Newest College Application Essays

I’ve had an elephant on my chest for as long as I can remember. On three occasions, I’ve been in a hospital bed not knowing if I would be alive the next day. The elephant was suffocating me. My divorced parents were forced to come together in a...

The room is spinning. The lights seem to burn straight into my skull. I look around, seeing nothing but eyes watching my every move. I feel as if I’m weightless, floating in the abyss of space. Suddenly, the white tile on the floor gets closer.

...

Snowflakes, soft and silver in the dark, drift past the window, casting shadows on the floor. The door creaks open as my mother peeks into the room to check on my brand new baby sister. She finds me crouched besides the tiny swaddled figure,...

Monday morning. I wake up to the birds singing and the sun radiating brightly, ready to conquer the day. I get ready, dressed in leggings and a long-sleeve t-shirt despite the 90º weather. I jog out the door, hop in my car, and speed away.

Once I...

If your dad asks you to cycle along the biggest saltwater lake in China-Qinghai Lake, what will you answer be? Hell yeah, that was my answer. However, I found the challenge was not easy. Qinghai Lake is 225 miles long and it is two miles above sea...

Sitting down in the authentic-looking Japanese restaurant, rated 4.5/5 stars on TripAdvisor, I find that my hopes are up. I sip my matcha latte and my mind buffers. After another sip, I ask myself, Do I taste the authentic matcha magic? Or does...

Crouched behind my yellow closet door, hearing glass shatter and walls banged, I kept hoping that something wonderful was about to happen. My parents were arguing over my father locking me in my room again. Whenever my mom was not home, he would...

For years, the first thing I would say to my mom everyday is, “Mom, did you wake up yet?”The answer I would receive across the phone has always been a yes. Some days, I called her too early and she would respond with a muffled yes, clearly half...

“Marylyn? The trouble-maker?”

Normally, you would not expect these words to be paired with smiles, but there they were, plastered on the faces of my classmates’ parents who loved to tease me. I laughed it off as if the joke meant nothing to me,...

I can’t eat Werther’s butterscotch candies anymore. For eight years Mr. Werth, my piano teacher, always kept a bag of Werther’s Butterscotch candies in his bag that he would share with me and my siblings. I have an enduring association between the...

I was at a loss for words.

Before we traveled back to New York, my dad insisted that we visit a nearby plantation. As I walked across the Carolina cotton field, I pictured myself in my ancestors' shoes. Imagining the verbal, physical and mental...

The date was near...even before I even glanced at my calendar full of sporadic events and reminders, I knew it. It’s finally Homecoming Week: the ultimate week for high-schoolers to go wild (within the confines of the dress code, of course)....

As the youngest in my family, I’ve always been what my older sister would call an attention-seeking leech. Always hungry, I feed on love, attention, and adoration as if it is my life source. But because I know how much it means to me, I try to...

Some people aspire to be the man in the grey flannel suit – or dream of going to work in a pinstripes baseball uniform, green hospital scrubs, a yellow firefighter’s coat, a pink tutu, a police officer’s dress blues. But me, I want to wear white –...

I strolled into Boston University’s College of Fine Arts, slipping off my tennis shoes and socks to embrace the cold tile floor of what was once a Buick dealership showroom in the 60s. Eagerly awaiting the start of Theatre Ensemble, I socialized...

To do today:

1. Conduct dramatics selections in snack-break2. Script finalization with class teacher in club period3. Production practice after school

It wasn’t always like this, though.

I’d had major body image issues and faced the...

I like to think of myself as tantamount to avial - a South Indian stew with a motley variety of vegetables and spices. A tablespoon of the American culture that has diffused seamlessly into our household, peppered with Tamilian roots that leave a...

“It is a truth, universally acknowledged...”

A seemingly proper novel, Pride and Prejudice began with ostensibly proper words. The satire of an endearing family was all I presumed upon cracking the cover.

I was wrong. Contained in those pages was...

My final task was to finish coloring Spider-Man’s leg, and as I laid on the floor discomfort enveloped the room so intensely you could hear a pin drop. This situation came about because I was one of the three people chosen to be apart of the...

“10-64. CODE 10-43! Suspect Heading Northeast!” she said while running in her heels, dodging cars and people. Suspect five feet away. Jumps the fence, gets cuts on her palm from the shattered glass on the floor. Suspect takes out a gun, but she is...

My eyes only followed the two figures, donned in white, squat-walking back, forth, extend, stab. I watched as the fencers calculated their every movement with precision and speed. What do the arm movements of the ref mean? How do I know when...

I always find myself sitting cross legged on my bedroom floor, body hunched over a canvas, with the aroma of paint surrounding me. I follow the bleeding of one shade of brown into another and decide on using oil instead of acrylic to magnify the...

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...

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....