Bryn Mawr College Undergraduate College Application Essays

"Angelina, you're 18 going on 45" - that's my best friend, Bailey's, favorite expression. What most people don't understand, though, is that those qualities of mine that make me seem older are simply the result of a rather unusual upbringing. Of...

Ping! The elevator doors opened on Floor Nine, and I was in another world. Leaving the chaos of panicking patients and bustling doctors in the floors below, I found myself walking down a deserted hallway.

This was my first day volunteering at the...

“Get out, and never return to this family.”

Again, Dad caught Mom with her secret lover. It is even more unacceptable in China, a rather conservative country, to have extra-marital affairs. Mom said nothing. An hour later, she walked out with four...

I could not understand. There was no sign of trash on the streets. There was no trace of graffiti on the benches or walls. Everything was impeccably clean and simple in the middle of Stockholm, Sweden, with its 780,000 inhabitants. It is still a...

It had been raining and windy all morning. The conditions were not ideal for a college tour, but off I went to see Bryn Mawr. Upon my arrival on campus, I was captivated by the women at Bryn Mawr. These women looked confident, focused, and...

“Where did you go to college, Ms. Jennifer?” is a question I get often at lunch mentoring. The kids I work with are less focused at times with why I’m there and instead want to know everything about me. Instead of giving them a long spiel about...

I hate sitting in a classroom and sensing the hesitation and self-consciousness of the other girls, something I fight against feeling myself. The silence continues until a male peer speaks, and the conversation continues between him and his...

I cannon-balled into reading in first grade and have not emerged to catch my breath yet. Reading is the medium through which I grow. Books have swept me light years and alternate realties away, but have always returned me with more understanding...

The soft reminder of warm light, the neat rows of novels and biographies and volumes of poetry against mahogany shelves back to back in a literary continuum… I walk further into Barnes and Noble. Swim in circles around the small brown tables in...

Think about a neighborhood. The clumsy, haphazard houses are chock-full of individual life and experience. The cars whiz busily down the street, past gargantuan rows and corners of houses and apartments brimming with families, stories, and people....

In kindergarten, I was a cyborg. At least, with wire glasses and a clanky metal leg brace, my classmates thought I was. They thought cerebral palsy was a disease that made you part robotic; mostly because I led them to believe that. For in-school...

Thud!

The sudden noise interrupted the flow of dynamic movement. My passport had slipped onto the floor with the documents required for the flight. I let out a small sigh as I put the things back onto the desk.

Growing up as a third-culture kid,...