Newest College Application Essays

“A mi no querer takar la clase de español”, I fervently and somewhat jokingly argued with my mother after she DECLARED that I would take Spanish 1 in 7th grade. It’s sort of like those times when you know the battle has long been over, yet you...

"Hey Gran how have you been hol-"

"Graaan? Can you hea-"

"Great, she can't hear us. *Sigh*. Mom, I thought Dad fixed issues with her sound?"

"Well, what are we supposed to do?"During the initial lockdowns, I tried to keep in touch with my...

Adolescent boys hurl Molotov cocktails at uniformed soldiers. Snipers target innocent travelers on deserted highways. Corpses sag from the windows of shattered buses. Macabre scenes such as these characterize how Israel is portrayed in the global...

My Oxford-educated great-grandfather served as a high court judge in the British Indian Civil Service during the early 1900s. Administering justice with an iron fist, he earned the nickname “The Hanging Judge” and firmly believed this practice to...

My eyes only followed the two figures, donned in white, squat-walking back, forth, extend, stab. I watched as the fencers calculated their every movement with precision and speed. What do the arm movements of the ref mean? How do I know when...

I stared at the inmates crowding the courtyard in front of me and began to wonder what I was doing in a prison. My visit was for three weeks during which I was tasked with helping teach computer code to inmates in San Francisco’s San Quentin State...

Striking parallels between language and law exist: Both require analysis, precise diction, and the suspension of one’s own worldview to comprehend a different perspective. Chi ku (吃苦) is an idiom, directly translated as “eating bitterness,”...

I was recently on a cramped yet frigidly air-conditioned 12-hour bus ride to Chicago, when I noticed a group of cows grazing under a tree. “It’s crazy, isn’t it?” I said to the woman next to me. “I’ve lived in Tennessee for over a year, and I’m...

Spoiled Rotten

Admitting that you’re a spoiled child isn’t easy. I was the kind of person in high school who probably spent too much time putting on my makeup and picking out my clothes, and I was the kind of person who worried a lot about my skin...

As sweat dripped down my nose and mixed with the dirt, I yelled, "I found glass!" Glass is considered a rare find, and upon hearing my announcement the excavation team stopped digging. Later, as I sat under the overhang on the laboratory roof...

Recently, I found myself seventy-two meters underground, in a North Korean invasion tunnel discovered not fifty kilometers from Seoul. The tunnel is wide enough for ten thousand armed soldiers to pass through in an hour, but not so high that...

So there I was. Peering over the edge I saw nothing but dark, ominous water on top of what seemed to be a 40-foot high cliff. I know, with today’s 300 feet tall roller coasters, skydiving, and other high-risk adventurous activities for the typical...

As an undergraduate, I was fortunate to have professors who pushed me to blend abstract principles with real world experience. I hope to continue this mixing of education and life through New England's clinical programs, because I know that direct...

I had written and fully intended to submit one of “those” personal statements: the personal statement that says how noble the legal profession is, that goes on and on about the importance of selfless attorneys fighting injustice, and the one where...

“Dad, I hate the shot put. It’s so hard,” I whined as we walked away from the throwing area. “Can I just quit?” My dad paused and bent down to look me in the eyes.

“Thanithia, if you quit something just because it’s hard, you’ll be quitting for...

Our ridiculous expedition was scheduled to conclude with a birthday celebration, a climax that my girlfriend anticipated and expected to savor. “Won’t it be wonderful,” she would muse, “that the trip will conclude the day after my birthday in...

When I was nine years old, my father proposed my first official, self-building challenge. I had fallen in love with a five-year-old pygmy goat named Jake while at the county fair in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Jake and I were even on the evening news...

In Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, this Court struck down a Texas law that rendered it illegal for a woman to abort a pregnancy unless her life was in danger. This Court granted complete freedom of choice to the woman in her first trimester of...

Every child is asked the inevitable question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” My response as far back as I can remember had always been, “Well, I want to be a lawyer”. I always received some strange looks from adults for my unusually...

In the past, whenever I have been confronted with a question on an application asking about “contributions of your cultural or ethnic background”, I have always thought that such essay prompts were not written for me. Such topics, I facilely...

"Go to bed, Adelya, it's late." As a child, I heard this command very often. I did not, however, always obey.

I clearly recall the many nights I stayed up well past midnight just so I could finish studying for a test the next day. My routine was...

As long as I can remember, I've wanted to make movies. There was a short period when I wanted to be the starting point guard for the L.A. Lakers, but that passed quickly enough and I was right back to the more realistic goal of being a...

On one hot late-summer day when I was in high school, my parents came back from a shopping trip with a surprise present for me: the legendary board game, Diplomacy. At first I scoffed at such an old-fashioned game. Who would want to waste glorious...