Columbia University Undergraduate College Application Essays

I discovered the philosopher dormant in me when introduced to TOK in grade 11, where we learned about the means of acquiring knowledge. Both science and philosophy, as I realized, aim to unravel the basis of our existence. String theory proves its...

One afternoon, I bought a cheap Lego kit off the street. The bright colored blocks fitted naturally, forming a miniature Qutub-Minar, leaning like the real one. That marked a life-long marriage between me and Mechanical Engineering.

My interest...

I watched Dion walk slowly into my classroom for her first tutoring session. She held her hands clamped tightly over her mouth, dropping them only to introduce herself, and then immediately bringing them back up to cover her face as before.

If I...

I don’t know how exactly I fell in love with neuroscience, just that “The Brain!” was my favorite episode of Bill Nye, that I’d invariably perk my ears up during sleepy car rides whenever I heard neuroscience being discussed on NPR, and that I’d...

“¡No podemos, mi amor!” Recently, while visiting my abuela, she told me she couldn’t afford to buy me my favorite caramelo. Growing up, I spent most of my summers with her in Argentina. On our walks back from the farmers market, we would always...

The circumstances surrounding my family are defined by an absence of choice. At age 11 my abuelita dropped out of school to begin working as a full-time maid, a job she didn’t choose to have but had to have in order to support her family. At age...

My backyard is my studio, and the lush, green grass is my stool.

C.

With one powerful strum, my surroundings come to life: a gust of wind emerges; birds sing in harmony; dandelions dance in unison to my tune, frolicking through the sky. As I sway...

When my great-grandmother was on her deathbed, I heard her speak for the first time. Through her shaking words and glittering gaze, she transported me to her teenage years. Describing living during the era of Rafael Trujillo, a time of harmful,...

My pencil sketches of human head sculptures filled countless pads of paper. Desperately, I tried to recreate in each face the intangible aspects of emotion that continuously eluded me. I drew faces over and over, telling myself that with more...

I search “how to grieve properly” in the naive but hopeful belief Google knows the answer. An article tells me “broken crayons still color.” This strikes me as not only condescending but false. I am in pain and I am healing, but I am not broken....

My mom loves people-watching. Every time we step inside a downtown café she insists on sitting by the windows.

I initially deemed the hobby strange and senseless, but people-watching has taught me to look outside myself—to witness the pigtailed...

Every full moon, my family would make offerings to our deceased ancestors. As the eldest son of the eldest son, I am given the distinct honour of having my name be the first called when praying to our ancestors. Even though I was younger than my...

I once believed my extraordinary skill with numbers would take me to great heights and greater happiness. I was wrong.

Numbers- quantitative indicators, widely believed to factor the quality of one’s life - galvanized significant achievements, but...

The first time I tried to bale hay was a colossal failure. I walked into the job with the naive feeling of “Oh, this will be easy” and that it would earn me some gas money. I came home my first day smelling like sweat and Alpaca dung, and so...

In the corner of my room sits my grandfather’s diary: soft, well-worn, and cracked. The first entry, written in English, is dated “June 1st, 1970,” in the halting, elaborate script of a man accustomed to Bengali. The last entry, dated “November...

I have to speak up and say something. No, I don’t.

These were the thoughts that battled in my mind as I sat still in my chair. The spacious classroom seemed suddenly like a restrictive cage. For two days in homeroom, the entire school was...

There’s a wall near my grandparents’ home in Kolkata that’s stood for decades. Spray-painted on it, in carmine-colored dye, is an enormous hammer and sickle, a reminder of the Communist Party’s stranglehold over the area’s regional politics for...

The first thing I noticed about Columbia University was the cherry blossoms, strewn across the ground, plucked from their branches by a rainstorm that left the streets of New York damp and glistening. In Japan, cherry blossoms symbolize ephemera—...

I showed up to school in thongs today... no not that type of thong. Indeed, Australians call flip flops, thongs. As my physcis teacher told me he 'reckons' I should take off my thongs and put on 'runners' (i.e. sneakers) to avoid labratory...

I did not realize life could be so fragile and unpredictable until my grandmother was diagnosed with lung cancer. With social security as her only form of income, my family was burdened with extreme financial pressure. It was through this...

While we discussed how the Roman empire helps examine identity, I was disheartened that ToK lessons were coming to an end with the course of IBDP. This was until I discovered Columbia’s core curriculum. Divergently debating external focalization...