Newest College Application Essays

How can we build a more environmentally sustainable society?

Such a broad, open ended question may seem unreasonable for a sixteen year old girl to pursue, but at a place like Emory University, courageous inquiry is literally in the water. When I...

When my mother read picture books to me as a child, I lingered in the world of the story for days after, demanding that we act out my favorite scenes over and over again. I dressed my sister up as characters from my favorite books, carefully...

A silver eagle gleams as it soars over the Australian countryside on an early Tuesday morning. Inside this majestic mechanical bird, however, I feel nauseated and shiver vehemently despite the heavy suit I have on. The aircraft gives a violent...

“The only reason I want to come here is because of you.” I heard Jennifer's words as I looked down into her dark brown eyes; what she had said sounded almost like a confession. Seven years old, Jennifer came to Fei Xiang Bilingual School for the...

A pink plastic weather station. A two-inch Black Friday telescope pointed at the Moon. A fishtank, lid heavy with chrysalises about to become butterflies. Of the images from my childhood, these and many more stand out as defining moments. I once...

My heart is booming. My pulse is rising. My stomach is churning. A drop of sweat rolls down my face. I can barely breathe. "You've already made it so far Cayley, you can do this," exclaims one of my more stable team members. I take a deep breath...

If at any given moment there is not at least one child screaming, one dog barking, any variation of an alarm sounding and/or someone "practicing" an instrument they don't actually know how to play, something is awry in my house. Generally, any...

I stood there holding my stethoscope, listening to a five year-old child’s back, nervously searching for any abnormality, trying to control my nerves and focus on my work. I shifted my stethoscope to another spot, the sweat on my back now beading...

Riding the elevator down into the aquarium, with the azure shadows refracting off my body, I had never been so alive. Immersed in the aura of the thousands upon millions species of fish, I felt like I was staring right into my own soul and beyond...

“So you want to go to med school. Is it for the money or to appease your parents?” Neither, because money isn’t worth the sacrifice of dealing with insanity and I have only one parent, who cannot be appeased by my attending med school. This was...

While all my extracurricular activities have helped me shape my values, there is one in particular I have enjoyed the most: picking tangerines from my grandmother's orchard. Picking tangerines was often to me simply a burden. I had to wake up at...

Our Socratic reading group is the ultimate unconventional cult, nine curious high schoolers and a college professor gathering every weekend to discuss the practicality of anarchy, the life of the mind, and the cosmological divine. Here, I learned...

The University of Virginia has been good to me. I had the college life of storybooks—lazy afternoons on the Lawn, head-scratching debates about philosophy, and spirited evenings at athletic events. As a third year, I should be looking forward to a...

My favorite childhood activity was bringing my bedroom outside. I would lug out everything I could and drape it throughout the shrubs that lined the apartment property where I lived. There were no trees, so I couldn’t have a treehouse, but I could...

I am at peace on my computer, Photoshop application open, eyes fixated on a 5000 by 7000 pixel window. This window becomes a very special type of canvas. It can be expanded and cropped without any effect on its contents, which are comprised of a...

I sat there staring at it. The so called “blob” of the food world. That infamously taboo food with a worse reputation than Lindsey Lohan. Its unpleasant corners, soft texture, and initial lack of flavor strike fear into the hearts of its...

Today there is a common misconception that gender inequality no longer exists. Yet Stephanie Coontz of the New York Times has analyzed the data and, for me at least, put this misconception to rest in her article “The Myth of Male Decline.” She...

The screen glowed brightly in her face as she would check her Facebook, and wonder why people did this to her. “Who would be mean enough to treat a person like this?”, she would always ask me. The cruel, menacing, and terrifying words that some of...

The pianist plays the final chord, the conductor lowers her hands, and the audience pauses in awe before applauding the beautiful rendition. Three hundred pairs of eyes relax and slowly look around, secretly celebrating what has just been...

As I walk into the kitchen, bleary-eyed, I can hear the television anchor announcing the latest news. I suddenly perk up upon hearing Maria Bartiromo's rapid reports on the latest stock market ups and downs, and I listen attentively as she...

I wake up an hour before the stampede towards the shower begins in my summer camp residence hall. Quietly, I close my dorm door so as to not startle my week-long roommate awake--I had to be alone. My clothes and towel hang on the stall as I brace...

I stare out from the bay, my hip waders sunken into the mushy sand as I admire the smooth and confident glide of a blue heron landing on a rusted rack off the next sandbar. My father and I share an affinity towards nature, as well as an...

The grass brushed against my ankles and my backpack bounced with each step as I walked through the field. Through my sunglasses, I looked towards kids playing what I knew was soccer. With my school, I had traveled to Haiti over Christmas break....

Tightening my grip on the thin paintbrush, I squinted my eyes as I carefully traced the flawless face. My hand shook and the paint bled outside of the brow. In frustration, I set down the canvas to inspect my work. The painting was like a...