Newest College Application Essays

To finish off the junior year, our English instructor told us to compose one last piece concerning our personal beliefs, and I worried about the consequences of reading my controversial paper on homosexuality in front of the class. To do so would...

After being selected as a delegate to the Freedoms Foundation Leadership Conference at Valley Forge, I agonized over whether it would be worth missing a week of school and work. However, the trip exceeded my highest expectations. My opinions,...

I begged my mother to let me wash it off in the car. It was Ash Wednesday and, as a third grader new to public school, the cross of ashes on my forehead burned. My mother told me to be proud that I was Catholic and to remember how lucky I was...

Albert Einstein said, "Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value." I only truly began to understand this quote over the course of the last school year. Until this year, success in high school was never difficult...

Life lessons can sometimes be learned in the strangest of places...even at a soccer match. Going to watch my father play soccer every week was a large part of my childhood. The league he played in was far from high-profile, but there was something...

Full of innocence, I lay in my bed on a Saturday morning, relaxing after a difficult week at school. Suddenly I was awakened as the intercom in my room crackled to life. My parents often used the intercom, but calls this early in the morning were...

"Go to bed, Adelya, it's late." As a child, I heard this command very often. I did not, however, always obey.

I clearly recall the many nights I stayed up well past midnight just so I could finish studying for a test the next day. My routine was...

High school student government is a microcosm of American politics: a group of elected officials makes decisions that will affect and hopefully benefit their peers. They represent the larger student body, and therefore play an extremely integral...

Martians exist! My proof is my brother. On May 3, 1984, he was born John Smith. Four years, seven months, and eleven days later, I joined his family, along with another brother, a Terran, or human. Johnis far different from my Terran brother,...

There I am, sitting, hidden by a black tenderly loved and cared for music stand, surrounded by clamorous and obnoxious noises. Sitting and waiting for what seems like an eternity. To my left I hear skweaks and high pitched screeches. To my right I...

Harlan County, Kentucky, deemed the poorest in the United States, hosts the Capuchin Youth and Family Ministries' (CYFM) Appalachian Mission Program every July. For the past two years I have been a participant. The first year I worked as a manual...

In a day and age when religious persecution might be expected to be a diminishing issue, one might be surprised to realize that it is in fact alive and well. While crusades may no longer be erupting to rid the world of the "non-believers" and...

I defy odds. From birth, doctors predicted bad things for me based on my environment, including that I would not be intelligent, because I lacked proper motor skills and speech proficiency. Today, I have defied those odds, because my mother...

It's electric really, the feeling I get when I know what I want to do to the paper. It's even better when I have the pencil in my hand, loaded with lead, and with plenty of eraser (I'll be using both extensively). It's the thing that makes me feel...

The day before it happened, my father and I went to the historic Bangladesh vs. India cricket match at Bangabandhu National Stadium. It was Bangladesh's 100th international match-thousands of people attended. We were in the stands, intently...

I was finally there. After months of anticipation, the stucco buildings, green lawns, and Spanish moss of the Magic Square came into sight. Excited students and nervous parents (there were so many!) were already in the parking lot, unloading the...

"Live the Fourth!" The Fourth of July you might ask? Not quite. I mean the Fourth day of the Kairos Retreat, when we made resolutions and the Kairos spirit was at its peak. Kairos means a spiritual time-a time that can't be measured in minutes or...

When I started high school, like most freshmen, I was unsure of what I wanted to study in college. I knew that I needed a major that I was interested in and excited me. It had to be something that drove me to be better everyday than I was the...

I'm sure I have the visiting team's attention by the time I finish my first lap around the soccer field. Standing in a circle, contemplating my presence, they venture guesses quietly, "Cross country? Lost? Girl's soccer?" Finishing my second lap,...

St. Augustine tells us, "It is not true to say that a thing rightly done once should not be changed." I know this is true because of my experience with my grandfather's failing health. My grandfather, Sinclair Adam, is a gentleman farmer in...

He wore a black collared shirt with the logo of American royalty, a purple horse, embroidered over the left breast. His hair was glossed and spiked with an expensive gel that smelled like an overripe kiwi. My attention, however, was focused on...

My heart is hammering as sweat drips like tears down the side of my warm, sticky face. Blood, propelled by adrenaline, races throughout my body. Twisting open the bottled water I bought earlier, I sit down on the blue-green grass, looking at the...

Our daily lives are characterized by incidences, changes, perks, and disappointments, and each morning we wait for fate to unfurl. Sometimes an event occurs that changes our whole outlook on life and gives us a new perspective to live by. An event...

I am proud of my African-American heritage. As a teenager in modern-day America it is easy for one to lose touch with the rich culture of their history in an effort to blend into the fast-paced, forward-thinking, modern American culture. But it is...