University of California - Berkeley Undergraduate College Application Essays

The objective of this school project was to create our ideal version of a school.We turned in a trash can."Our project was inspired by the Dada artists, who are known for their use of readymade (everyday objects) that were displayed as 'art.' This...

Drenched in sweat, I was more than ready to hop on the last subway to my hotel. Suddenly, a hand grabbed my shoulder. With my tiny fists clenched, I braced for a fight as I slowly turned around. And there, I saw a mob of Asian grandmothers."Ni...

"What's your favorite animal?"Typical six-year-olds may pick cats or dogs or even snakes, but me? I loved lobsters. I had read from an animal fact book that they are immortal. So typically, I thought that they were magical animals with the power...

"Can you believe her? She's 240 pounds - no wonder she had a heart attack." The doctor scoffed as we walked out of the patient's room. The woman had just received an electrical shock to the heart. I had the opportunity to participate in a summer...

Each summer, I work as a high ropes counselor for middle school students. My goal: to push campers out of their comfort zones and into the “growth” zone. Yet that goal isn't always easy to reach. I had one camper named Aldo who was absolutely...

This is a fact: I go to the post office much more often than your typical high school student. No, it’s not because I constantly miss packages that are addressed to me. It’s because I send packages full of little handmade goodies to other people.

As a business development intern for Mason Bottle, a mason jar baby bottle company fresh out of a successful Kickstarter, I was very excited and totally out of my zone. My previous summers had been science and research oriented, but when I was...

“Lemonade! Twenty-five cents a cup!” Some say that our earliest memories are indicative of our later years. Sometimes I wonder if I was born to sell.

My earliest memory dates back fourteen years, when I opened a lemonade stand outside a...

Every birthday of mine there is one specific thing I look forward to: my friend Tamara's handmade card. Every year she makes me a homemade card and every year, I'm warmed by her thoughtfulness, love, and care. It's the small yet thoughtful...

My mother would throw a fit if she knew I spent an evening during Mosaic roaming downtown, unsupervised, in the company of a homeless woman and a high-school sophomore, searching for a homeless couple. Granted, it was her fault I was doing it. She...

A pair of tiny Mary-Janes and ruffled socks stirred anxiously in anticipation. Ms. Bush’s kindergarten classroom leered ominously over our small heads, making my friend Corinne’s knuckles whiten and eyes instinctively shoot downwards. My navy blue...

To begin, I am going to describe the state of the desk on which I am currently writing this essay. Besides the normal clutter of assignments, one film and one digital camera sit directly across from me. At least five rolls of film wait patiently...

In the summer going into junior year, I signed up for a Rustic Pathways photography trip to the Himalayas. Going into the program, I was ecstatic that my parents had allowed me to do this and I couldn't wait to take my first solo trip out of the...

I joined Theater freshmen year out of curiosity for its technical aspects. As a person of science and logic, I was, at first, skeptical about the artistic club and shy to interact with the boisterous Theater community. But the club was full of...

“The title Looper implies time is a continuous loop, right? The future interacts with the past like it always does, because it’s meant to. So how does Bruce Willis break away from it, all of a sudden? And when he does break away, how doesn’t he...

I am a citizen of another world. This land is not one everyone ventures into, and even fewer make a home within it. It is a world with mystery and magic, unimaginable creatures and portals that lead to the stuff of dreams. Some call us divers,...

In our increasingly madcap age, the great American pastime has shifted from baseball to pranking. I concur by aspiring to place staplers in jello, just like Jim Halpert from The Office. My creativity isn’t expressed through art but through the...

I live in Saratoga, California: the sunny land of tutors, prep centers, and SAT classes. Everywhere you drive there are signs offering the best discounts, the best teachers, the best results. I always wondered, however, why my community didn’t...

Telling my peers that I intern at a morgue catches them by surprise; typically, they look at me in bewilderment. Many question why I would want to do something like this. But I honestly do not think they would react with such astonishment if they...

I fill my search history with mug shots and tear up a nice school shirt as an incoherent combination of thoughts, memories and questions swirls in my head. As always, when confused, I turn to my oils and brushes.

In 2008, I watched Professor...

I tried to distribute the weight of my body evenly in the soles of my Crocs. My hair was contained in a cap and my mouth was smothered by a cotton mask. Each time I exhaled, the mask filled with the smell of the coffee on my own breath. The...

The hill is too tall. That’s what my friends said. That’s what everybody said. Which is exactly why I tried to climb it.

Every Saturday morning I would begin my workout by biking around Walnut, making sure to stop by Norman Boulevard, a street...

I slowly wipe away the droplets of sweat rolling down my forehead as I glance outside the black curtain at the other dancers. The vibrant reds, pinks, and blues are all a blur as the dancers mimic each others’ graceful movements. I shut my eyes,...

Two summers ago I’d wake up in the clouds and roll over in my sleeping bag to see if my host brothers were awake. If they were, I’d shimmy out of my bag and hurry next door to eat breakfast before we headed out to work our tiny subsistence farm....