Newest College Application Essays

“Where are you from?” asked the guest speaker, picking me from the crowd. Just as I was about to answer, a passing thought squeezed my mouth tight and slapped me hard in the head. A conscious side of me perceived this simple question as “extremely...

Big data, big data, and big data. With the birth of the internet age, our world has inevitably produced massive quantities of data. Application is limitless as such data yields crucial information about human trends and preferences, clearly...

During the overnight at Vassar, my nighttime ritual was disrupted by the unexpected presence of a male Vassar student in what I thought was a female bathroom. Startled, I ran back into the dorm. There, my host explained to me that the bathrooms at...

My costume glitters in the black light of the backstage area, my body tensing up, my mind telling it to relax. The curtain opens slowly while the clapping from the audience ceases. The music comes on, and my routine begins. I have every movement...

During my interview at Colorado College, I explained why I advocate for mental health awareness. I recited some ingrained statistics, such as “1 in 5 teenagers experience a severe mental disorder”, “suicide is the second leading cause of death for...

The streets of Kunming, China are crooked and filled with potholes, and the ‘school’ was more of an abandoned building than a learning facility for children of full-time workers. Yet the children that sat on the dusty floor of my classroom were...

In our society, there is a divide between physical health and mental health. When we are young, we are taught to eat fruit and vegetables, exercise 60 minutes per day, and wash our hands before eating. Starting in Kindergarten, physical education...

The summer I turned thirteen, in the sticky humidity of a Circassian town in northern Turkey, I received two gifts. “Leave that book aside for a minute,” my grandfather said, walking into the living room with a leather case. I don’t remember what...

It is 9:30 on a sunny June morning, I’m standing alone in the ferry ticket line pretending to look for friends that aren’t coming with me, hopelessly trying not to look so uncomfortable. I move forward in line and see a group of people who I know...

When I moved from China to the Philippines during my sophomore year, my world turned upside down. Instead of ancient Chinese classics, Chinese geography, and Chinese history, I studied Shakespeare, geography, and U.S. history. In China, catching...

6:00 AM, small industrial town of Zhodino, Belarus. Summer 2008. I reluctantly boarded the bus, immediately noticing that it was absolutely packed. The bus, of course, was to my grandmother’s dacha, a cottage where she grew and tended to what I...

I walked up to the half-open garage and peered uncertainly into the cluttered space. At this point, I was alone in London, navigating purely by gut and intuition. My voice shook as I rasped out an indication of my presence. As I waited for an...

Here, on top of this duvet there exists a sun-soaked, silent universe. I pick up the object in my lap, lazily stretch out my legs and fill my world with the sound of its cracking spine. A gentle shhhhh, smoothing the page beneath my hand. The...

I am from the "Arab Spring generation": the generation that took the street in 2011 to fight for their dreams. I can no longer talk about a flourishing spring when I think about what is happening in Libya, Syria, Yemen and Egypt. However I am very...

My name is Nawal, but I used to call myself Titan.

If there was ever a moment when I thought the stars would align for me and my one wish would come true, it was a moment not taken for granted. I would always ask for the same thing: to be a...

Until now, it has never occurred to me that a spider taught me how to forgive.

In all honesty, I never knew how to feel about my father. I loved him because I was supposed to. But I feared him even more. I feared him like I feared spiders. Perhaps...

“Let’s try that again” my Mom says as she picks up the piece of dough that I have rolled into an unrecognizable shape. “Now remember, the key to making your roti round is to move your shoulders and loosen your grip on the rolling pin.” I do as my...

“Do not touch” signs are probably my biggest temptation. The simple statement of a rule makes the action it advises against almost irresistible to me. There is no better way to ensure that something is done than to tell me I can’t or shouldn’t do...

I initially noticed it at my first A Level Physics class. This was the second most popular subject at school, and yet I was the only girl there. Ditto with Advanced Mathematics: I was the only female student there, and I wanted to get to the root...

As the cliché states, anything worth achieving only comes through blood, sweat, and tears. Well, in my case, it was lots of sweat, some tears, and a little bit of blood—I tripped over branches periodically. At the age of fifteen, I encountered an...