Colby College Undergraduate College Application Essays

When my English teacher died last spring, I wrote in his tribute a song called "Confusion." It is not the most technically impressive thing I have written, but it's my favorite because it conveys emotions I still can't put into words. Taking...

I love laughing. Laughing loudly, a little smile, or just a silly grin, I love them all. A laugh everyday can release my stress from school. When I am sad, I take a big breath and 'ha!' A silly laugh makes me laugh at myself, and soon I find...

It’s 107 degrees and the sun’s hot rays are beating down on a family trekking through the busy streets of Dhaka. People, rickshaws, and goats alike are all rushing off to reach their respective destinations. As the parents of the family encourage...

Bound by the limits of my hearing impairment, it took me three years to realize the clocks at school actually make a noise. As Mrs. Neilson lectures, pressured by the deadline of the AP test, she leaves little room for pauses. Intrigued by every...

I’m hanging on a half inch thick loop of nylon webbing over a 100 foot cliff, double checking my anchor set up for a climb I’m about to try with a friend. My hands are a little numb and my breath hangs in the air in front of me. Looking out from...

A thrift store is a naturally dynamic world, with a constant influx of the unknown and an incessant purging of the unwanted. Any moment may yield a glimmer of Fendi drowning in an ocean of Gap, everything marked $3.99. The objective is to find the...

The trick to picking a perfect peach is simple: Gently squeeze the chot (stem and fruit junction); if the inside of the fruit is juicy and dark yellow, carefully roll the fruit and pull while holding the stem to avoid bruising.

After nine summers,...

For me the world can have a strangely retentive quality, in which certain places represent the nerve points of my past. When I think of my childhood, I think of the room where I took art lessons, where I first met my art teacher. I see a floral...

My story starts here, in San Francisco. Today, I hate it. I hate the sweat trickling down my back from the walk to breakfast on the steep ascent of Castro Street. I hate the suspicious gunshot-like sounds ringing outside my window as I try to...

I last raced with him at our favorite venue, where he dusted me (and all of us) decidedly. Wiley was headed to big things. That much, I thought was certain. If only I had known this might be the last time I saw that blue race suit streak past me,...