Massachusetts Inst. of Technology Undergraduate College Application Essays

When life throws me a curve, I try to find an equation for the best-fit line. Actually, life never really throws me a perfect curve, only a series of data that resembles one. Most people are content by connecting these random dots, forming a...

John F. Kennedy stated in his 1961 Inaugural Address, "Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths..." People in the...

The day before it happened, my father and I went to the historic Bangladesh vs. India cricket match at Bangabandhu National Stadium. It was Bangladesh's 100th international match-thousands of people attended. We were in the stands, intently...

My mother often reminded me that nothing good would ever come from playing video games. As a young child, I dismissed her words as baseless propaganda to coerce me into doing more chores. After all, I was having plenty of fun catching Pokemon on...

Yellow - one of the primary colors. It is one hue; it is a million hues. Pale yellow, the color of silt in China’s River of Life; saffron yellow, the color of Chinese sovereignty for two millennia; tanned yellow, the tint of my skin.

The first day...

I thought I had it all figured out when I began high school. My future, I was convinced, was in psychology—a field that has always fascinated me and seemed to be a promising career choice. Before specializing in psychology in college, I planned to...

It was broken. Teams were gathering in the gym for the regional Science Olympiad competition and my electric vehicle sat useless on the cafeteria table. The motor simply would not spin, even though the lights said the circuit was on. The...

During the art camp’s Bead and Wire Sculpting class, a fish-shaped frame with wires running across it caught my eye. “Carly, what’s this?”

“An earring holder,” the freckled girl announced. “But I want it to stand up.”

We built a half-dozen wire...

“I wanna go home!” I say as I sit on the kitchen floor watching my mother cook.

“What do you mean?” she asks, giving me a questioning look. “Ethiopia?”

“I don’t know.”

Home. For most people, the word can be easily defined as the place where they grew...

I arranged the bottles in front of me: 30% acrylamide, TEMED solution, ammonium persulfate, Tris buffer, and distilled water -- all of the materials I needed to run electrophoresis on the protein samples I had isolated earlier that morning. Oh,...

With forested hills open to exploration and a lake for boating and fishing, Spring Lake Park has become a second home to me. I come here regularly for a run, a bike ride, or a walk with my family. I have participated in community work days and...

Immediately after placing the finishing touches on my homework, I grab my headphones and rush downstairs to the small, confined room that stows my drum kit. I proceed to “jam out” to a plethora of music, including Jazz, Rock, and Samba. The...

The stage lights burst open, blinding and white. I trembled. I was at the citywide poetry slam, Verselandia, about to perform in front of hundreds.

Earlier in the month, I had qualified through my high school’s contest, which I had signed up for...

On any given dusky afternoon, I find myself asking the pressing question: Will I make it a third time in a row? I raise my arms, examine a dulled orange orb clinging to my aching, sweaty palms, and squint at the near-invisible net. Far from...

1,2,3,2…1,1,2,5…1,6,5,3…at first you have to remember each combination, which move is next, but after a while it becomes instinctive: in a bout you don’t have time to think. Despite boxing’s bad rap for being barbaric, it’s long been known as the...

At my home, it sometimes feels like “angle of refraction”, “thin films”, and “escape velocity” are as common as “hello”, “thank you”, and “go to sleep”. That's what you get when your parents are both professors in engineering. When I ask a single...

“Oh d-d-d-d-dear, dear!”

Among the lush trees of the Hundred Acre Woods, a little stuffed pig named Piglet searches for his friends. Despite being a tiny ball of anxiety, he displays remarkable amounts of compassion and fortitude whenever his...

“Innocent until proven guilty” does not apply within the perimeters of Youth Court.

As a diversion court for juvenile misdemeanor crimes, our job is not to determine a defendant’s ‘guiltiness’, but rather solely to prescribe an appropriate...

Living between a large hill and the flat space of an empty parking lot makes for the perfect skateboarding terrain, temporarily gifting me with wings as I fly down the incline without a helmet, falling into the soothing rhythm of push, slide,...

Six or seven years ago my family purchased, for pennies on the dollar, a couple of foreclosed-upon rental properties in Silver City, a rough but budding Old Milwaukee neighborhood. When we first walked through the behemoth relics of the 1920s, we...

My father is a mechanic. Therefore I am, by proxy, an unaccredited mechanic, specializing in relatives’ cars, vintage Vespa scooters, and my friends’ bicycles. I've loved our dirty garage from a young age — the sting of growing callouses and the...

Throwing knives are for hot summer days and for dull Sunday afternoons – for when even the blood in my head has seemingly gone stagnant. This spin on the martial arts pulls me from these doldrums, forcing my mind into discipline. I must estimate...

Compared to the stereotypical beach packed with tourists and surfers, New Hampshire’s Hampton beach seemed rather unremarkable. It was like any other New England Beach: cold, empty, and cloudy – just two miles of sand wedged between the road,...

Last summer, I had a 10 week paid internship working for American Traffic Solutions, a toll and ticket processing company. Naturally, I was nervous about working as part of a team of Ph.D.’s in math and computer vision. I learned to deal with the...