Newest College Application Essays

Initially I was drawn towards Pratt by its alumni: Peter Max, Betsey Johnson and Robert Redford. I thought a college that trained such prominent artistic minds must be worth investigating, but the Pratt alumnus that persuaded me the most in my...

I remember sobbing with my face pressed against the wooden swing set in my backyard while my parents yelled at each other on the patio. I remember playing with my toys in my room only to go hide in the darkness of my closet because my parents were...

Her hands were as tough as leather, but they felt like velvet to me. She smelled unlike most grandmothers, constantly encompassed by a pungent aroma of fresh mimosas and blooming marigolds. I think it was her eyes that captivated me most as a...

Have you ever thought about having children? I've come to realize that most girls assume they will be mothers sometime in the nebulous future, but I used to be bewildered that my peers could say things like, "If I have a son, I'll name him Jude."...

At School of the Arts (SOTA) in San Francisco, film and video students set out to create independent projects twice a year. In spring semester of senior year, my friend Julian and I decided we would produce a movie so incredible, it would be...

It seems as though every day since elementary school people have been asking me the same daunting question: "So, what do you want to do when you grow up?" While my creative mind continues to come up with a different idea for each day of the week,...

I wrestled open the door, juggling the unwieldy fruits of my labor. Here I was again at Sequencing, that cavernous machine-laden room on the 15th floor of the Alkek Building in the Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center,...

He walked into the classroom like any other student would on his first day of class. He carried the same books, same vaguely uncomfortable air about him, and same barely-concealed eagerness to learn as the rest of us. Yes, in all regards he was a...

After nine years in the public school system, I was used to locking everything away knowing that what I left in the open would be gone when I got back. When I changed schools, I encountered a new environment and a set of rules based on honor...

If you looked into our senior hall, you wouldn't think that we once had a reputation for being the most socially divided grade. During morning break, we gather in a buzzing, ever-shifting, conglomeration, laughing and talking with everyone around...

"Ma'am, I just don't have the money." I heard a click, and the phone went dead. In middle school, my parents began investing in rental properties, and over time, I became the manager, dealing with the rent, repairs, and complaints for six duplexes...

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...

To finish off the junior year, our English instructor told us to compose one last piece concerning our personal beliefs, and I worried about the consequences of reading my controversial paper on homosexuality in front of the class. To do so would...

After being selected as a delegate to the Freedoms Foundation Leadership Conference at Valley Forge, I agonized over whether it would be worth missing a week of school and work. However, the trip exceeded my highest expectations. My opinions,...

I begged my mother to let me wash it off in the car. It was Ash Wednesday and, as a third grader new to public school, the cross of ashes on my forehead burned. My mother told me to be proud that I was Catholic and to remember how lucky I was...

Albert Einstein said, "Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value." I only truly began to understand this quote over the course of the last school year. Until this year, success in high school was never difficult...

Life lessons can sometimes be learned in the strangest of places...even at a soccer match. Going to watch my father play soccer every week was a large part of my childhood. The league he played in was far from high-profile, but there was something...

Full of innocence, I lay in my bed on a Saturday morning, relaxing after a difficult week at school. Suddenly I was awakened as the intercom in my room crackled to life. My parents often used the intercom, but calls this early in the morning were...

High school student government is a microcosm of American politics: a group of elected officials makes decisions that will affect and hopefully benefit their peers. They represent the larger student body, and therefore play an extremely integral...

Martians exist! My proof is my brother. On May 3, 1984, he was born John Smith. Four years, seven months, and eleven days later, I joined his family, along with another brother, a Terran, or human. Johnis far different from my Terran brother,...

There I am, sitting, hidden by a black tenderly loved and cared for music stand, surrounded by clamorous and obnoxious noises. Sitting and waiting for what seems like an eternity. To my left I hear skweaks and high pitched screeches. To my right I...

Harlan County, Kentucky, deemed the poorest in the United States, hosts the Capuchin Youth and Family Ministries' (CYFM) Appalachian Mission Program every July. For the past two years I have been a participant. The first year I worked as a manual...

In a day and age when religious persecution might be expected to be a diminishing issue, one might be surprised to realize that it is in fact alive and well. While crusades may no longer be erupting to rid the world of the "non-believers" and...

I defy odds. From birth, doctors predicted bad things for me based on my environment, including that I would not be intelligent, because I lacked proper motor skills and speech proficiency. Today, I have defied those odds, because my mother...