Newest College Application Essays

Demanding to be looked at, the unique landscape of Zion National Park presents an imposing image of unforgettable beauty to its beholder. It may not be contained in the Louvre, but I consider it a masterpiece nonetheless. It is not that I do not...

Does education have a value? Not one that is measurable. From my four years in college I expect to receive a wealth of knowledge and skill commensurate to the countless hours of hard work and dedication I intend to put into it. I believe my four...

I was about nine when I watched the PBS special "Yanni: Live at the Acropolis" with my extended family. My parents said Yanni was a piano virtuoso, for whatever that was worth to a nine year older. As I awaited in 'enthusiastic anticipation', our...

From Negative to Positive (Or Positive to Negative?) The lurid confessions of a member of Teeny-Bopper Anonymous

Wow. Wasn't I cool? Since this picture was taken, everything outside of myself - my appearance, my surroundings, even my superficial...

The smell of twenty-seven kinds of chili and one style of barbecue wafted through the air at the Palo Alto Chili Festival. It was a perfect day on a summer weekend, one of many I had spent volunteering for the Palo Alto Fire Explorers. The morning...

On a summer vacation with my family last year, my first experience of independence in Italy was of almost being arrested. My parents had decided that they wanted to go to Europe for our annual summer trip. Since I had studied Latin for three...

The advent of the year 2000 signifies a new world of hope and challenges for our country and the planet. With developments in technology such as the Internet, the world is coming closer together than ever. It is vital for the survival of our...

The doorbell rang incessantly. The rest of the NASA Sharpies (as we like to call ourselves) and I in the room looked at each other in confusion - the door was already wide open. Glancing over, we saw Kennedy walk in with a curious look on his...

"Kai houtos manthano."* To most, they are meaningless words, incomprehensible and bizarre. But to me, their meaning is legion: secrecy, silence, concealment. They are Greek, and they mean subversive. I am a subversive, of the Greek persuasion,...

Is it possible for a person to be the mentor of another, even if the latter were born twenty one years after the former's death? The conventional answer to this question would be no, but then, I have always favored the unconventional. For indeed,...

A few years ago, I learned that I have a condition called hyperlexia. This condition is characterized by learning language "out of order" in childhood - in fact, almost in the same manner that an adult learns a foreign language. I was actually...

If one were to ask me to relate a story of what had most troubled me throughout my high school experience, I would likely tell of my trials and tribulations as an ambitious writer in the hands of my English teachers. I, like sculptor's clay, was...

A smile breaks out on my face as I sit in a picturesque shopping area in the heart of Vienna, Austria. The spire of a Gothic cathedral towers over me, a reminder of how far away my home and family are. I will be leaving Europe tomorrow, so I am...

Recently, a seemingly small, insignificant memory stick changed my attitudes about the world and myself. The power of this small device was unleashed; all my aspirations for college were stored on the memory drive, but due to a moment's lapse, the...

Sitting in the throne on a platform, I boomed, "You swam the moat?" across the stage littered with actors. Out of the corner of my eye, I glanced over at the audience to see their reactions to my demeaning character. Scattered emotions ran through...

In the early chill of the morning, as I hug the curvature of the mountain on my bike, my mind is open. The baritone of the whirling wheels, the bass of the humming tires on asphalt, the tenor of the creaky chain, all punctuated by the intermittent...

When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon and unraveled one very small piece of the galactic mystery, he said, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." However, my "small step" in unraveling a different mystery started in a very...

I'm the last one into the room. I was busy responding to an "I remember you" from Airianna, a five-year-old girl I had tutored a few weeks ago. I remembered her too; remembered how much I had liked her name, remembered getting none of her work...

The December breeze seeps through the cracked-open door, but I only feel my heart, throbbing in eerie unison with the clock behind me. At a heartbeat a second, my heart will beat ten thousand eight hundred times before editing of The Oracle...

I may seem to be a little bit unexpected, a tad too brash because I'm frequently rushing from one place to another, one meeting to the next, one errand to a physics lab: a windmill of both activity and laugher. However, if it seems slightly...

Towards the end of my trip to Russia this past summer I volunteered for over one hundred hours at a summer camp for partially deaf and partially sighted, most of whom are also mentally imbalanced. Though I have volunteered with disabled children...

Aristotle was wise to say that "poetry is of greater ethical import than history since poetry relates more of the universal, while history relates the particulars," for poetry can put one inside the universal body of human experience, while...

Personal Statement Choice #1

Swimming has been the main focus of my life since I was 8 months old, when I first learned how to swim. In 1988, I was part of the Senate Safety Council on whether or not to teach infants how to swim. From learning how...

I graduated in 2000 from Rockway Middle School, at the time a "C+" crowded public school struggling to improve its programs; to the surprise of some, I did so having had the honor of being taught by several excellent teachers. They may not have...