Newest College Application Essays

There is an incomprehensible secret embodied in the experience of feeling death without dying. It is a secret that I now share with the city of Paris, and every word I write feels like the spilling out of a sacred vow. In the attack on the...

The barrel; nothing but the barrel, thick and menacing, held less than five inches away from my face. In that singular moment , the world died: the early jacaranda blooms died, the sounds of shrieking school children died, the hoarse cries of bus...

Growing up, I was always surrounded by the classical Indian music that my parents sang but I could never understand because it was in Hindi. They often encouraged my sister and me to sing along with them but we were more interested in Taylor Swift...

By 2030, not caring will put 100 million lives at risk in third world countries. By 2050, not caring will cause a fourth of Earth’s species to go extinct. By 2100, not caring will raise the temperature by about 7 degrees Celsius, intensifying heat...

A flock of students surrounded me. I felt fear and confusion. I could hear them asking me questions, but I barely understood anyone; this, in short, was the beginning of my first day of school in the United States. I walked into my math class and...

Newspapers and magazines strewn over the table, heated discussions about the financial markets, and closing prices of the Dow Jones scrawled on post-it notes. One may think that this is an office in a major banking firm, but it’s not—it’s my...

I thought I was going to faint. I was a junior sitting in Senior Chorus, the most prestigious choir at my high school. Sitting among piano prodigies and future opera singers, I could not help but feel out of place among my virtuosic peers. We...

Here, a door; pale and pink. Two boarded windows painted blue to reflect a cloudless day. Here, the field will be perpetually filled with fragrant blooms because that is how we imagine it. I feel eerily calm as I guide little Grace's hand within...

“One more bucket of ears and you can go inside,” Momma said. Those days spent picking corn in midday Mississippi August heat are ones that I remember well. I vividly recall my toes digging into a mix of decomposing potato roots and freshly toiled...

My day is sticky fingerprints on crisp notebook sheets; healing playground rifts and easing the transition from playtime to classwork; overcoming the ice cream monster. Had anyone told me ten years earlier that I would spend much of my time...

Wandering my way through Woodland Walk, I not only found a home at the University of Pennsylvania, but also found clarity within the path I will be striving for in the next four years and beyond. Having dealt with my father passing away at 13,...

The train rambled down the tracks as smoke curled around the windows. It was 1861 and in both education and the country, a revolution was on the brink. A young girl gazed out the foggy window as she clutched a pamphlet in her gloved hand. Boldly...

Upon touring Notre Dame virtually, I fell in love with the majestic, French Revival architectures that entrenched the campus. I fell in love with its Twin Symbols — the Golden Dome and the Basilica — standing sky high, defining Notre Dame’s...

When the cool metal blade of the razor touched my scalp, I realized I had died. I watched with veiled eyes as my mother cut the last, straggling clumps of hair. The girl I glimpsed in the mirror afterwards was an apparition. If I puckered my lips...

The rain pelted the windows outside and steam gently rose from my coffee cup on a cold November night. It was ten o’clock and I was the last person left in the Museum of American Finance. I was almost finished with my culminating research project...

Walking down Commonwealth Avenue for the first time in February, I was not expecting to run into my high school friends, Felex and Adam. After a day of information sessions and tours, I yearned to experience the real BU and asked them for an...

I spent much of the summer in the basement of a Dublin Castle, jaws clenched and synapses firing as the identity of the murderer continued to evade my grasp of reason. The first surprise was not really a surprise but the fact remained astounding...

The wind billows through the eaves and tractors bide their time along country roads. Apples are ready for plucking and cider is brewing at the Rinker farm. The smell of manure during spring and mountains of leaves during autumn—that’s home, every...

Out in the country, past the city limit sign there’s a girl wandering the woods and creeping along the creek traveling down the county line. Her friends are giggling as they boogie in step with radio tunes.

"Boogie" paints a picture of complete...

In June of 1982, with the harsh sun beating down on their small, rural city, my mother’s community danced throughout the streets in her honor, making music with makeshift instruments as they moved. The quiet town, on the outskirts of Bishoftu,...

“Watashi no namae wa Hung Nguyen desu.”

My voice trembled as I nervously introduced myself to my Japanese class.

At first, Japanese was just a bunch of random noises in the anime that I occasionally watched. But as I started to watch more anime...

Sweat dripped from my brow as I carefully set my roll of tape onto the granite kitchen counter in front of me. My masterpiece was finally complete. As I slid down from my stool, I was careful to not let my knobby ten-year-old knees topple into the...

In our increasingly madcap age, the great American pastime has shifted from baseball to pranking. I concur by aspiring to place staplers in jello, just like Jim Halpert from The Office. My creativity isn’t expressed through art but through the...

One day, while browsing through my mail, I came across a pamphlet and large deck of Harvey-Mudd-customized cards, piquing my interest. In many ways, HMC is unique like its advertising tactic of a deck of cards with information about Harvey Mudd on...