hardwood floor as I approach the middle of the stage. I take a deep breath as I...

Driving down the streets of Arcadia, there were certain landmarks that reminded me that I was home— the grandiose library, the iconic windmill-themed restaurant, and at last but not least, the lady who stood at the end of my street. Committed, she...

Poetry makes nothing happen, so W. H. Auden famously said. And there are Sunday afternoons where I wonder why I am teaching it to middle school students. Make no mistake: for all my enthusiasm and bantering in class, I understood from the...

For as long as I can remember, I’ve answered the question “Where do you want to go to college?” with the same one-syllable, five-letter answer: “Brown.” My mother is a proud alum; my admiration of her intellect, plus magical visits to the campus...

I couldn't breathe. My lungs rebelled, desperately attempting to inhale, as if I were drowning. My hands trembled. I could no longer comprehend that my impending audition speech for the Varsity debate team, which had only two spots left, was...

At 8:35 AM, on a Tuesday during the school year, November 29, 2011 to be exact, I not-so-vividly recall shuffling around under the covers as a young teenager often does after waking up in the morning and looking over at the clock. After seeing...

A pair of track spikes hangs on my door. Colorway: teal/black/orange. Women’s, size five. They were the only ones available at A Runner’s Mind in my size. Those spikes sped my mile up by almost twenty seconds, and I loved them. Finding them was a...

I hate playing baroque music. The urgency, the false sense of drama imbued in unnecessary ornamentation, the singular melodic idea, the abrupt changes from loud to soft...none of the characteristics of baroque music appeal to me. I find myself...

"Great things happen here," was my thought when I first walked into Google’s Chicago headquarters. A field trip sponsored by Loyola’s Leadership Mentor Program took us to experience the organic and creative atmosphere of Google and learn about...

Of all the things I had expected might happen, waking up to a chicken trying to peck me to death wasn’t one of them. Last night had started out like any other, comforting in its ordinariness and definitely chicken free. After wrapping up some...

“I can come with you to orientation, right? I miss my college days,” my aunt expressed to me a couple weeks ago when I mentioned I was interested in attending the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

”If you’re going, that means I’m coming too!”...

My younger siblings and I founded Back-to-Eden Ranch Pasture Eggs, & Co., in January 2012. Although our business started small, we expanded rapidly and have since raised several hundred chickens and African guinea fowl, along with starting...

My father is a mechanic. Therefore I am, by proxy, an unaccredited mechanic, specializing in relatives’ cars, vintage Vespa scooters, and my friends’ bicycles. I've loved our dirty garage from a young age — the sting of growing callouses and the...

I stood at the crest of my cousin’s street staring at the 45-degree inclined road I was about to skateboard down. Now, I had never skateboarded before, nor did I know how to, but something inside me told me I should do it. I belong to the...

There’s a beach at the end of my street, squished between two houses with boulders for seats and dirty sand that gets stuck in between your toes. I find myself drawn here often; there is something different about the space and how the days unspool...