University of Pennsylvania 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...

Nothing better epitomizes today's motto of learning than Aristotle's analysis of education, "The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet." It seems that the fruits of education have bloomed even greater and sweeter than ever before....

Kurt Vonnegut's quintessential anthropological romp, Cat's Cradle. However, I trusted that then, unlike in the aforementioned novel, my "joining the natives" would not cause the world around me to come crashing down, or in that story's particular...

I was sixteen years old, and scared of rollercoasters; this fear had followed me through adolescence and into young adulthood. "C'mon, let's go Joo. It'll be fun!" urged my hyperactive friend. Reluctantly I went to Six Flags with a few buddies,...

about how silly things can be so profound.

Today, there's another substitute in English class. He's a tall, balding, middle-aged man, who is yet to be another one of my victims. Once the tardy bell rings, he begins calling roll.

"Rachel Baker......

Twelve years from now, I hope to be a surgeon in a well-reputed hospital. Whether it's stitching up a wound or performing spinal cord operation, I will receive great satisfaction in knowing that every minute and hour of my job is dedicated to...

What came first, science or technology?" asked a tall and husky figure, who was dressed in an unbuttoned and rather threadbare lab coat. My initial response was science because I reasoned that technology was the application of science. An...

Besides a general fancy for the written word, Professor Josephine Park of the English Department and I share interest in specialties like 20th century American literature. As a fellow Asian-American writer, Doctor Park’s emphasis on Asian-American...

As a young aficionado of poetry and prose, I would love more than anything to develop my skills through a disciplined and distinguished writing program, and Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences definitely offers just that. Believing that one must be...

She was the toughest; she was the best. She was also the most influential teacher I have ever had. Ms. William, my sixth grade teacher, was never one to settle for second-best. As a demanding teacher, she hadn’t always been popular. In fact, my...

We are sitting in an empty classroom, two hours after school has ended. Our hands are scribbling furiously across the page, trying to catch up with our torrent of ideas. It is the week before the debate final, and we are doing a dress rehearsal....

I never thought that I could be made to do someone serious harm until I read Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram. The book describes the Milgram experiment, in which ordinary people were made to believe that they were doing something...

It was our last scrimmage game before the start of the 2009 Valparaiso girls’ varsity basketball season. The clock counted down not only the time left in the game but also how many seconds I had left playing on my basketball team before I told the...

Waving our banner wildly, we counted down the seconds, not at the homecoming game, but rather the 2009 FIRST Robotics Competition Kickoff. With only six weeks to build, wire, and program a 120-pound machine, my team jumped headfirst into...

I’ve lived with my grandparents all my life. My grandfather, whom I call “Pipo,” is like a father to me, and he is absolutely, no-doubt-about-it my favorite person in the world. He is intrigued by everything academic and has a photographic memory....

I have encountered a fork. Should I again submit to my father’s demands as I am sent to the kitchen to serve or should I refuse and risk tainting my role as the ideal Vietnamese daughter? I succumb, and fetch a repulsive-smelling platter of duck,...

Maybe, I could be the next Lorene Cary, whose novel, The Price of a Child was selected to unite the city under the 2003 “One Book, One Philadelphia” project. Maybe, I could be one of the few students who stay up until three in the morning trying...

I am a traveler, continually guided and inspired by the Homeric hero Odysseus while leading a life marked by departures and subsequent beginnings. The first journey began on November 9th, 2000, when my family and I left China in pursuit of...

It’s 107 degrees and the sun’s hot rays are beating down on a family trekking through the busy streets of Dhaka. People, rickshaws, and goats alike are all rushing off to reach their respective destinations. As the parents of the family encourage...

I learned to write essays like prefabricated housing and sensible shoes—standardized, impeccable, identical. No flight of fancy dared disturb the military precision of my supporting arguments as they marched in brigades of four to five sentences,...

As I'm sitting criss-cross on my bed, my cats curl up beside me, purring quietly. There's music playing in the background softly, the melodious kind that floats through the air. It's so calming that eventually I don't realize there's music playing...

From the first day, one thing became painfully obvious--if I didn’t get moving, I would get run over. It started off easy; I made sure to travel in the right direction. The tempo was slow. It was a cinch to fix a mistake without being noticed or...

“The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make facts live,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes. Anyone can pass a history test by memorizing the facts. Anyone can follow an essay format and make an A....

Standing alone on the stage I faced the spotlight shining on my glistening bald head. The make up artist had done a brilliant job of adding a grim and menacing guise to my face. No, I wasn’t losing any hair at this tender age but I had shaved my...