Newest College Application Essays

“So you want to go to med school. Is it for the money or to appease your parents?” Neither, because money isn’t worth the sacrifice of dealing with insanity and I have only one parent, who cannot be appeased by my attending med school. This was...

While all my extracurricular activities have helped me shape my values, there is one in particular I have enjoyed the most: picking tangerines from my grandmother's orchard. Picking tangerines was often to me simply a burden. I had to wake up at...

Our Socratic reading group is the ultimate unconventional cult, nine curious high schoolers and a college professor gathering every weekend to discuss the practicality of anarchy, the life of the mind, and the cosmological divine. Here, I learned...

The University of Virginia has been good to me. I had the college life of storybooks—lazy afternoons on the Lawn, head-scratching debates about philosophy, and spirited evenings at athletic events. As a third year, I should be looking forward to a...

My favorite childhood activity was bringing my bedroom outside. I would lug out everything I could and drape it throughout the shrubs that lined the apartment property where I lived. There were no trees, so I couldn’t have a treehouse, but I could...

I am at peace on my computer, Photoshop application open, eyes fixated on a 5000 by 7000 pixel window. This window becomes a very special type of canvas. It can be expanded and cropped without any effect on its contents, which are comprised of a...

I sat there staring at it. The so called “blob” of the food world. That infamously taboo food with a worse reputation than Lindsey Lohan. Its unpleasant corners, soft texture, and initial lack of flavor strike fear into the hearts of its...

Today there is a common misconception that gender inequality no longer exists. Yet Stephanie Coontz of the New York Times has analyzed the data and, for me at least, put this misconception to rest in her article “The Myth of Male Decline.” She...

The screen glowed brightly in her face as she would check her Facebook, and wonder why people did this to her. “Who would be mean enough to treat a person like this?”, she would always ask me. The cruel, menacing, and terrifying words that some of...

The pianist plays the final chord, the conductor lowers her hands, and the audience pauses in awe before applauding the beautiful rendition. Three hundred pairs of eyes relax and slowly look around, secretly celebrating what has just been...

As I walk into the kitchen, bleary-eyed, I can hear the television anchor announcing the latest news. I suddenly perk up upon hearing Maria Bartiromo's rapid reports on the latest stock market ups and downs, and I listen attentively as she...

I wake up an hour before the stampede towards the shower begins in my summer camp residence hall. Quietly, I close my dorm door so as to not startle my week-long roommate awake--I had to be alone. My clothes and towel hang on the stall as I brace...

I stare out from the bay, my hip waders sunken into the mushy sand as I admire the smooth and confident glide of a blue heron landing on a rusted rack off the next sandbar. My father and I share an affinity towards nature, as well as an...

The grass brushed against my ankles and my backpack bounced with each step as I walked through the field. Through my sunglasses, I looked towards kids playing what I knew was soccer. With my school, I had traveled to Haiti over Christmas break....

Tightening my grip on the thin paintbrush, I squinted my eyes as I carefully traced the flawless face. My hand shook and the paint bled outside of the brow. In frustration, I set down the canvas to inspect my work. The painting was like a...

Dairy products crushed my dreams. My pediatrician delivered the terrible news: she said that my constant stomach aches had been caused by a dairy allergy that had, until recently, lain dormant. This development would be a tough pill for any...

As I walked through the door there she stood, staring into oblivion with a dazed look on her face. Alice was my first Adaptive student, and the only discernible sound that she emitted was "ribbit." I was intrigued, but not surprised, because the...

We climbed out of the van and into the lush Thai jungle, overgrown and wild, unlike anything in America. The soothing trill of the locusts was met by complete silence, aside from the deep breaths of the colossal creatures across the road and the...

Maggi is desire. Maggi is beautiful. There are few things I wouldn’t give up to have Maggi. Just so things are clear - Maggi is a brand of instant noodles.

Every night in our dormitories, my friends and I used my kettle and cooked up exactly these...

As a volunteer fireman and EMT trainee, I have witnessed archaic machinery’s fatal effect on lives and buildings. In my short time with the Great Neck Vigilant Fire Company, I have already begun to outline prototypes to help my colleagues ensure...

According to tradition, every Chinese New Year children receive lucky money in red envelopes from older relatives and friends. In my toddler years, finding the crisp, red envelopes embossed with gold characters to be aesthetically superior to and...

A few Thanksgivings ago, my mom decided to buy a whole pig and roast it herself. Unfortunately, the pig had a ghastly aroma which filled the whole house, and everyone immediately scolded her for the acrid smell ruining their Thanksgiving meal....

I step into the studio, a room dominated by a towering record collection and the flashing fluorescent lights of a soundboard. It’s a very small room, but its endless possibilities for transmitting different types of sound make it seem larger than...

The stench of a burnt building polluted the air. Children huddled around the damage, confused, even though the fire was forty-eight hours behind them. What had been a recently remodeled apartment project just six short years earlier had been...