Newest College Application Essays

Whenever my grandparents visit, they take me to Barnes & Noble. My grandmother, Shasha, a strong believer in self-education through voracious reading, passed on that trait to me. On this particular trip, I spied the book “C++ for Dummies”. I...

Jessie trotted, dust plumes lifting around his hooves. I gripped the saddle’s hold bar, securing Jaidyn to the saddle with my forearm and keeping her feet in the stirrups. She flailed her arms, hurling the plastic red cup from her hand. It landed...

"Ugly," my grandfather blatantly declared.

The eight-year-old me looked down in confusion and shame, having just committed the greatest crime of the century: breaking and entering a makeup bag.

"You must get rid of that," he continued.

Following...

"Mr. Grove, you can come back in the room now." Wiping pints of sweat off my forehead, my heart racing, I reenter the room containing four people: the four people whose sole job is to challenge everything I have done for the past six years. Maybe...

Under the covers, past bedtime, my eyes gleamed, reflecting tiny pixellated flames from the video of a Saturn V launch. The low quality video from the 70’s didn’t do justice to the sheer power and scale of this magnificent rocket, but it didn't...

One night, my dad taught me about the Indian celestial sphere. Pointing out my "Orion" he showed me his "Kalpurush." The Greek and Indian constellations both use the same stars, represent humanoids, and have a weapon in the right hand. I was...

My brother knocks down a glass from the kitchen table and it shatters; my sister makes a joke, teasing my Dad; I receive a bad test grade in my math class. As different as these situations are, my family reacts to each with just two simple words:...

I discovered a trick to manipulation, one that gives me the power to compel friends, family, and customers to make the decisions I want them to. My freshman year psychology experiment produced a significant p-value while I was testing whether...

I was five years old when I first had my hair "burned" at a beauty salon. There I was, not even knowing how to properly spell "hairdresser" and I probably knew more about the process than a thirty year old white woman. You're probably wondering...

Two broken brushes and an empty spray bottle of water later, I am left with a less than curly, more than straight, brown mane. I turn to my mom's drawer of worn-away labels of mostly expired, nearly empty bottles of ancient hair products. I...

“It’s okay! Just breathe!” I said to myself in an attempt to suppress my unfaltering anxiety. I restlessly skimmed the pictures in a Clifford the Big Red Dog book, typical of me during independent reading. All the while I kept my head down,...

Every human being loves being comfortable. Whether it's napping on the good couch or wearing sweatpants on Sunday, comfort is bliss. But what if I said that I help to save the world while being comfortable? It might sound unbelievable, but...

“TZX Corp will buy Tyler’s store in a cash for stock transaction. Consider external economic factors and anti-trust regulations.”

Cases like these at the DECA International Career Development Conference pushed me beyond my comfort zone, and helped...

At 7:30 am we set off. My father and I wove back and forth over damp rocks, climbed stairs, and slalomed cairns until the first glimpse of our destination — a cell tower — broke through the grey sky. Adrenaline pumping and boots racing at the...

I refused to leave Sedona, Arizona, home to a "spiritual vortex," without visiting at least one of the city's renowned psychics. Sharing my spirited lust for travel, my mom brought my sisters and me to "Sedona Center for the New Age," where I was...

As the clipboard passes from one set of hands to the next, a bizarre sensation drifts from person to person. A fantastic glimmer of passion and excitement. An assuring whisper of creativity and vision. The pen and paper reach me, and I glance down...

My curiosity in advanced statistics began with a question that plagues basketball fans everywhere: why are the Blazers signing unproven players to enormous contracts? These players weren’t stars in the past, and only played marginal roles on their...

Humans constantly find beauty in symmetry. The scientific community initially scoffed at mathematician George David Birkhoff in the early twentieth century when he claimed that people naturally find simple art most appealing when it has...

The sun warms my frozen skin, and the granite flecked with pine needles and ants is rough under my beach towel. Gratefully I accept an apple and a piece of baguette with cheese from my father, and reluctantly pass the bag of trail mix resplendent...

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you stab us do we not die?

I cry out in pain, despair and anger, every nerve of my upper torso tensed up. The flood lights trip. The spotlight - amidst the darkness - illuminates my presence as Shylock, in The...

It was 2 AM. As my fingers moved across the keyboard, words sprang onto the surface of my laptop screen like drops of tar. Word count revealed that I had only written 500 words today. Unacceptable. Stephen King averaged 2000 words a day. I had to...

If I had to describe the culture of my family in one word, it would be "resilient." Every year, my father gets a new assignment... fight in the skies above Iraq, train future pilots in Mississippi, advise a four star general in Hawaii, and now,...

I come from a culture where everything, from the language to the way one dances, is rhythmical. Everything flows freely in the mind, everything makes sense, and nothing is inhibited. I feel this sense of absolute free flow when I push the sole of...

Since I was a toddler, my father has taken me sailing on the Long Island Sound. As I grew older, I began to ask questions. How do the sails move the boat forward? Why isn’t the boat pushed over by the wind? After ten years of asking questions, I...