Newest College Application Essays

One Way Out of Gym, the mystery of a murdered gym teacher, is not a timeless classic. It’s a novel that spent zero weeks on The New York Times Bestseller List. There’s only one copy—I published it myself. Few care about Detective Charley or the...

With six layers on, I waddled out the door, feeling and looking like an oompa loompa. My mother had dressed me in layer after layer, and, begrudgingly, I had allowed myself to be smothered with an array of puffy jackets and scarves. The weather...

“Where the world ends and paradise begins” is what the founder called my little safe haven where I worked the past summer. Working was basically like Cheaper by the Dozen without the promise of financial stability and with the fact that the girls...

184,000 miles. This is the number glowing green on the dashboard of my 2008 gold Prius. Although most people might interpret this number as a sign my car has been on the road for far too long, I see it as a badge of honor. Despite the strange...

His skin detached from its threadlike bindings to unveil a unique color palette. Excess blood flooded the area, only to be extracted by a contraption of assorted tubes. Muscle tissue, each fiber visible, danced around bones and ligaments to the...

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008, started out as an ordinary day in Zimbabwe. I was eight-years-old then, and I awoke unaware of the fact that this Tuesday would be the most devastating day of my life. My parents, my little brother and I lived on a large...

Regardless of where you come from, police brutality is currently the hot topic in media. With countless accusations of police using excessive force making the headlines, it has generated unfavorable views against those in law enforcement. Race is...

For an airline that describes its seating as “cozy,” Spirit Airlines had remarkably good legroom. After stowing my overhead luggage, I fished out the latest edition of The Economist and buckled up for the (hopefully comfortable) flight to the...

I’m one of the most clumsy people in the world.

This may seem like an exaggeration at first, but it’s spot on. From early childhood, I was called “Ms. Falls a lot” by my parents. I seemed cursed, as every single time I wore a dress to preschool, I...

In eleventh grade, I remember sitting in Physics baffled that there were formulas to make sense of the world. Before this course, I had simply accepted that gravity made things fall to the ground and pushing objects would make them move. However,...

The incessant, monotone beeping of the heart monitor was Public Enemy #1.

It alone was not the problem. Rather, it meant that I had found myself in a hospital room again. First it was my grandma, then my dad, then my grandma again. Each time was...

“Good things come in threes.”

I walked into my first job thinking I was overqualified; most of my coworkers were Chinese immigrants attending the local community college. But time slowly brought a new lens of admiration into my perspective. They...

“All-analysis-is-contrary-to-its-own-intent-and-the-affirmative’...

Living between a large hill and the flat space of an empty parking lot makes for the perfect skateboarding terrain, temporarily gifting me with wings as I fly down the incline without a helmet, falling into the soothing rhythm of push, slide,...

“Innocent until proven guilty” does not apply within the perimeters of Youth Court.

As a diversion court for juvenile misdemeanor crimes, our job is not to determine a defendant’s ‘guiltiness’, but rather solely to prescribe an appropriate...

It always felt right to go left. Instinctively, I would throw or kick with my left side. My left hand would pick up my pencil or turn the page of a book. Being left-handed is intuitive - something I cannot provide an explanation for. As I matured,...

I’ve come to understand that when I choose a path in life, I’m bound to face some roadblocks along the way. I now see these hurdles not as impenetrable obstacles but instead as opportunities. I can appreciate the new direction they take me and the...

I recently spent two mornings in a row sorting through old paperwork, filing and refiling old receipts, invoices, and timesheets. I labeled and alphabetized nearly 100 folders, plunking them into small file cabinets one by one. The day before, I...

His cell phone rang again. Sighing, my father ducked his head apologetically before excusing himself to pick up the call. It was the hospital calling to inform that a patient—an elderly undocumented immigrant—had returned to the emergency room yet...

“GIMME A PIGGYBACK RIDE! HORSEY!!!!”

I scrambled to allow the giggling seven year old girl to climb onto my back. I was volunteering as a camp counselor at the Hand in Hand Chinese Cultural Summer Program, a program that introduces adopted Chinese...

In an old moon-cake box lay hundreds of hang tags; they are different shapes and colors, flaunt decisive typography, and showcase intricate logos, differentiating each and every one. To many, these tags are a nuisance - quickly snipped off of...

“God is too big to fit in one religion.” It it is a beautiful paradox of how much hate and love can come from having a faith; it can cause war but also save lives. Religion is a vehicle for so many causes; it is not something to be scared of, but...

“O-Week, Beer Bike, & The Rest—we know Will Rice is the Best!”

Returning for the holidays, my friend had incessantly been repeating Will Rice cheers before I even knew what Rice, much less residential colleges, was. But maddening as they were,...

Whether we like it or not, life is messy, and the world is messy; it doesn’t make sense to assume that the subjects taught in school are abstract and insular concepts, neatly categorized and inevitably isolated from one another by the five-minute...