Newest College Application Essays

I was sitting with my teammates in the Denver airport after yet another trip to Boulder, Colorado for a running camp. The week had been successful, and most of my memories made on the trip were good ones. There were, however, exceptions. At one...

Recently, I found myself seventy-two meters underground, in a North Korean invasion tunnel discovered not fifty kilometers from Seoul. The tunnel is wide enough for ten thousand armed soldiers to pass through in an hour, but not so high that...

I was wandering down a typically busy hallway at my high school feeling like death. The burden of academic hardship weighed down on the shoulders of even the brightest young scholars. However, in an honest attempt to bolster the ever-thinning...

I ask a man for directions, only to be rewarded with awkward silence and a mildly bemused, uncomprehending stare. I try other passersby and get the same discomforting stare, sometimes coupled with an apologetic, “Sorry, no English”. The one woman...

My stomach lurched violently as if it had been caught on a fishhook and jerked suddenly forward. The scene before me, a bunch of shorts and t-shirt clad high school marching band kids puffing through various instruments, swayed and became blurry,...

I have always heard that it is best to be well-rounded. However, I like to think of myself as pointed. For me, all of my cumulative life experiences are simply the shaft that propels the arrow forward in my desire to build.

I think passion entails...

A home should serve as a transitional space between shelter and the outdoors. In all of the structures that I design, I try to include walls full of windows that will allow in natural light. These windows help to integrate elements of a cozy...

I stepped up onto the podium and listened to the rumble of conversations hush almost instantly. The room was full—packed so that everywhere I looked, the eyes of a stranger stared back at me. I glimpsed the flashing red lights of several recording...

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” (Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Henry David Thoreau)

I have always heard that it is best to be well rounded....

Recently, Baz Luhrmann produced a remake of The Great Gatsby, a film that attempted to put the excitement of the Jazz Age into context by featuring modern hip-hop in different scenes during the course of the movie. However, I think that the...

I used to hate podiums so much that whenever I stepped up to one to deliver a speech or present a project, I would clutch the sides and tremble as my nerves reverberated in my stomach.

Now I love them.

After participating in public forum debate for...

I've always been my own life coach. Some people are born to be “lucky,” but others have to create that “luck” by themselves. Having had to fight obesity at the age of 6 was the first and the biggest challenge that life ever put me through. The...

Last year, I was a runaway for a grand total of 27 hours.

I stormed out of my house in complete confusion. I couldn't understand why, after all the awards I'd managed to win, after I'd been set as the model of success by our relations, my own...

In high school, writing a research paper is synonymous with baking your own mini-textbook. You crack open a few statistics, sprinkle in a few quotes, and add a pinch of SAT vocabulary. Mix well until blended, and voila—a hot, piping thesis (though...

The piano groaned in dismay as my fingers struck the wrong chords. My wrists were stiff, my shoulders hunched forward, and my gaze was expressionless—but I continued to play, unconcerned, as this broken Chopin spiraled downward into a crumbling...

I grew up in a nonreligious household, but for as long as I can remember, I’ve been taught to worship my academics as the key to my success in the future. Instead of praying 5 times daily or memorizing biblical verses, nearly every day my mother...

The shutter button is released, causing a chain reaction: the lens opens and closes in the span of microseconds, and, for a moment, the world stands still to allow genius or despair to be captured.

When I was eleven years old, fresh out of...

When one envisions winning a state championship, it’s not usually pictured from the bench player’s perspective. However, as the seconds ticked down on the game clock and I sat in my dry swimsuit on the sidelines, I couldn’t have been more ecstatic...

I owe it all to Anna. Three years ago when she tapped my shoulder, I was an overwhelmed freshman lost in the pulsing sea known as Club Rush. Turning around, I found myself face-to-face with a petite, quivering girl. Although she held herself in a...

Among the candid celebrity shots and photogenic pets, one aspect of Instagram has always intrigued me: the Popular page—a continuously changing mosaic of current top posts. After checking the page, I often wondered what made those photos so...

The Parks and Recreation star’s blonde locks and petite stature may be that of the quintessential Hollywood darling, but Amy Poehler is anything but. After becoming the first woman to ever become a full cast member of Saturday Night Live in her...

In a classroom occupied by thirty students, I am the only one of African descent. In a locker room of varsity basketball athletes, I am the only one under six feet tall, and during a first priority assembly hosted by a peer, I am the only one of...

Picture it: Hoboken, New Jersey 1999. I sit on the floor of my living room as my parents consult with two speech professionals. I am three years old and to say I am a quiet toddler is an understatement. I act just like any other three year old,...

I’m hanging on a half inch thick loop of nylon webbing over a 100 foot cliff, double checking my anchor set up for a climb I’m about to try with a friend. My hands are a little numb and my breath hangs in the air in front of me. Looking out from...