Newest College Application Essays

I am always interested in making something radically new out of an ordinary idea. As I explored different styles and media at the Orange County School of the Arts, I became an artistic nomad, seeking for something new each and every step in my...

I first discovered this versatile building material as a seven-year-old visiting my father's HVAC shop. While waiting for him to finish working one night, I wandered from the modestly finished space at the front of the building to the shop in...

My junior year of high school, I took Honors Biology. Although I expected to do well, as I had always had a knack for science, I immediately fell flat on my face. At the midterm, I distinctly remember looking at my grades and seeing a 74. I had a...

In my life I find myself practicing a certain sort of attitude that is subtle but impactful in its own way. While I do tend to look at life with positivity and a sense of adventure, I would be lying if I said I was always chipper---or even always...

I speak Czech with an accent. Even as a young child, I noticed a distinct difference between my choppy pronunciation and the smooth, oblong consonants of native-born speakers. While the speech of my extended family is peppered with idioms, slang,...

After seven straight hours of headache-inducing, nail-biting delay, Flight 2237’s touchdown into Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport was met with an exhausted yet raucous cheer from every passenger on board. As we disembarked, my...

An enchanted ticket, speckled with the paints of artists past and present, allows me to enter any museum at any time to study, engage, and feel the mastery of the artists' paint brushes in an effort to expand the use of my own. I set my plan of...

After months of planning and excitement we said our goodbyes, packed our packs, loaded our canoes, and took the first paddle strokes in remote northern Saskatchewan. We spent the next 30 days paddling over 375 miles through untouched Canadian...

The first time I truly appreciated the sunset was when I was 11 years old. My family decided to take a day trip to Devil’s Lake State Park where we spent the day swimming, hiking and lazing in the sun. Towards the end of the day my mom and I snuck...

I nervously sat down to the computer and started typing. Creating an Evite wouldn’t seem like a big deal to most people, but it was to me. Always having been too shy to reach out to my teammates from soccer, I had never been included in their...

Music can be best described as a skeleton key, opening the locks in your mind. Whether it's changing a mood, de-stressing, or adding excitement, music transcends generations and cultures. Throughout my existence, music has been a constant reminder...

I’m sure that it won’t be the last. However, the first really difficult academic decision I’ve made was in February, 2015: choosing my A-Level subjects. Overnight, I had to cut down my earlier eleven subjects, many of which I had really enjoyed -...

At 16, I was on a train to San Diego and deep in my biology notes when alarms began to sound and we were evacuated. Armed police urged us to run; as a fellow passenger told me, there was a gunman on the train who was threatening to shoot. Within...

I believe in hiking boots. Stiff, clunky and unapologetically dorky, preferably made of waterproof leather. Neat rows of hiking boots line the back wall of REI. An employee who calls himself a “shoe expert” lists the pros and cons of each pair. “I...

I was confused when I saw “85%” scrawled in red ink on my eighth-grade algebra worksheet despite all of the answers being correct. Underlined at the top of the page were the words "No Doodling!" and a large arrow pointed to a cluster of flowers...

97%. That is the survival rate for thyroid cancer. It’s the first thing I looked up after my diagnosis. I felt like something inside me shattered. I told myself I could live with that because, statistically speaking, I would be okay.

However, my...

As high school graduation inches closer, I find myself contemplating the word legacy. When I joined Dos Pueblos High School’s journalism team, the class was fading. The stories did not matter to the writers, and therefore, did not matter to the...

Waiting in line at the gleaming grand piano, I listen to repetitive scales. Each girl in the choir takes her turn singing along. After each ascent and descent of the duet, the director announces which voice part she will sing in the choir. The...

‘Andrea, from Norway. Pleased to meet you.’

‘Hey. Elen from –’ I stopped short, unable to shake the hand of my to-be-roommate.

First day at high school, and I was already struggling for words to explain my identity.Born in USA. Brought up in...

Sweat dripped off my face, and my body trembled in excitement. Playing along with some of the top high school players in the nation, I yearned to belong. However, as I sat on the flight back to Taiwan after camp, I realized that my mind and heart...

6,876 miles. This might be a hard distance to measure, so let me help you understand how far it is and just what it has entailed. It’s not only how far I’ve travelled almost every summer to see my family, but it’s how far I’ve travelled to become...

Freedom. That is the essence of the Open Curriculum at Brown. As a student committed to engineering but with broad interests and a desire to explore them, I find that nothing excites me more than the opportunity to be the director of my own...

It started when my sister fell off the bed and nearly fractured her skull.‘Trauma to the occipital cortex,’ the doctor told my parents. ‘That explains the vision impairment.’ With the eloquence only a seven year-old could muster, I piped up, ‘I...

Standing before me is Lake Ontario, one of the Great Lakes of North America; a boundary between here and there, or more specifically, the United States and Canada. It is the fourth largest lake in the US by volume, and masks as more of a sea or...