Boston University Undergraduate College Application Essays

97%. That is the survival rate for thyroid cancer. It’s the first thing I looked up after my diagnosis. I felt like something inside me shattered. I told myself I could live with that because, statistically speaking, I would be okay.

However, my...

Waiting in line at the gleaming grand piano, I listen to repetitive scales. Each girl in the choir takes her turn singing along. After each ascent and descent of the duet, the director announces which voice part she will sing in the choir. The...

My childhood included everything from waking up to my mom’s dramatic wake up calls in the mornings, eating ice cream from the carton with my siblings, rough-and-tumble play with my father, to family dinners at our Chinese restaurant, filled with...

Acting has always been one of my passions. Upon entering high school, I was excited to continue the acting I came to love in middle school. Unfortunately, I quickly hit a roadblock.As a freshman, I auditioned for the first play of the year, but I...

An issue I am deeply concerned with is the environment, because without a stable environment, humans simply cannot exist. My junior year, I took AP Environmental Science, and many of the things I learned in that class sparked my interest in the...

A pair of track spikes hangs on my door. Colorway: teal/black/orange. Women’s, size five. They were the only ones available at A Runner’s Mind in my size. Those spikes sped my mile up by almost twenty seconds, and I loved them. Finding them was a...

The world stops when my fingers make contact with my piano’s black-and-white keys. Music modeled after the Romantic style makes me feel truly alive—brimming with enough raw emotion to make my breath catch. Von Goethe’s statement is most relevant...

I hadn’t seen Empire of the Sun in years.

It was the last film I ever watched with my father--him, sick, lying on a hospital bed; me, 11, completely unaware that this would be the final thing we’d ever share.

Before, I’d often complain: “Dad, you’...

“I never want to raise my hand in school again.”

At least that is what I initially thought after being laughed at by my entire sixth grade science class. Sporting a faded Bob Dylan t-shirt, the middle school teacher asked if anyone could tell him...

My grandma thought I was going to die. By studying abroad in France, away from her care, I learned that I must be the one to make the most out of an experience, even if it’s not what I expected it to be. Coming from Hawai’i from a single parent...

It’s half past one in the morning, and I've progressed in an indistinctive direction. My cold fingers guide the soft vine charcoal across the matte, welcoming surface of smooth paper. My lines are gestural, strokes varied and abstract. Your first...

“At 6.00 in the morning she begins her morning cleaning. After preparing breakfast and clearing the table, she cleans up all the rooms.” This is a brief translation of a short passage secondary school students are given in Turkey. The passage...

When I tell people I work at the library, they often respond with open jaws and comments ranging from, “Oh my gosh—dream job!” to, “That must be boring, huh?” While the tasks are routine, each shift jostles my curiosity awake.

To be clear, I am...

I push through the mountain of people ahead of me to glimpse at the check in line at the traikin station. I frantically push myself through the multitude of people to avoid being trampled to death in the busiest city in the world: Beijing.

I...

I collect words. Not just words, but phrases. Lines of text that make my heart feel like it’s going to explode out of my chest. I live for the feeling when a sentence is perfect, when each syllable flows perfectly into the next and the words come...

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...

Walking down Commonwealth Avenue for the first time in February, I was not expecting to run into my high school friends, Felex and Adam. After a day of information sessions and tours, I yearned to experience the real BU and asked them for an...

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...

Photos freeze the world in place for just a moment. In the rapidly moving world, it’s refreshing to look at a photo, stop the earth’s spin, and live in the past for a few minutes. Photos are sentiments—souvenirs of a time and place that has...

Bridgeport, Connecticut: A fleet of fifty-two Greater Bridgeport Transit Authority-owned buses spurt to a start while the sun begins to rise. Each bus slowly creeps along one of the nineteen lines spanning across Fairfield County; one of them, Bus...

I wish someone had been recording the moment we pitched the idea to my physics teacher, Mr. Heese. His forehead crinkled and his brow arched, completing his puzzled complexion as he sat at his desk.

“So you want to start a club… that grills meat?”...

I had spent the whole morning preparing to execute an Olympic worthy backflip into my aunt’s community pool. It was the summer before 6th grade; I stood at the edge, took one deep breath, and launched myself into the air. I imagined the intense...

Hands shaking, I lifted the cover of my makeshift steamer.

All families have their own “thing.” Some have game nights; others have movie nights. My family has a time-honored tradition of cook-offs. These competitions are not like the casual and...

I once believed my extraordinary skill with numbers would take me to great heights and greater happiness. I was wrong.

Numbers- quantitative indicators, widely believed to factor the quality of one’s life - galvanized significant achievements, but...