Newest College Application Essays

My grandfather found himself in the yellowed pages of a Bible, my father in the South African anti-apartheid movement. I found myself in a 2004 Scion xA hatchback nicknamed Oliver.

Writing flash-fiction until my hand ached, reading library books...

When I’m on my drumline, I can sense the power of rhythm; drums show me how a consistent rhythm can guide people to work in unison. Our drumline requires the extremely cautious cooperation of nine of us at once, so it has sharpened my ability to...

My mom loves to tell the story of when I was a baby, and I would pull the biggest book I could find off the shelf and into my lap, tracing my fingers over the words and pretending I knew what I was reading. Since the night I came home from the...

Raised as a figure skater, and indoctrinated into believing that thinner thighs produced higher jumps and faster rotations, I started my first diet as a ten-year-old. Meals were replaced with protein shakes, and childlike innocence devolved into...

My eyes glistened as I watched a documentary on Korean Pop Stardom. The trainees were subject to strict diets, inflexible rules, and practice from morning to midnight. The video intended to reveal the supposed horrors of the industry. Yet, as a...

A year ago, my mother casually said that if I had a brother, I would receive nothing from her. Distraught, I had asked her to clarify. However, she coldly maintained that she always believed that sons are superior to daughters. Every time I make...

One late night I was alone in the house and struggling, as usual, to fall asleep before my mom came home. The thought that I might be considered a "bad boy" unsettled me. As the 472nd sheep jumped over the fence, I finally heard the front door...

For most people, singing is an expression of unabashed freedom usually reserved for either car rides with friends or solo dance parties. While I frequently belt the lyrics to my favorite tunes, for me, singing represents something more sacred. I...

Eating-disorder-related issues are not acknowledged in the skating world. From a young age, I was taught the minimum amount of calories my organs required, tips for suppressing hunger, and methods of hiding malnutrition-induced alopecia from...

When I was four years old, my newly divorced mother transplanted us into uncharted territory: a sunny locale called “Florida.” I was too young to understand the magnitude of this life-changing event. Initially, money was scarce and the...

I fell in love with Davidson the moment I stepped onto the campus.

It was the fall of my junior year; back home in New Hampshire the trees had been stripped of leaves, the ground was frozen, and people were walking around bundled in enough clothes...

The pointe shoes on my feet carry me across the floor with restrained urgency, the movement of my arms in alignment to the syncopation of the music. Ideas flow through my fingertips, and manifest themselves in the form of choreography.

From a...

I attempted my first back handspring during Cheer tryouts my freshman year. My legs clumsily guided me across the mat, the momentum of the trick promptly knocking me off-center and, by extension, onto the ground.

When I received a congratulatory...

I’ve always enjoyed taking my homework outside. Rice’s thousands of oak trees and expansive quads provide an excellent study environment, and perhaps I’ll sit under one and review notes from my Approaches to Social Policy course. Between outdoor...

“Eww, what is that?” were words I remember as I brought out the bento box my mom had packed for me.

My middle school lunch consisted of typical Japanese cuisine, and I didn’t see anything wrong with it when I was 13 years old. Hurt by those words,...

"Someone must watch, it is said. Someone must be there."

When I first read this Kafka quote, young and ambitious, I set my goal as an artist to be "the watchman "of the world - to reveal the truth to the audience. Like many children, I was brought...

“Hiza magatende!”

Translated into English, this phrase is, “your knees are bent!” These words were what I listened to on a daily basis while I was training gymnastics in Japan. Because I heard these words every day, I realized the values of...

As I read The Odyssey one rainy summer night, the book became a prism that reflected a fantasy world free from the restrictions of reality and took me on a voyage of giants, monsters and gods. Its stories challenged me to embrace a viewpoint...

For most of my life, I was seen as a very skinny kid and sometimes I was mocked for it. There is a rising concern for boys who have body positivity issues and experience toxic masculinity. I for one can speak from personal experience on what it...

Biology. Cellular research. Diagnosing neurological diseases. These are my passions. I was eight years-old when my mother gave me a small but very real microscope. I first used it to examine the cellular structure of my father’s hair. A field...

Wide green screens, lanky wooden chairs, bulky professional cameras, powdery makeup, and a hundred frantic people surround me as my mind envisions this potential future of mine. Being a 21st century child, I was practically pressured into learning...

The first time I tried to bale hay was a colossal failure. I walked into the job with the naive feeling of “Oh, this will be easy” and that it would earn me some gas money. I came home my first day smelling like sweat and Alpaca dung, and so...

Mariya Kurbatova is busy planning her third novel, and says it will be “the best one yet,” probing into a variety of topics: growing up, unrequited love, AI domination, and the end of the world. Astrology will, of course, also play a large role. “...