Brandeis University Undergraduate College Application Essays

Waking from calm dreamless sleep, I find intricately patterned welts on my skin, embedded by the woven bamboo mattress, the only reminders of the night. I descend from the bed and frown as my feet reach the cold and damp dirt floor. It rained...

Brandeis University's international prestige, reputation for academic excellence, appealing location, and familial social environment compel me to seek acceptance to the university.

Offering a wide range of courses, Brandeis University is an...

At a Bat Mitzvah I attended in eighth grade, an encounter with seemingly innocent Japanese cabbage-which I did not know was marinated in peanut oil-produced an unparalleled wrath. Upon putting a mere spoonful into my mouth, I went into...

I still remember it like it was yesterday. After seven days of grueling labor pushing my body to its limits, I was proudly walking - no, strutting. As my clean and pressed uniform held my new ribbons for the world to see, I looked up to the stands...

I love crap. I love bad novels and cheap clothes. I love dirty shoelaces and melted candles, junk earrings and instant coffee. It's about finding the beauty in everything. I find it in palms and tea leaves. I sense Pablo Neruda's sonnets in my...

“Lower your lids!”

Gilad, my drama instructor, paced back and forth on the stage, arms folded over his belly, Israeli impatience rising in his voice. His eyes narrowed, scanned me through bushy slits, and he barked new commands.

“Let your smile...

I don't remember how I stumbled upon it, but after I did, I became inspired and motivated. It was too surreal that a thirteen-year-old girl could have written and published a book at such a young age. The book was called In the Forests of the...

I firmly believe that antidrug campaigns whose values instill the “just say no” attitude in elementary school children should be extended to encompass the wretched habit of knuckle cracking. I have done it since I was a young tot, I am told, which...

Last summer, while aurally interpreting the script of Lorca’s ‘Yerma’, my biggest challenge was bringing to life the ‘shepherd’s horn in the distance’. My initial choice, the authentic sound of a conch-shell horn actually used by Andalusian...

When I was fifteen I borrowed $200 from my father, bought a broken Sidekick phone on eBay, watched YouTube videos to learn how to repair it, and re-sold it for an $80 profit. That was the start of David Wolkoff’s Store, an eBay business, which has...

Adolescent boys hurl Molotov cocktails at uniformed soldiers. Sniper fire silently slaughters innocent travelers on deserted highways. Mangled corpses sag from the windowsills of totaled buses. These macabre scenes characterize media portrayals of...

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...

Everyone thinks me strange because I love it all as though it were a person.

I love the quiet road named after my great-uncle Pintor Ruano as though it were my great-uncle himself; I love the old church like an old friend; I love the sound of its...

There are few places in this world as diverse as my high school cafeteria on a food sale day. A tell-tale spicy aroma draws students with jingling pockets to the back table where they are greeted by an array of cultural foods. They fight over the...

Since my childhood, I have been disturbed by inequality and injustice in the world. I felt like a solitary beacon of humanitarianism upon a coast of apathy and egoism. The idea of college life, then, was unnerving to me; I imagined attending a...

The soft reminder of warm light, the neat rows of novels and biographies and volumes of poetry against mahogany shelves back to back in a literary continuum… I walk further into Barnes and Noble. Swim in circles around the small brown tables in...

When I was 12, I found a book on global poverty at the local bookstore. For weeks my grandpa and I sat at a coffee table and read the analysis of foreign aid. I stayed up past bedtime, hiding under the covers, leafing through the debate about...

I blow out the candles on my seventeenth birthday cake. Another year has passed. The flames slowly flicker, burn out, and die.To me, a candle is merely a wax stick that steadily holds the flames. It’s only regularly used for birthdays and as a...

‘And voilá my amigos! All four beautiful queens.’ I reveal the top four cards of the deck with a thin smirk. The kids simultaneously call out ‘Show us more! Show us more please.’ Regardless of age or gender or culture, everyone loves a...

“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...

Summer begins with skin made of ants. The months between school years were designed for sitting on the border of the sandpit at the Jewish Community Center with ants crawling over my hands.

“Sugar ants don’t bite people,” my friend assures me...