Newest College Application Essays

When people imagine a setting for intellectual enrichment, they often envision libraries, universities, and Fortune 500 businesses. Although a local firehouse does not usually cross their minds, it actually provides unparalleled enrichment for its...

When I first heard the lyrics of the Rolling Stones’ “Paint it Black,” it was from this little red contraption that I bought from a garage sale for ten dollars. I was hooked. That small record player eventually became the two Numark turntables and...

Another failed sports season passed: no hits, no touchdowns. I entered 6th grade with my dreams of becoming a jock squashed. Then my parents informed me that I was enrolling in band. Still clinging to my ESPN hopes, I warned my parents that taking...

As I sit typing my final paper for eighth grade on a rainy Portland night in May, I hear my mother suddenly call, “Andrew, your father and I need to talk to you”. From her tone I know the subject of the conversation. She used that tone at the end...

There I sat on the piano bench, leather sticky where shorts ended and legs began, and all I could think was, "No, please don't make me learn that." The piece was Burgmüller's Ballade, the time somewhere around my twelfth birthday. The song was...

Before signing up for Computer Science, I had never seen what a code looked like. But suddenly, I found myself fluent in the language of Python. While the other students stewed n frustration, for me, everything had clicked.

It wasn’t until a few...

I shiver with anticipation as the other nine finalists and I line up on the Portland Teen Idol stage. I’ve performed my songs to the best of my ability, and now I grasp the clammy hands of my talented neighbors, waiting to hear the results. The...

Studying abroad in Germany, my classmates and I dreaded waking up early and walking to our classroom in the notoriously rainy city of Tubingen. Mr. Schneberger spoke about the anatomy of a cathedral, and we made it clear how confused we all were....

How can we build a more environmentally sustainable society?

Such a broad, open ended question may seem unreasonable for a sixteen year old girl to pursue, but at a place like Emory University, courageous inquiry is literally in the water. When I...

When my mother read picture books to me as a child, I lingered in the world of the story for days after, demanding that we act out my favorite scenes over and over again. I dressed my sister up as characters from my favorite books, carefully...

A silver eagle gleams as it soars over the Australian countryside on an early Tuesday morning. Inside this majestic mechanical bird, however, I feel nauseated and shiver vehemently despite the heavy suit I have on. The aircraft gives a violent...

“The only reason I want to come here is because of you.” I heard Jennifer's words as I looked down into her dark brown eyes; what she had said sounded almost like a confession. Seven years old, Jennifer came to Fei Xiang Bilingual School for the...

A pink plastic weather station. A two-inch Black Friday telescope pointed at the Moon. A fishtank, lid heavy with chrysalises about to become butterflies. Of the images from my childhood, these and many more stand out as defining moments. I once...

My heart is booming. My pulse is rising. My stomach is churning. A drop of sweat rolls down my face. I can barely breathe. "You've already made it so far Cayley, you can do this," exclaims one of my more stable team members. I take a deep breath...

If at any given moment there is not at least one child screaming, one dog barking, any variation of an alarm sounding and/or someone "practicing" an instrument they don't actually know how to play, something is awry in my house. Generally, any...

I stood there holding my stethoscope, listening to a five year-old child’s back, nervously searching for any abnormality, trying to control my nerves and focus on my work. I shifted my stethoscope to another spot, the sweat on my back now beading...

Riding the elevator down into the aquarium, with the azure shadows refracting off my body, I had never been so alive. Immersed in the aura of the thousands upon millions species of fish, I felt like I was staring right into my own soul and beyond...

“So you want to go to med school. Is it for the money or to appease your parents?” Neither, because money isn’t worth the sacrifice of dealing with insanity and I have only one parent, who cannot be appeased by my attending med school. This was...

While all my extracurricular activities have helped me shape my values, there is one in particular I have enjoyed the most: picking tangerines from my grandmother's orchard. Picking tangerines was often to me simply a burden. I had to wake up at...

Our Socratic reading group is the ultimate unconventional cult, nine curious high schoolers and a college professor gathering every weekend to discuss the practicality of anarchy, the life of the mind, and the cosmological divine. Here, I learned...

The University of Virginia has been good to me. I had the college life of storybooks—lazy afternoons on the Lawn, head-scratching debates about philosophy, and spirited evenings at athletic events. As a third year, I should be looking forward to a...

My favorite childhood activity was bringing my bedroom outside. I would lug out everything I could and drape it throughout the shrubs that lined the apartment property where I lived. There were no trees, so I couldn’t have a treehouse, but I could...

I am at peace on my computer, Photoshop application open, eyes fixated on a 5000 by 7000 pixel window. This window becomes a very special type of canvas. It can be expanded and cropped without any effect on its contents, which are comprised of a...