Newest College Application Essays

“You know how in Chinese, the first character for swan…”

“No.”

Stop right there. I do not know anything about the characters for swan. Turning to my classmate, I repeat the phrase for the hundredth time in my life: “See… I don’t speak Chinese.”

It was an excellent idea in theory—the fishing wire would be released from some unknown mechanism, invisible to the audience, and the paint strip leaves would fall, revealed the bare, jagged-looking trees that were supposed to make up our creative...

“Entonces, Max, ¿dime porque has venido a España?”

I stared blankly at my host Dad while trying to catch a glimpse of how large his moustache really was, as he glanced over his shoulder towards me, his car narrowly avoided the oncoming traffic....

A girl drops in her seventh Alka-Seltzer tablet, still perplexed that her cough medicine can transform her mundane plastic bottle into a colorful lava lamp.

“Again!”

Five boys laugh as their Coca-Cola rockets spiral through the air. The 300 kids...

It’s May 5, a typical Thursday. Your alarm rings. You sit up, check your phone, and spot a Facebook viral video on Holocaust Memorial Day. It's not an ordinary day. Plugging in your headphones, you brace yourself and hit play.You see a black...

It’s 8:00 am. I open my shades and admire the view from my Warren Towers dorm: sailboats drifting along the Charles River. This was the sight I woke up to every morning during my six weeks at BU’s high school honors program last summer. When my...

“So, you’re like a plant, right?”

Yep, exactly. My name is Katia, my favorite color is aubergine, and I’m secretly a plant because I don’t experience sexual attraction. How did you know?

I found out I was asexual the summer after sophomore year....

While my own romantic ramblings have done little to either confirm or deny the existence of love at first sight, my affair with the passive voice began long before we even met. We did not have our first formal introduction until my freshman year...

Consumed by exhaustion, agony, and stress, my dad silently plods toward his old recliner and sinks into it. His delivery route had seen five extensions in the past year, and the USPS management was attempting to enforce a sixth. Severe gout and...

I want to change the cynical, bitter stigma attached to politics. Many only see corruption and greedy lobbying, but politics is my outlet to solve the growing problems of our modern world. Nothing else has the potential to affect the lives of...

I'm not completely tied to one academic field, and I'm not afraid to embrace it. This notion has its roots in my 10th grade English class. Personally, I believe the class should be renamed Honors English, Philosophy, and Anthropology with a Dash...

Distant and peaceful, unscathed by technology, surrounded by countless pine trees and multiple lakes lies a small family run resort that is known as Pine Lake Manor to some but known as peace on earth to myself. The sheer beauty of the countryside...

Twenty-five familiar faces stare at me as I pull down the whiteboard to start the day's lesson on how to use if/else statements to follow a black line. Teaching robotics every weekend at the Catholic Church off of Paseo Padre Parkway every...

I walk to the waiting area and call, “Michelle,” and she follows me into a big room with three beige, reclining leather chairs. “Have a seat,” I urge, directing her as if I’m a hostess. “Are you ready?” She nods her head; her shoulders tense up,...

At my Kaiser SYEP Internship this summer, I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Calvin Wheeler, the physician in chief for Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Fremont, CA. In our conversation, we talked about the future of the health care...

In a 1957 interview, Ustad Ahmed Jan Thirakwa, a legendary tabla (an Indian percussion instrument) player remarked that “rhythm is the essence of life. Without rhythm, man can not move a step forward in any sphere of activity.” He went on to point...

Everything happens in the Miller family kitchen. It’s here that we celebrate birthdays, cram 40 Thanksgiving guests (even though there’s plenty of room to spread out), endlessly listen to the Eagles, and most importantly have the serious family...

From the age of five, I've had an irrational fear of heights. Maybe because, as a short child, everything seemed to tower over me. Or maybe because, as a Floridian, I had not known any height above sea-level until later in my life. As a boy, my...

Before last October, I crafted artwork in a way that I now find stifling to the creative process. I devised pieces in a manner that I can only describe as linear: I would imagine a scene, create different compositional sketches, and then draw and...

The sun set, while a blend of indigos, rich plums, and the deepest blacks carpeted the sky; headlights lit up the parking lot as crowds entered what is normally a Jewish temple, but for the night was the Belmont High School Art Show. Stomach...

"Areh bache! Return to class!" The teacher's booming voice couldn't stop them. The students, identically dressed in white polo shirts, navy shorts, and polished shoes, climbed on top of one another to see if they could catch a glimpse. "There it...

I never once thought that swinging my arms to a beat would transform me. Of course, I knew that being a drum major would consist of constant conducting, but keeping tempo was only scratching the surface of the duties I was responsible for. I...

“Please rise for the national anthem and the presentation of the colors.” Immediately, the thousands of people attending this Memorial Day program rise in reverent silence. It’s 9:30 in morning, the sun illuminates the Star-Spangled Banner, and...