Newest College Application Essays

It’s 6am. My alarm clock squawks at me to wake up. With legs aching from practice, arms tired from shooting drills, and head throbbing with pain from only sleeping four hours, I squint at the illuminated red numbers, contemplating whether or not...

“Gue… Gue…Gueb…be,” my new teacher stumbled over the pronunciation of my last name. I smirked under my breath but decided to put her out of her misery by raising my hand and declaring my presence. “It’s Guebediang but I go by Maeva.” With a name...

Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code, awed me when I first met her at Fashion Institute of Technology. Originally a politician who became the first Indian American woman to run for Congress, Mrs. Saujani had no technological skills to...

A devoted technologist, a drama lover, a HAM freak and a Research scholar – for me, the Pratt School of Engineering would fulfill it all…

Duke’s Multi-disciplinary Engineering Program encompassing options from Materials to Fluid Mechanics is my...

I was up to my ears in water, fighting to stay afloat. I was more concerned about not drowning than wondering if I would ever be good enough to lead my team to a championship. Four years later, I can elevate out of the water above my waist and...

A few times a week, I make the hour-long trek from my home in the suburbs to my fencing school in West Philadelphia. As I drive to practice, suburban towns slowly fade into red and brown brick row homes, until all around me are boarded up windows,...

At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.

These words have always held a spiritual quality to me. Something sacred, like a marble statue. And in the gym, when we repeat them, I feel that even with all the sweaty air...

In front of the board stood two kindergarteners, a classmate and I, ready to engage in fierce competition. The task? Simply solving a two-digit addition problem. I felt my heartbeat racing, my hands shaking while holding the marker. I had no...

“C810,” the judge announced. I check my code again — it’s mine. Rising from my seat, I step towards the front of the room. The other competitors clap, as is customary for speech events, breaking the sacred silence that previously occupied the...

Revelation. This one word describes my learning style, my writing habits and my insights. I can be in a library studying for a subject I don’t quite understand and out of nowhere I receive a revelation. Revelation, to me, is the missing puzzle...

The rapidly evolving online economy touches virtually every aspect of our lives. We now turn to Yelp to choose a restaurant, Airbnb for a weekend getaway, Uber for a ride, and Amazon to purchase products. All across the nation, and more...

“Stop interrupting! Before opening your mouth, see if the adults are in the middle of a conversation,” my dad reminded me for the hundredth time. What I couldn’t have articulated at the time was that I was too lazy to ‘watch’, and I couldn’t hear...

I had been standing in the scorching sun for 90 minutes, collecting data using the illuminance sensor. Sweat dripped down my forehead and sunlight reflecting from the three computer screens blinded me as I observed the graphs. They showed no...

Marhaba! Biweekly at 6:15 pm sharp, Arabic class begins. We are a community with few similarities - I am the youngest by fifteen years, and the eldest is 65. Yet, we are united in pursuit of an ancient Semitic language. This is a downtown...

Dear Roommate:

I was born to a family of six children – three older adopted siblings, me, my younger brother, and my younger sister. Living in a house full of people, I've never known what it's like not to have a roommate. When I was five, I...

One afternoon, I bought a cheap Lego kit off the street. The bright colored blocks fitted naturally, forming a miniature Qutub-Minar, leaning like the real one. That marked a life-long marriage between me and Mechanical Engineering.

My interest...

As a toddler, days at Grandma’s house were a colorless blur of television and snacks--that is, until naptime. Once the clock struck noon, I scuttled promptly into my aunt’s room and jumped under the covers, eyes screwed tightly shut in semblance...

“Frances Perkins!” I yelled as our car sped past the U.S. Department of Labor Building. Constitution Avenue! The Smithsonian Museum of American History! I was in utter ecstasy as I walked past the flag that had inspired the national anthem and the...

One of the communities I belong to is the Vistamar Theatre Program. We're a very tight group, because at a small school, the number of theatre kids is limited. The theatre community here is just like a family. While there is competition for parts...

It’s hard to choose from my many passions, but I would pick ice hockey. Not only does hockey provide me with great exercise and fun, but the leadership and responsibility that comes with playing on or captaining a hockey team are important skills...

My greatest interests and passions are immunology, allergy, and epidemiology. These areas have evolved throughout the years. My fascination with pathology started in the first grade with a basic science fair project on environments conducive to...

My childhood included everything from waking up to my mom’s dramatic wake up calls in the mornings, eating ice cream from the carton with my siblings, rough-and-tumble play with my father, to family dinners at our Chinese restaurant, filled with...

An issue I am deeply concerned with is the environment, because without a stable environment, humans simply cannot exist. My junior year, I took AP Environmental Science, and many of the things I learned in that class sparked my interest in the...

An issue I am deeply concerned with is the stability of our environment, because without a stable environment, life as we know it will be deeply affected on a global scale. In my junior year, I took AP Environmental Science, and many of the things...