Newest College Application Essays

It is raining, and I am measuring the length of Frida Kahlo’s unibrow with a ruler – eleven inches and a half. When I was ten, my fifth grade teacher Mrs. Hoef said that ancient Egyptians had pharaohs and priests. My mother tells me that Frida was...

During my freshman year of high school, I fell in love.

My English teacher assigned Jane Eyre as our last reading of the year. Great, I thought, another pretentious novel about 19th century English society that the BBC adapts for television every...

Slowly walking down the stairs, wiping the sleep from my eyes, I head directly towards the kitchen. The cold metal mixing bowl meets my hand as I remove it from the cupboard. Struggling to make it to the counter with my hands full of ingredients,...

Muted pastels climbed sluggishly into the sky that morning, pale pinks and periwinkles barely peeking through the marine layers of Imperial Beach. It was the kind of morning ideal for lounging in pajamas. And yet as dawn shed its light, I found my...

The line between water and sky is two shades of black. Silence hides between the crevices of elements, and I convince myself that I can weigh the air.

I cannot see my body or my paddle or my kayak, but I am kayaking.

The trees’ shadows reflect on...

There I sat, an American-born Indian boarding a flight to Guatemala with Japanese anime loaded on my phone and a Wheelock’s Latin textbook in hand. At only 15, I was somewhat culturally aware, but I felt culturally confused. My skin said I was...

While opportunity cost is what we must give up in order to attain what we desire, I’m sure that there is no opportunity cost of attending Penn. From research, volunteering, and publications to distinct majors, the opportunity cost of Penn is...

People love to complain about how “useless” mathematics is in everyday life:

•“How will cubic factoring help me get my dream job?”

•“How is the quadratic formula going to stop global warming?”

Typical.

If not mathematics, they often set their...

A middle aged woman enters the riding arena with what looks like a rag doll draped over her forearms. Her face has the furrowed brow of melancholy, but her tone is hopeful when she speaks to me. “Esta es mi hija Mili (this is my daughter Mili),”...

We are live in five! Four! Three! Two! One!

“Jean, you’re directing tomorrow.”

I look at my teacher seriously, nodding. However, I was inwardly jumping with joy at the prospect of leading the whole broadcast.

Let me start from the beginning. Back...

"This is a nightmare," I thought. Sean was on the ground wincing in pain and blood was slowly leaking through his spandex. A million things raced through my mind but I stopped, took a deep breath, collected my thoughts and got to work. Sean had...

To most people, a costume is a few layers of carefully constructed material that conveys a character or historical period. To me it is a vessel of teleportation that permits me to explore the personalities of flirts, cowards, evil geniuses, and...

The notion that Emory stands alone, discrete and disconnected from Atlanta, is a remarkably simple misconception. A swift breath of the crisp, unadulterated Georgian air clouds any association of the institution with a Metropolitan hub. But a...

I think I was Canadian in a different life. Not because of my love of French, though strong, or my craving for maple syrup, though incessant; no, this Canadian lifestyle manifests itself through a kind of hockey mania. While my friends enjoy...

If I had a dollar for every time I heard, “Wait, you aren’t white?” I would probably be a millionaire. Unfortunately, dollars do not shoot at me whenever I hear that question. To clarify, I am half Puerto Rican, half Cuban, and half...

When I was sixteen years old, I stayed for two weeks in the heart of the third arrondissement with a bronze-colored, balding man named Antoine and a white cat named Snodgrass. My mother was there too, of course, and it was technically a bed and...

I'm not usually one to disrupt a class.

It was a Monday morning in my first-period freshman health seminar. The lights were low, half the class was already asleep, and the 20-year-old television was slowly gearing up to play some low-budget video...

As the Chinese saying goes, “he who stays near vermilion gets stained red; he who stays near ink gets stained black.” If one were to take that literally, I would practically be a rainbow. It is widely held that the environment that one grows up in...

I have been led to believe that for most, the airport is compulsory misery, a means to an end, on par with a visit to the DMV. But for me, alone in the airport, amidst the chaos of mankind, I am entranced. Perhaps it’s my desire for independence,...

Even at 6:30 in the morning, with blurry eyes, wet hair and a to-go mug of tea, I always find that my breath is taken away by the sight of my bus stop. It faces the Chesapeake Bay, looking over a stretch of grass that slopes down to the water. On...

I have weak eyes, strained but experienced; they peer through windows of thick, -11.75 prescription lenses.

They have curiously looked outside during countless road trips, widening in awe at the giant redwoods of Yosemite; marveling at the...

There was a gleam and bright blue spark in my teacher’s eyes as she taught piano. The young student looked at her in excited amazement, a smile spreading across her face, like the smile of a mother seeing her newborn baby for the first time. This...

When I used to fall asleep as a toddler, my mother would put on old Punjabi songs. Apparently, I always woke up doing bhangra. That’s where it all started, my passion for all things dance. My first stage performance came when I was seven. I...

He brutally murdered his sister. Driving intoxicated in the waning hours of the night, he recklessly swerves in and out of lanes until he finally loses control and rams his car into a tree. Save for a few cuts and bruises, he escapes unscathed....