Newest College Application Essays

All my life, I've considered myself an American. Born to a Jewish-American father and a Japanese mother, I've been surrounded by two cultures in drastically unequal proportions. I never understood what it really meant to have more than one...

Perfection. Boredom. Anxiety. There is probably a subconscious reason for my nail biting, but the origin of this habit has been lost with the years of my childhood. Regardless, it reflects my consistency as a person and my devotion to familiarity....

When I was nine years old, my father proposed my first official, self-building challenge. I had fallen in love with a five-year-old pygmy goat named Jake while at the county fair in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Jake and I were even on the evening news...

June 16, 2000 -- My sense of uncertainty had never been so overwhelming, my emotions never so mixed. Born seven weeks early on what I now view as a blessed day, my youngest brother, initially referred to as “Baby Malone,” hung on for dear life. He...

One of the most significant reasons I want to attend Michigan State University is for the beloved “college experience.” To me, the best part of this experience is meeting people that I would have never met in my small hometown of Memphis,...

I am currently seeking admission to the history program at Montclair State University. As a prospective student, I believe Montclair to be the perfect fit for my educational goals. Earlier this year, I attended an open house at the university; to...

I had a dream last night that my most revered mentors came together to weave their unique threads into the fabric that ultimately became my Common Application essay.

Kurt Vonnegut, my favorite novelist, was in charge of the introduction to this...

As a young child, I always experienced awe and inspiration through art. Even twenty minutes of finger painting or dabbing emerald green petals with soap paint in the bathtub or doodling with chalk on the sidewalk reflected my passion as a young...

Have a minute? Good. Because I never do. I spend every available moment of my life organizing and directing a group of 25 juniors and seniors in the news studio at my high school. If I am not in the process of assisting my fellow students,...

A wave of feelings crashed through my mind as my eyes confronted the horror. Living, breathing animals were reduced to commodities before my eyes as workers shoved turkeys into crates and slammed piglets headfirst onto concrete floors. I could not...

"On Thursday," announced my religion teacher, "we will be going to the zoo to find our animal totems." For those that don’t know, an animal totem represents the Native American belief that each person has a connection to a specific animal. I was...

I sometimes daydream about how my life would have been if I led the carefree life of the average teenager. Then I snap back into reality, realizing that life is never average. There are always obstacles to overcome. My transition into high school,...

I have been raised since the early stages of my childhood to be a generous and morally sound individual. My parents persistently ingrained in me basic and fundamental Christian virtues: charity, humility, and selflessness. This value-oriented...

Every morning before I go to school, I take my dog, Buxton, on a walk around the neighborhood. It is a very mundane task, but because of the struggle I faced to finally own Buxton, the time I spend with him each morning is special to me. I had...

Michelangelo, perhaps the most renowned painter of the Renaissance, once said: “A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.” I interpret this quote to mean that art is created with the intention to convey ideas and express emotions as...

When I look back upon my life, I think of many things. I think of football and how it means the world to me. I think of school and how even though I hate waking up for it, in reality, I don’t know what I would do without it. I think of my friends...

Here it is: my journal entry for October 8, 2010. In applying to college, I have written countless essays, each one carefully crafted to fit with what I thought each school would want me to say. Well, this one is different. Nothing is specially...

My grandfather’s hands hardly appeared photogenic. They were red, cracked, and rough, and they often bore cuts and scratches from whatever mechanical object he had last worked on. I knew those hands from an early age. They used to slap my back as...

“This year,” Mr. Stelfox exclaimed confidently as he addressed the room of eighth-grade students, “I will uncover your innate love of science and technology.” By exposing us to the practical side of science, he did just that. Every morning we...

When the dice directed me to yet another vacant property on the Monopoly board, I recklessly continued to invest. Young and naïve, I thought this was a foolproof tactic for winning easily. It was a strategy that I even attempted to conceal from my...

On my eighth birthday, my parents forcefully stripped me from my native China, forsaking the familiar, overcrowded landscape of towering skyscrapers and chaotic traffic in order to venture into a peculiar and alien territory known as Vancouver....

Henry David Thoreau said, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” Two people can look at the same situation but see something entirely different. In the grand span of my 17 years of existence, I have learned that attitude is a...

It was to my temporary Italian address that a package arrived in mid-November. Even though it had been only a couple of months, I had yearned for something to read as a respite from the unending flow of Italian, which inundated my still-untrained...

There is a special bond that forms between a dog and its owner. Sandy and I were no exception. That was why I wasn't really surprised when my mom told me the news. In a way, I already knew.

My family got Sandy when I was six, so she was a part of...