Harvard University Undergraduate College Application Essays

I gaze at the pieces of an intricate puzzle: A stone Indian elephant on my desk, and a pale Korean doll on the shelf above it, draped in crimson and gold, with flowing black hair. The wall is adorned with my name on a sheet of white silk, my name...

I didn’t have much to say when I was very young.

In fact, according to family legend, I didn’t utter so much as a single word for the first three years of my life.

Naturally, my mom and dad began frantically seeking the expertise of speech...

“I HATE science.”

Poor, unsuspecting Mrs. Lato. When she cheerily asked us to jot down our interests in science, I penned my sentence of outright rejection. This eleven-year-old clearly did not share the passion of my new science teacher.

Now, had...

Wedding bells were ringing in the background, and my fingers were deftly picking their way through the Rubik's Cube concealed under my blazer. The last wedding I had attended was in fourth grade -- a bubble boy in a lavender suit. Today, my only...

Even at 6:30 in the morning, with blurry eyes, wet hair and a to-go mug of tea, I always find that my breath is taken away by the sight of my bus stop. It faces the Chesapeake Bay, looking over a stretch of grass that slopes down to the water. On...

The line between water and sky is two shades of black. Silence hides between the crevices of elements, and I convince myself that I can weigh the air.

I cannot see my body or my paddle or my kayak, but I am kayaking.

The trees’ shadows reflect on...

It is raining, and I am measuring the length of Frida Kahlo’s unibrow with a ruler – eleven inches and a half. When I was ten, my fifth grade teacher Mrs. Hoef said that ancient Egyptians had pharaohs and priests. My mother tells me that Frida was...

Grind the spices in the molcajete. Taste the gritty texture on your tongue.

"No, mija," my grandmother says as she shows me how to mash the cumin, garlic, onions, and tomatillo. She is in Michigan for the summer, and I think she is homesick. After...

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...

Our acquaintance began when I was four. I still remember my mother shouting in horror when I would hold lightsaber battles with my bow, recreating the scenes from Star Wars. But thirteen years later, I have put thousands of hours of practice into...

There is a Chinese proverb, or chenyu, that literally means “guarding a tree for rabbits.” The story behind it involves a farmer who saw a rabbit run into a tree, providing his dinner for the night. He then waited by that tree the next day in...

“So, you’re like a plant, right?”

Yep, exactly. My name is Katia, my favorite color is aubergine, and I’m secretly a plant because I don’t experience sexual attraction. How did you know?

I found out I was asexual the summer after sophomore year....

There he is, clad in his “World’s Biggest Fish Fry” baseball cap, neon orange diabetic footsoles, and multicolored top hat à la Dr. Seuss. Four hundred and twenty pounds, bound to his high-backed leather armchair (driven with tender care all the...

Recently, I discovered the world of “ditch architects”: urbanists who abandon the traditional office-style design studio and blur the line between urban planning, design, art, and social work. Rather than relying on statistics, they mapped out a...

In his inspiring work of philosophical allegory, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche proposes the concept of the "Übermensch", or Superman, a human who is completely autonomous and self-directed. When I first stumbled across this concept...

The oblong screen of a piercingly blue iMac G3 glowed in front of me. I was six years old. At first, the new machine was nothing more than a medium for games on Disney’s website. But slowly, as I learned how to copy and paste and click and drag...

“Pop!"

I’ve heard about this unmistakable sensation at the time of injury, but never suspected it would ever make its way into my life; significant injury was a disease isolated to the ranks of professional athletes. Or so I thought.

Friday,...

I inched closer with silent footsteps, holding my breath… and Click! As the moment froze in my camera, the sparrows whizzed past and flew into the trees.

My tryst with photography began many years ago upon discovering the old 35mm Leica in Dad’s...

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 wasn’t happy about the puzzled faces across the auditorium. The pensive frowns weren't exactly pensive. They were looking at the questions with absolute perplexity. I was standing in front of the projection screen, confident that my problems had...

The American Ballet Theater (ABT) Gillespie School parent/student meeting back in March started off with nothing exciting, nothing new. New drop off and pickup procedures. The June showcase. Spring evaluations. Yawn. But then the school’s artistic...

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...

All summer I had been speculating about the first day of high school, but not for the same reasons as my peers. While others were perfecting their “summer bods,” I was worried about one particular class and one particular teacher. As I took a...