Occidental College Undergraduate College Application Essays

Midnight was two hours old before I could finally peel out of my costume. The prosthetic nose and glue-on beard tore at my skin as I tugged them off, and they quickly joined the clutter on the bathroom floor: a tired pile of mismatched robes,...

My brother lives in a "gated community," one of those manufactured neighborhoods. It was like we were driving through the streets of a toy city, a miniature suburb built for the amusement of a god-sized obsessive compulsive. I myself was steering...

With the wind in my face, my half-zipped jacket flying behind me, I feel alive. I'm barreling down a powdery hill at a hundred miles per hour on my snowboard, carving turns, jumping over shrubs, alone in the woods on the back of the mountain,...

When we were young, we were all asked what we wanted to be in the future. Some of us said a firefighter, some said an engineer or a lawyer, and the some even said school janitor. However, I only had one goal for my future. For me, all those hours...

"Those who do not know their opponents’ arguments do not completely understand their own.” My mother had emailed me the quote, saying it reminded her of me. As I read the quote, I saw how it reflected my life. In all my schooling, all my...

I step into the studio, a room dominated by a towering record collection and the flashing fluorescent lights of a soundboard. It’s a very small room, but its endless possibilities for transmitting different types of sound make it seem larger than...

According to tradition, every Chinese New Year children receive lucky money in red envelopes from older relatives and friends. In my toddler years, finding the crisp, red envelopes embossed with gold characters to be aesthetically superior to and...

I have the soul of a 74 year old grandmother. I used to be ashamed to say it, because what kind of teenager wants to openly admit she enjoys spending time in retirement homes. But, there’s no use in masking the age of my soul any longer. I like...

From saying “Rabbit-Rabbit-Rabbit” on the first day of the month, to drinking hot water (with exactly three ice cubes), I personify idiosyncrasy. However, I have one secret quirk that begun several years ago with Fluffy. My dad and I went to pick...

I feel the sweat drip down my neck and soak into the fabric of my bedazzled gown. I clench my fists and inhale deeply, closing my eyes to see the reassuring grin of my choreographer in my mind. Here I stay, tucked securely behind the stage curtain...

It’s half past one in the morning, and I've progressed in an indistinctive direction. My cold fingers guide the soft vine charcoal across the matte, welcoming surface of smooth paper. My lines are gestural, strokes varied and abstract. Your first...

“At 6.00 in the morning she begins her morning cleaning. After preparing breakfast and clearing the table, she cleans up all the rooms.” This is a brief translation of a short passage secondary school students are given in Turkey. The passage...

The strong smell of cigarettes filled my senses as I entered into a solemn hallway. I stared into the lights which flickered off and on. My gaze was abruptly interrupted by a resident who grotesquely howled from their room, “Help me, help me,”...

Light, clear and ephemeral. A bubble is easy to pop. An onion on the other hand, has layers of tough, pungent membranes - breaking them brings tears to your eyes.

When asked where I was from, I would unthinkingly say ‘Karachi’. As I grew older, I...

I've never once questioned why I had to bring my teal-blue, TI-34, MultiView calculator with me to my driver's license test. It was outdated in design, and nearly obsolete in comparison to the sophisticated calculators my peers sported....

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...

“A mi no querer takar la clase de español”, I fervently and somewhat jokingly argued with my mother after she DECLARED that I would take Spanish 1 in 7th grade. It’s sort of like those times when you know the battle has long been over, yet you...