Newest College Application Essays

I grew up in the most All-American suburban town imaginable. My father, a former quarterback, married Miss Talladega County; they settled down in Vestavia Hills with the expectation that their first child would be a sweet, Southern belle with a...

It's 4:55 on a Thursday morning when you hear a shrill ring pulse through the room. You rub your eyes groggily, praying that the noise will go away soon, when a dim light blinks on. Roommate #1 climbs out of her bed and finally, blessedly, turns...

The transition between childhood and adulthood is not denoted by a fine line, but sometimes there is a definitive moment that rearranges everything that has gone before and shapes everything that comes after. For me, that moment was the first day...

It’s no secret that millennials want to change the world; an entire generation of young men and women who have been told repeatedly that they have the capacity to accomplish whatever they set their minds to. They are raised to be cognizant of...

While most girls in second grade were playing with their Barbies, I was designing homes. I was the little girl who dreamed of being an architect, who at the time was only concerned about the design of elaborate yet welcoming interiors and...

Thank goodness apartments don’t have emotions. If my one bedroom apartment did, I can guarantee that its paint would be chipping off as rapidly as the layers of my sanity. Every morning, I'd wake up to the sound of my alarm clock simultaneously...

For many of my friends, summer break means swimming at the local pool and hanging out at our downtown movie theater. Yet for me, summer means traveling 6,000 miles to a completely different country, where I speak a completely different language...

Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

The Prince - Machiavelli

Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell

Art of War - Sun Tzu

Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning spoke to me on a deeper, more emotional level than...

As the sunlight began to dim, my panic rose. The street signs were incomprehensible, and any request for assistance only resulted in a barrage of unfamiliar German. I found myself hoping for a rapid rescue, yet I knew that I needed to find my own...

One of my favorite business mantras is from Simon Sinek: "people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." This idea is based on what Sinek calls the "golden circle" of business. The outside of the circle is the "what," the middle is the...

On the top shelf on the far right wall of my closet, there are stacks and stacks of dog-eared, worn-out, bent-up composition notebooks. Well, mostly composition notebooks, but there is some variety -- like a locked plastic purple diary that my...

I was recently on a cramped yet frigidly air-conditioned 12-hour bus ride to Chicago, when I noticed a group of cows grazing under a tree. “It’s crazy, isn’t it?” I said to the woman next to me. “I’ve lived in Tennessee for over a year, and I’m...

Fingers at the ready. Arms at the ready. Feet at the ready. Stomach at the ready. Eyes at the ready. Keys, bow, steps, song, speech – all at the ready to create another person, another emotion, another world. This genesis, this nebula that hatches...

I remember walking down Kreshatik Street on October 31 at 4:30 am, with a couple friends on each side, talking about the party we had just left. Suddenly, I spotted a group of students across the street, running, trying to escape from something....

He reached out, unfurled his hand, and looked up at me with what can only be described as a look of pure desperation. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a crumpled five-dollar bill and handed it to the man. "It's a cold one," I remarked. "God...

The school day is over, which means it's time for ESL American Social Studies. Spread all over the table are primary sources from the Civil Rights Movement. Sitting across from me are Carlos from Mexico and Durgam from Iraq. As a peer tutor, I was...

I was jealous. Sally could draw a perfect circle and I couldn’t. She always created beautifully proportionate people while I sketched a blobby figure with one arm. I tried over and over, listened to instructions, but as hard as I tried I could...

When my iPhone shattered against the pavement, I watched in horror as my $650 investment instantly became a $650 paperweight. Soon after, I stood dumbfounded again, when my local Apple Store provided me with a $169 repair quote. There had to be a...

Behind the camera’s shutter, I am never calm or collected. I am, more often than not, trying to figure out my next shot, my eyes darting from my subject to the light source to a detail of the scene. However, I am perfectly content.

When taking...

I walked into the hospital that morning wearing my red polo and khakis, which I feared made me look far more like a glorified Target employee than a capable intern. As I stepped out of the elevator, I realized that four hours of basic training...

I sat across the room, watching my father in awe as he typed out a document with mind-blowing speed. I had no idea precisely what I was watching him do, of course, since I was only six years old, but still -- Wow. How can someone move his fingers...

If I ever felt like an outcast, now was the time. Loose brown hair, dark eyes, and olive toned skin, my Middle Eastern features were nothing like those of the other 500 or so passengers. As the plane rapidly reached a halt, the flight attendant...

At the top of the page were the words “Rosalind – Piper Hill.” My head began to spin. I had been hoping for Phoebe or Celia, or even Audrey. But I was certainly not expecting the lead. A lead certainly, but the lead? No way. I was expecting a...