Amherst College Undergraduate College Application Essays

"Wow," I whispered to myself as I walked into the main doorway of my new high school. I walked through the endless hallways and questioned myself as to why my parents decided to move here, Wuerzburg, Germany, one of the alleged bad schools in the...

From Negative to Positive (Or Positive to Negative?) The lurid confessions of a member of Teeny-Bopper Anonymous

Wow. Wasn't I cool? Since this picture was taken, everything outside of myself - my appearance, my surroundings, even my superficial...

She was the toughest; she was the best. She was also the most influential teacher I have ever had. Ms. William, my sixth grade teacher, was never one to settle for second-best. As a demanding teacher, she hadn’t always been popular. In fact, my...

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...

The colors through the window become inconsequential, only the forms and their faces significant. Through the window of my hometown Kolkata, India I see a half naked child running around on the street. His face depicts childish levity and frolic...

''Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.''

--Attributed to Chinua Achebe, Nigerian novelist and poet

I’d like to beg to differ with Mr. Achebe. Art is not always man’s effort...

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,...

This is the balcony that extends into infinite dimensions. Inside: paintings and the smell of dusk. Lined against the tiled walls are canvases both void and filled. A soft light overhead. There is something extremely calming about occupying this...

Another failed sports season passed: no hits, no touchdowns. I entered 6th grade with my dreams of becoming a jock squashed. Then my parents informed me that I was enrolling in band. Still clinging to my ESPN hopes, I warned my parents that taking...

I stir fried the noodles, steamed the broccoli, pulled pie out of the oven, and set the table. My younger brother Roy put down the forks. We both sat down, and Roy took the first bite. He chewed for a few seconds, looked up at me, and gave me a...

The stage lights burst open, blinding and white. I trembled. I was at the citywide poetry slam, Verselandia, about to perform in front of hundreds.

Earlier in the month, I had qualified through my high school’s contest, which I had signed up for...

When I was ten months old, I grabbed onto the coffee table and hauled myself up, arms shaking, fists clenched, knees wobbling; ten minutes later, much to my parents’ dismay, I was sprinting around the house, choppy bangs flapping in the wind like...

Pools of gold and crimson flooded the front gates, masked by a heavily saturated mist, infused with the scent of crisp cinnamon apples and a warm underlying accent of rich gravy. We were still a week from Thanksgiving, but the vibrant,...

For me the world can have a strangely retentive quality, in which certain places represent the nerve points of my past. When I think of my childhood, I think of the room where I took art lessons, where I first met my art teacher. I see a floral...

I woke up at six that morning. My mom had left an hour earlier to work her two full-time jobs. It was a routine weekend; surrounding me was our ramshackle apartment decorated with sparse furniture, a Hindu temple in the corner, and a telephone I...

It was already 6 PM, and I walked across the classroom, wary of the many fingers tapping away at their keyboards, their mouse clicks, their resizing and editing articles, photos, and captions. It was the day before the newspaper production...

I was shocked by the sound of my own voice.

Having recorded myself, I excitedly pressed play, expecting to validate an acoustic theory I had just read about in physics textbook. As sound travels faster through bone than air, I expected a...

From my upbringing in Northern Ireland, a small corner of the world, I’ve learnt that it’s possible to catch pneumonia and get sunburnt in the course of one afternoon, so I always over pack. So too have I discovered that “I’ll pop the kettle on”...

I’m going to talk to you about my experience being mute. I erased the line, feeling immense anger as I toiled over the right way to tell my story without sounding fraudulent or, worse, inept. The task should have been a simple one, talking about...