Newest College Application Essays

I believe in hiking boots. Stiff, clunky and unapologetically dorky, preferably made of waterproof leather. Neat rows of hiking boots line the back wall of REI. An employee who calls himself a “shoe expert” lists the pros and cons of each pair. “I...

I was confused when I saw “85%” scrawled in red ink on my eighth-grade algebra worksheet despite all of the answers being correct. Underlined at the top of the page were the words "No Doodling!" and a large arrow pointed to a cluster of flowers...

97%. That is the survival rate for thyroid cancer. It’s the first thing I looked up after my diagnosis. I felt like something inside me shattered. I told myself I could live with that because, statistically speaking, I would be okay.

However, my...

As high school graduation inches closer, I find myself contemplating the word legacy. When I joined Dos Pueblos High School’s journalism team, the class was fading. The stories did not matter to the writers, and therefore, did not matter to the...

Waiting in line at the gleaming grand piano, I listen to repetitive scales. Each girl in the choir takes her turn singing along. After each ascent and descent of the duet, the director announces which voice part she will sing in the choir. The...

‘Andrea, from Norway. Pleased to meet you.’

‘Hey. Elen from –’ I stopped short, unable to shake the hand of my to-be-roommate.

First day at high school, and I was already struggling for words to explain my identity.Born in USA. Brought up in...

Sweat dripped off my face, and my body trembled in excitement. Playing along with some of the top high school players in the nation, I yearned to belong. However, as I sat on the flight back to Taiwan after camp, I realized that my mind and heart...

6,876 miles. This might be a hard distance to measure, so let me help you understand how far it is and just what it has entailed. It’s not only how far I’ve travelled almost every summer to see my family, but it’s how far I’ve travelled to become...

Freedom. That is the essence of the Open Curriculum at Brown. As a student committed to engineering but with broad interests and a desire to explore them, I find that nothing excites me more than the opportunity to be the director of my own...

It started when my sister fell off the bed and nearly fractured her skull.‘Trauma to the occipital cortex,’ the doctor told my parents. ‘That explains the vision impairment.’ With the eloquence only a seven year-old could muster, I piped up, ‘I...

Standing before me is Lake Ontario, one of the Great Lakes of North America; a boundary between here and there, or more specifically, the United States and Canada. It is the fourth largest lake in the US by volume, and masks as more of a sea or...

When I am overwhelmed, I remember the words of Wangari Maathai, environmental and political activist. Maathai tells the story of the hummingbird who, when faced with a massive forest fire, carries small drops of water in its beak to extinguish it....

At my school, AP U.S. History has a reputation all its own - difficult, lengthy, overbearing. Still, in comparison to the teacher’s notoriety, the class seems like a piece of cake. You would have thought The Imitation Game was based on the way...

I have two homes, and they could not be more different.

My life in futurism-crazed Dubai is punctuated by my summers, which are spent amid the feeble cleanliness systems and lack of robust infrastructure endemic to places like Kolkata. This...

“I hate coming to this school.” I vividly remember overhearing during the first week at my new school. I couldn't believe someone would say such a thing in America. Back in Japan, students certainly complained about school but never with such...

At the School of Engineering, I hope to concentrate in Mechanical Engineering. I am currently considering the energy conversion or structures tracks.Brown’s program would give me a solid grounding in mechanical and thermal systems, as well as the...

I glared at the plastic contraption before me and tried one last time to summon any telekinesis powers.

Nope. Nothing. The device’s arm stubbornly oscillated at a regular pace, like a mocking tongue across a palate. I sighed dejectedly and shut...

When I was in eighth grade, during the 2012 Presidential Election, I ran to represent President Obama in my American History class’ mock election. Despite the obvious differences between the President and myself, I believed that with preparation,...

If given the opportunity to sit down with any woman and converse for an hour, I would select Jeanine Tesori, the first woman to win the Tony Award for Best Original Score. Tesori is credited with composing the musicals Fun Home, Thoroughly Modern...

I can’t draw, I don’t paint, and I certainly can’t dance, but I can still create art. Video editing is a an art of supreme sensitivity and I have been developing my skills since I was 13 years old. Movies and videos have the power to make you...

Carefully, I move the probe around the patient’s belly. Sliding it on top of piles of gel that I had generously poured until suddenly everyone can hear it…Lub.dub...Lub.dub. Tears of joy roll down my patient’s eyes as she listens to the rhythmic...

From the age of seven, when I first stepped off the train at Grand Central Station and took in a performance of Les Miserables with my mother, there has not been a doubt in my mind that my future would lead me to New York City. With time, the...