Sarah Lawrence College Undergraduate College Application Essays

I could hear the rhythmic pitter patter of rain on the window pane as I drifted in and out of consciousness. I stared intently at my notes, desperately trying to absorb the convoluted lines of graphite lead on my paper. After concentrating for an...

Three months into my exchange year in Germany, my friend called me, a little dejected. She wanted to go downtown, and it was clear why. There was still something incredibly rousing, mysterious, and exciting about the European city that had...

Here is Burma in the spotlight’s glare: cheap Chinese products, bad roads, on-and-off electricity, censored internet, starving people, useless education, brain drain, corrupt government, no freedom of expression, and hopelessness. This is what it’...

Chabela sits across from me with a nearly finished cigarette pursed between her wrinkled lips. As she watches me, I pour myself a cup of coffee and butter the one slice of white sandwich bread I’m allowed to consume each morning. My head is foggy...

During my freshman year of high school, I fell in love.

My English teacher assigned Jane Eyre as our last reading of the year. Great, I thought, another pretentious novel about 19th century English society that the BBC adapts for television every...

It is Sunday afternoon and my friends and I are all making nonsense syllables. “Dim dims” and “Ooh bop bops” fill the room and flow out of the windows we have opened in the heat. We’re not crazy – we’re just having a cappella rehearsal.

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I am sitting inside a carrot.

Burnt orange walls surround me. Rough brush strokes of this rusty shade streak the back of the door. Paint is hastily dripped in visible spots on the concrete floor. The room is about three feet by three feet and...

I remember in kindergarten, during my troubled sleeps, my mother would come in and sing the Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday”. I didn’t know what the lyrics meant then, but I do know that in her voice I found a universe of meaning. By first grade I was...

Summer begins with skin made of ants. The months between school years were designed for sitting on the border of the sandpit at the Jewish Community Center with ants crawling over my hands.

“Sugar ants don’t bite people,” my friend assures me...

Public speaking isn’t my forte and yet one day I found myself speaking in front of around 55 software engineers.

Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t terrified of public speaking, but I was never good at it. My legs would shake, my voice would quiver...

My journey as a violist began seven years ago, when I made a trip to my local music center and the director searched around in a cluttered inventory closet, pulling out a case. Inside lay my first viola. It was slightly off color, worn down and...