Newest College Application Essays

"You're off to Great Places!

Today is your day!

Your mountain is waiting.

So...get on your way!"

Somewhere in a far off town in Australia, these words penetrated the deafening silence that pervaded the room in which I stood, deeply immersed in...

"There's something beautiful at night. There's something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by God who knows what He is doing. They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the...

My unique course of study at Stanford will allow me to contribute to the learning environment at Vanderbilt. In the "Human Genome and Disease" course, Nobel Laureate Paul Berg gave a guest lecture on epigenetic regulation. Afterwards, I spoke to...

Ron is an elderly stroke victim who lives alone in a subsidized apartment in downtown Palo Alto. I assisted Ron with daily tasks such as cleaning the apartment, doing laundry, and going to the store. One day, I took Ron to Longs Drugs to buy food...

Russia had never been bad to me. My eleven years there made for a joyful, carefree childhood. I never thought of my life as wanting despite living on my grandma’s miserly pension for three years. During those last three years of my life in Russia,...

"Those who do not know their opponents’ arguments do not completely understand their own.” My mother had emailed me the quote, saying it reminded her of me. As I read the quote, I saw how it reflected my life. In all my schooling, all my...

I was three years old when my parents chose to emigrate from China to Canada in order for my father to pursue his medical career. It was a difficult journey for my parents because of cultural and language differences and for me, as a small child,...

Music has been an especially important activity for me. Although I have chosen to be involved in a variety of activities, the one that has been most rewarding for me is performing in a band. In junior high school, I organized a band that has since...

Growing up in a family of doctors, I have always been fascinated by the medical field. This fascination has prompted me to involve myself in many science related areas, from taking numerous science classes to participating in the many scientific...

I once delightedly boasted of Dubai’s cohesive society – a medley of well-educated British businessmen, Emiratis adapting their lifestyles to the ever-changing social landscape, Southeast Asian workers fuelling the massive demand for cheap labor,...

Shouting, tantrums, chiding, infuriation; I scuttled back into my room and slammed the door to defy my parents exhortations and advice. What followed was the sulking and tears, complete with the customary introspection. I fashioned the...

I was thirteen, chubby, and small. It was late and it was raining, and I needed to run to the grocery store to get some oven cleaner so my dad could surprise my mom when she came home. I was stopped from completing my honorable task by a guy on a...

The external reflections of my admiration are subtle. A red and blue toothbrush, its handle laced with white plastic webbing, stands among bottles of makeup remover by my sink. A boyish PVC and polyester wallet depicting an agile hero as he swings...

In the past, whenever I have been confronted with a question on an application asking about “contributions of your cultural or ethnic background”, I have always thought that such essay prompts were not written for me. Such topics, I facilely...

Considering that I was hesitant about joining and wanted to quit several times during my freshmen year, the YMCA Youth in Government program has had a huge impact on my life, and is the most influential extracurricular activity I have ever...

For the first time, I was an outcast. The minority. The one who didn’t fit in. I was a speck of white in a sea of black, and everyone around me made sure that I realized that. I was in an unfamiliar country, across the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded...

One of the first pieces of mail I ever received from The University of Chicago grossed me out. It was the size of a postcard, folded up, and had a big coffee stain right on the front. I figured that either a) the mailwoman had spilled coffee on it...

The great passion of my high school years has been debate. One of the reasons that I attended Damien High School in the first place was because of its reputation in competitive debate. I was thirteen years old when I began and I realized very...

Both of my parents came from very different worlds. My mother was born and raised in the impoverished country of Colombia in South America, where she had to help my grandparents take care of her four younger brothers in their small apartment in...

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” -Socrates

As a Philosophy major, perhaps it is of little surprise that I chose this quotation. Nevertheless, I do believe it conveys better than any other who I am and what I value. If Socrates was at all...

As a young boy, perhaps seven or eight years old, I remember watching a certain episode of Batman after returning home from school. In the episode, Batman finds himself in a dream world created by the Mad Hatter. Consequently, both Batman and the...

Cornell University has come to mean something much greater to me than its Ivy League status alone conveys. When I first visited Cornell, I was amazed by the feeling of connectedness the campus emitted. It didn’t seem as though everybody was just...

I stood on my tiptoes, clapping furiously, my mouth open in a joyous scream. The White Sox, my favorite baseball team, had won a critical game while I was in the audience. As the furor of victorious shouts died down, I noticed my friends’ faces;...

“Click. Click. Click. Click.” sounded the metal balls as they ricocheted off one another. I had just begun to play with my “Newton’s Cradle”, a gift that my father had given to me moments prior. A bug-eyed, eight-year-old version of myself...