Middlebury College Undergraduate College Application Essays

I can see myself alone, sitting, squatting really, on the branch of a monstrous sprawling oak tree with dirt under my fingernails and stinging branch-scraped knees. I am out of breath after having climbed to the very top so as to see my...

As a child I always felt like I was missing something, as though everyone else was tuned into a common understanding of life to which I was oblivious. I first realized this when, in the third grade, I was sentenced to a fifteen minute “time out”...

Fairness is a quality that I try hard to embody, and I admire those who demonstrate the impartiality necessary to be just. But people often mistake impartiality as the defining characteristic of someone who is fair. Empathy is more essential...

When my younger brother, James, was five years old, Jack Nierman bit him while they were playing in our favorite playground. I was sitting atop the monkey bars when I saw it happen. I swung down and pushed Jack away, then dragged my screaming...

I have grown up in a household with parents who come from very different backgrounds. My father’s grandparents were first generation German immigrants, and holidays and family gatherings were of the utmost importance when my Dad was growing up....

By now, color and form are two essential ways I express myself. In my art I often draw myself as a stick figure with a shock of bright red hair. My family, friends, and even strangers have always commented on the thousands of freckles that pepper...

A year and a day’s journey lay ahead of every fabled knight in search of the ever elusive Holy Grail, and if said knight was deemed worthy to find it, exhaustion would cause him to sleep at the feet of the Grail without ever truly seeing it. And...

A thousand miles away from home, I sat in a cramped apartment littered with Bruce Springsteen CDs, listening to my Spanish home-stay family talk about their day. Every evening, just before dinner, the four of us would gather for tiempo de la...

One hundred sixty-two days ago I was counting the days I had left to live. “Impression: Large right ovarian mass with cystic appearance periphery and solid tumor in the center…” I trembled as I heard every word of the MRI report that my mom had...

I’ve been a lot of different people in my seventeen years of life. I’ve been a tap dancing mouse chased by shrieking female cats, a 1950s teenager with greased-back hair, a sailor on 24-hour shore-leave in New York City seeking love and a good...

At 7:30 am we set off. My father and I wove back and forth over damp rocks, climbed stairs, and slalomed cairns until the first glimpse of our destination — a cell tower — broke through the grey sky. Adrenaline pumping and boots racing at the...

For four dollars, anyone can buy a bag of heroin in a town five minutes from my school. Prescription cousins of heroin, like Oxycontin and Vicodin, have been over-prescribed for decades. But as the war on drugs has progressed, a crackdown on...

I am not a religious person. I cringe at the sound of Christian rock, think Broadway's The Book of Mormon is shamelessly hilarious, and am often scolded by my elders for flippantly exclaiming "Oh my God!" I find the following of dogmatic religious...

I asked my friend Ruixi to translate a question from English to Chinese for me. “Excuse me, how old is this tree?”

We were wandering around the village of Yunnan, China when we came across an old lady resting at the trunk of a giant, towering...

There is nothing quite as extraordinary as witnessing a Haitian sunset. Watching as the sky folds itself to form a dichotomy of colors that bleed into the horizon. If I climb a roof high enough, or stand on a hill tall enough, it looks like the...

My grandfather found himself in the yellowed pages of a Bible, my father in the South African anti-apartheid movement. I found myself in a 2004 Scion xA hatchback nicknamed Oliver.

Writing flash-fiction until my hand ached, reading library books...