Newest College Application Essays

I was a nine-year-old novelist. No really, I was. Granted, it wasn’t professionally published and my first book was as sophisticated as you can imagine from a child but, nonetheless, I’m proud of my first written fiction piece. My book was called...

I woke up at six that morning. My mom had left an hour earlier to work her two full-time jobs. It was a routine weekend; surrounding me was our ramshackle apartment decorated with sparse furniture, a Hindu temple in the corner, and a telephone I...

I came of age underneath the faded awnings of stalls that sold peppers and crayfish; boiled pears and ripe ears of corn. The older women smiled at me as I, surreptitiously, tried to avoid the animal droppings that littered the market roads. Theirs...

From Ohio to Kentucky to Massachusetts, some may call me crazy for having three different trees as my best friends, but I assure you that I am perfectly sane. For my first birthday, my grandparents flew to Ohio and gave me my first birthday...

A semicolon, and a brace there. Done! I hit the “Compile and Run” button, my first ever computer program has printed out the famous “Hello World.”

When I was ten years old, I found a book on “Windows” operating system from my parents’...

On September 25, 2010, my parents agreed that shaving my head would be an effective disciplinary measure against my growing indifference towards my studies. It was a scaldingly hot day in Lagos. My mother drove down the old Ikoyi bridge that would...

As Tai moved through the strange garden, scarcely breathing in wonderment, I moved with him. When Tai’s classmates mocked him for drinking tea with his grandmother instead of attending sporting events, I flinched as though I was the recipient of...

The four of us sit still for a full minute, too humbled to move or to speak. My hand finds its way to the door handle and I cringe as the car opens with a low clunk, interrupting the total silence. I walk to the edge of the lookout to survey the...

I tried to distribute the weight of my body evenly in the soles of my Crocs. My hair was contained in a cap and my mouth was smothered by a cotton mask. Each time I exhaled, the mask filled with the smell of the coffee on my own breath. The...

Santa didn't always come down my chimney on December 25.

I worried when my mom said my dad had to work on Christmas day, but she had a simple solution in mind. She made a phone call to the North Pole, and Santa kindly agreed to bring our presents...

When the credits are over and most of the audience is gone, I am still stuck in my seat waiting for something to happen. Then the projector starts buzzing again and the screen lights up with a final bonus-scene the director has decided to bless us...

The vibrant skyline stood dead. It was 4:30 A.M. and life ceased to exist on the streets of Shanghai. The sunrise peaked through the jungle of buildings across the river and shined onto our faces. I stared at the skyline, thinking how much the...

A single road escapes from the bustle of the commercial corridor that is Raymond Njoku Street. This lesser known road leads into a neighbourhood known as ‘Manuwa’. Here, wooden kiosks that sell soap, bread, and mosquito-repellant coils are the...

From the commercial corridor of Raymond Njoku street, a lesser known road strays from the bustle that typifies Nigeria’s capitalist hub. This road leads into a cul-de-sac where wooden kiosks selling bread, musk, and mosquito-repellent coils are...

I never believed there could be such a big world hidden in such a tiny cube. Staring at the Rubik’s Cube sitting next to my computer monitor made me remember my destiny with it. When I was nine years old, I saw my cousin solving the Rubik’s Cube...

At the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, Japanese runner Shizo Kanakuri dropped out midway through the marathon after feeling like he could no longer keep running. He simply took a boat home without telling anyone, and the race officials assumed he had...

At 12:05 she emerged at the door of the classroom. In her hands she held my future, and yet, with an irreverence that made me flinch, she shook out the folded sheet she held in two brisk motions as she entered. “Here are the results of the class...

“Ridiculously disrespectful,” I mumbled to myself. I’d just seen two students stealthily looking into their desks, utterly disinterested. Shocked by their distracting whispers, which rose above the sound of my voice and the harsh scratches of my...

Teaching myself how to play music has illuminated my greatest skills: being a didactic learner and a divergent thinker. I have been involved in music my whole life, fiddling with any instrument I could get my hands on. I currently own three...

At the end my junior year, in my AP United States History class, I was assigned a group film project in which I learned several important life skills. With this project, I took creative leadership to create a satirical film about Dorothea Dix and...

My work area watches straight out of Mad Men. Its dark lacquered complete and calculated legs give it a 60's vibe in the midst of the tan covering and orange dividers of my lounge room. A defensive tangle, covered with Sharpie imprints and X-acto...

My glistening mouth is frozen in a wide grimace; my eyes peer down into my little white book. My mother has asked me to read for her and I am determined to do so, despite my younger brother's distracting presence. This is my mother's first...

Thursday afternoons in Edgewood College were synonymous with several things: assessment tests, pans of limp spaghetti in the vast dining hall, and the constant whir of the gardener’s mowing machine. However, these seemed pale in comparison to the...

Look at her.

I swallowed nervously and raised my eyes to regard the figure before me. A girl stared back at me with an expression of sorrow etched into her features. As I raised my hands to my cheeks, she did too, flinching as my fingertips...