Newest College Application Essays

Recently, I attempted the ultimate in mailed communication; I mailed a potato to a friend at college. Another friend and I covered it in sticky postage stamps, attached an address label, and waited for the surprise to be discovered in the...

I dreamt of the crowd in the darkness, a single spotlight shining down on me as I graced the stage with my movement, a sparkling array of costumes, and the feeling of soothing, crisp air. From the moment I stepped into my first dance class, I knew...

In checkers, players must strategize and plan in order to make their moves and win the game. This is what my dad taught me when we played, almost every day after school. After I learned the basics, it was up to me to figure out how to beat him. He...

Throughout my short lifetime of difficulties and discouragements, education has

been the one constant and one motivation that helped me stay positive. When my life

seemed to be falling apart, I knew I could get on the bus, go to school, and enter...

This past summer, I tutored two summer school math classes for incoming freshmen in

my district. I've tutored dozens of students in my high school career, so when I was working with

these students, I wasn't expecting anything to be different....

When I was seven years old, I used to think my floor was made of hot lava or occasionally under siege by a pack of angry anacondas. So, at night when it was time for me to go to bed, I would have to take one giant leap to make it to the massive...

I remember the first time, for better or worse, that I ever visited New York City. My parents decided it would be a great idea to road trip there (creating the basis of my hatred for long car rides). After two long, exhausting days of torturous...

The athlete-to-captain relationship is the lifeblood of any functioning sports team. After all, the team captain essentially acts as a mediator between the other players and the coach. Some other jobs of a team captain include, but are not limited...

Diving in a pool is an experience like no other. It’s like immersing yourself in a world with no sound and no communication. Underwater you can do things that would be so much more difficult to do on land, for example: a backflip or a handstand....

We have a saying at work: “Dealing with an angry mom is like dealing with a burglar; just give her what she wants, and no one gets hurt.”

I see it almost every day at the pool - a mother’s desperate desire to have everyone acknowledge her son as...

Off the wall.

That's how I'd describe my family. My sister just took a semester off from studying financial economics in New York to attend the Cordon Bleu, a pastry school in Tokyo. My brother is a reserved, taciturn character with an interest in...

Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 has been revered since its 1961 release, serving as a landmark of American literature. The infamous phrase “catch-22” -- indicating a paradoxical, irresolvable situation -- has traditionally held a negative connotation....

I felt an unequivocal sense of community when I gazed at my dinner plate one night at Chewonki and acknowledged that the beets, potatoes, and lettuce on my plate were plucked from the earth by me and my best friends. The hours that we expended on...

“You all know your neighbors, right?” James asked my science class. We all nodded, wondering where our teacher could be going with this. “Well, the trees outside are your neighbors too. Don’t you think you should know them as well as you know your...

One afternoon I received a letter from a friend, a current student at Lehigh. Nestled inside the letter was a newspaper article regarding initiatives undertaken by a group of Lehigh students to provide fresh, organic food to those living in the...

I took another sip of coffee, contemplating the road ahead. At that point – midnight –the coffee was less for taste than for me to stay awake behind the wheel. My mother dozed in the seat next to me, while my younger brother and sister slept...

I gasped when I peeked into Christine’s sketchbook, a kaleidoscope of vibrant colors and eye-popping characters. Hoping to see more of her drawings, I eagerly tried to befriend her. Although Christine covered her sketchbook at first, she slowly...

“Hello, can I have a medium long-sleeved shirt? I don’t mind the color.”

These words were the same I’d been hearing all night. I was in charge of distributing t-shirts to those that came to my side of the van, and all night I’d had trouble keeping...

I sat quietly at my desk on the morning of September 4th, 2005, steeling myself for my first day of second grade. Thus far, I had managed to deflect my classmates’ earnest conversation attempts, and my seeming indifference made them wonder about...

I am a quantitative entity. Throughout my entire life, I have been defined by a set of numbers. From the number on my birth certificate to the grade I got on a math test this week, they have always represented me…well, a watered-down, inhuman...

Amidst the monotonous stroll of daily life, it is easy to forget what happened. People never inquired, so I never remembered. Friendly conversations seldom reached that socially awkward barrier. After all, the “Great East Japan Earthquake,” was...

Since I was three, I have enjoyed the most tedious activity known to man. If one were to peruse old family photos, one would likely find me standing atop a stool—favorite Scotch-Brite sponge in hand—washing dishes.

While my parents have allowed...

“Jonathan, sit down!”

When my coach blatantly refused my request to allow me to play, my prior confidence and enthusiastic spark were replaced by a deflating sense of hopelessness as I recognized my role as a benchwarmer during my first...

When I was fifteen, I considered a theory: it is possible to assign a numerical value to two people in order to measure how much they care about one another. In total, the two numbers would add up to a percentage of one hundred. The more effort,...