Georgia Institute of Technology Undergraduate College Application Essays

"Live the Fourth!" The Fourth of July you might ask? Not quite. I mean the Fourth day of the Kairos Retreat, when we made resolutions and the Kairos spirit was at its peak. Kairos means a spiritual time-a time that can't be measured in minutes or...

I remember the smile on his face. My father had been stressed for eight years, and I didn't think I'd ever see that smile again. It was an exuberant smile-one that showed a man who was at peace. Even with my father's reassuring smile, I was...

What came first, science or technology?" asked a tall and husky figure, who was dressed in an unbuttoned and rather threadbare lab coat. My initial response was science because I reasoned that technology was the application of science. An...

What do Walt Whitman, Howard Roark, and I have in common? Passion. Passion for life, for architecture, and for viruses. When I read The Cobra Event in eighth grade, I had a cinematic picture of viruses. I imagined there were millions of deadly...

My grandfather unknowingly helped define who I am today when he gifted me with a computer ten years ago. I am certain that he could not fully understand how that technology worked, but I believe he had a vision about how important this gift would...

A person I would be interested in meeting would be Ms. Lise Meitner, an Austrian physicist whose work led to the creation of the atomic bomb. I have always been intrigued about how she might have viewed her scientific discovery and her role in...

My involvement in Key Club, an organization devoted to aiding the less fortunate, has led me to discover new roads, providing me with experiences that have helped me to mature spiritually and psychologically. My position in the club as an officer...

I am well known for having many strongly held personal convictions. Whether people look fondly on my convictions or harness utter disdain for them is a completely different story. Some are seen to be outrageous, such as believing that dipping...

All my life, I've considered myself an American. Born to a Jewish-American father and a Japanese mother, I've been surrounded by two cultures in drastically unequal proportions. I never understood what it really meant to have more than one...

I arranged the bottles in front of me: 30% acrylamide, TEMED solution, ammonium persulfate, Tris buffer, and distilled water -- all of the materials I needed to run electrophoresis on the protein samples I had isolated earlier that morning. Oh,...

I could feel the tears coming. My brother’s words pierced me like bullets, one by one, slowly overpowering my determination. I turned to face him and cleared my mind. After receiving the ball, I noticed him hesitate slightly and on instinct I...

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...

The first thing I learned in sophomore-year chemistry is that when two atoms or molecules hit each other with enough force while oriented in the correct manner, magic can happen. Well, “magic” isn’t exactly the word that the textbook uses, but...

The stench of a burnt building polluted the air. Children huddled around the damage, confused, even though the fire was forty-eight hours behind them. What had been a recently remodeled apartment project just six short years earlier had been...

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...

It was three o’clock in the afternoon. My first race was full of middle-aged men, and the decals on their cars weren’t all stickers like mine. They had been painted professionally. But paint jobs don’t impact speed and, to my advantage, I had the...

As the applause faded to a hum, my whole body began to tremble. My throat seized up and tiny bumps arose across my arms. Just as my legs felt ready to give out underneath me, the conductor raised her hands. In one swift movement, a wave of relief...

As I reach into the back of my closet for my go-to tee and gently tug it off its hanger, its hem brushes against a yellow tote bag that hasn’t left its spot on the bottom shelf for months. Without opening or even peering down into it, I can...

Your world seems to fall here. Air so cold and fingers so numb, you would barely know when it happened. But you do. As your grip slips, it takes only seconds before you realize. Gravity unforgivingly pulls you from your scull and into the frigid...

“What’s the safest thing to do?”

I found myself asking this question freshmen year when I was trying to come up with an idea for Project Echo, a high school entrepreneurs’ business plan competition. I wanted an idea with the highest guarantee for...

Our vice-principal was leaving the institution after 15 years of dedicated service. Unfortunately, the last incident he had to deal with in this capacity involved a student who had released private pictures of another student online without her...

“Mom!” I grumbled, “these don’t fit either!” I could feel my throat closing and my eyes welling up. “Mackenzie’s fit her so well, and...and Juliana’s actually look good on her.” I stared at the streaked mirror disgusted with the pants that...

I zoomed in on my character with a few quick swipes using my drawing tablet pen. The blocky character was made out of perfect, tiny squares as if it had been built out of Lego bricks. But something was a bit off. I peered into the picture and...

The vibrant skyline stood dead. It was 4:30 A.M. and life ceased to exist on the streets of Shanghai. The sunrise peaked through the jungle of buildings across the river and shined onto our faces. I stared at the skyline, thinking how much the...