Newest College Application Essays

It was my first day of high school- a public high school in Chicago. As I pushed past the sea of people bustling past me to get to my classroom, I felt like a buoy being tossed back and forth by the high tide. Three months prior, I graduated from...

One of the most important books in the world is The Records of the Grand Historian. Written by Sima Qian in the first century B.C., it elucidates more than two thousand years’ worth of Chinese history. The story behind Qian’s masterpiece is...

I was born in the middle of two different social classes. My father’s family consisted of wealthy business owners and stock brokers, while my mother’s side consisted of minimum wage workers. Growing up I was able to get a taste of both sides...

Sophomore year I tried out for my school’s track team. I made the team but never placed high enough in the competitions to earn a varsity letter. I was very disappointed in myself and worked hard in the off-season to change that. I ate healthier,...

Walking out onto the stage, petrified, I hear the director utter in monotone, “Whenever you’re ready.” I figure that I will never be ready, but I decide that I’ve worked too hard to just walk away now. I read off some of the lines that I’ve...

Each morning when I entered my preschool classroom, I would cling to my mother, peering out from behind her legs where I would try to make myself invisible. It was only when guided to the children’s table and given some crayons and paper that I...

So there I was. Peering over the edge I saw nothing but dark, ominous water on top of what seemed to be a 40-foot high cliff. I know, with today’s 300 feet tall roller coasters, skydiving, and other high-risk adventurous activities for the typical...

I had thought of living in simplicity and happiness before, but I never understood its significance until I heard this sentence. “I will not allow you to come to my house. I am poor.” I stared and looked at him as my eyes filled with tears,...

I learned to write essays like prefabricated housing and sensible shoes—standardized, impeccable, identical. No flight of fancy dared disturb the military precision of my supporting arguments as they marched in brigades of four to five sentences,...

“On my honor, I will do my best, to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the scout law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.” The scout law is how I incorporate Artes,...

I left my house on the first day of middle school wondering if I would fit in and if my iPod was fully charged. By the end of the day I was wondering if my mother would be alive by the time I got to seventh grade. I still vividly remember parts of...

In the “journey to be oneself,” people discover many things about themselves—both good and bad. This kind of self-revelation makes many people afraid to venture on the journey. Throughout life, I have experienced many different events including...

As a blonde cheerleader, I've chuckled to myself when instructors who don't yet know me refrain from calling on me the first week of class. I guess the uniform and pom-poms give them a subconscious stereotype that I will be unable to answer the...

Whenever the world turns on its head and things don’t go as planned, my mother consoles me by saying “I feel like the Rock of Gibraltar.”

My family visited that monstrous slab of stone two summers ago. The sheer enormity of it was overwhelming. My...

I often find myself momentarily stunned by small, jewel-like moments that make up this life. For this I must thank books.

I always loved to read, for reading allowed me to contemplate life in a way that reality never did. The novelty lay, I think,...

Turning around the sharp corner and onto the straightway, the car next to me, number 32, inched closer and closer to the inside of the track, forcing me to move to the outside. While trying to speed up my pace around the next curve, my car’s front...

The path to becoming a successful USMA cadet and Army officer must start before being admitted to the Academy. A potential cadet has to prepare by taking rigorous courses in high school and being successful in them. My class load, which includes...

After riding my bicycle around campus to start off the morning, I return to Cazenova Hall to prepare for the day. I leave my dorm and make my way to the Lulu to meet a couple of my friends for breakfast. We met when we were only freshmen at...

Beep.

Beeep. My mind begrudgingly detached itself from the safe nothingness of the subconscious, wondering, as any sane entity would, why it was waking up at 6:00 on a crisp Friday morning. A few confusing seconds later, as usual, I remembered: I...

One year ago, on a muggy summer morning, I boarded a plane with some of my classmates and teachers, headed for Ecuador. The trip was intended to reveal a different world to us, as well as aid a local elementary school in a state of disrepair. A...

I was practically born on the river. Both of my parents were extreme whitewater raft guides, and they passed on their love of the river and nature in general to me. From a young age, my parents took me rafting on rivers like the San Juan, the...

Eye color was evenly divided in my family before I was born: two sets of blue eyes and two sets of green eyes. My birth would have traditionally tipped the scales, but I was born with one blue eye and one green. This anomaly was originally...

"Darcy, why do we have to read this book?" I complained after school. "This book isn’t just stupid, it has no relevance in my life at all." Because she was used to me asking questions like this, her only response was, "Because I told you. And I'm...

And there I was: sitting in front of a school computer on a cheap plastic chair, my hands resting on a desk stained to look like wood. It was early in the morning and in the middle of my second semester of my freshman year of high school. Little...