University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill Undergraduate College Application Essays

I stare at the seven month old embryo suspended in fetal position in my mother’s ultra-sound image. I am amazed and thus unable to look away. This tiny being is confined to the corners of my mother’s womb, its umbilical cord still attached to its...

I sat down on the bench, apprehensive. I hadn’t touched the ivory keys in almost eight years. Instead, I had actively avoided them, treasuring instead the strings of my violin. In debates I claimed that it was harder to play my instrument,...

The finely milled sand was white-hot, almost as if a billion microscopic pieces of the sun had rained down and settled beneath the soles of my feet. As I scanned the beach, I took a deep breath of the muggy air, letting the dampness settle in my...

Turning around the sharp corner and onto the straightway, the car next to me, number 32, inched closer and closer to the inside of the track, forcing me to move to the outside. While trying to speed up my pace around the next curve, my car’s front...

Kicking rocks as I trudged down the windy path to my undesired destination, I heard my dad loading the obnoxious sounding cars onto the ramp. Every time I looked at the vehicle I was being forced to ride in, I couldn't help but be embarrassed. My...

As a salesman at my local outdoors store, I get paid to convince people to spend what I’ll admit to be absurd amounts of money on outdoor apparel and gear. The $350 Arc’teryx rain shell is not that much better than the $99 dollar Marmot...

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...

I stepped up onto the podium and listened to the rumble of conversations hush almost instantly. The room was full—packed so that everywhere I looked, the eyes of a stranger stared back at me. I glimpsed the flashing red lights of several recording...

I heard the final call for my race. By now I should have been done with my warm up jog and run-outs and heading over to the check-in tent, spikes in hand, ready to run the 3200 meter race at the State Championship meet. Instead of pinning on my...

In fourth grade, I was forced to choose a profession for Career Day. I remember being overwhelmed by the vocations available to me. I could be a doctor, an engineer, a public accountant, or even a pilot. How could a nine-year old choose? Since...

"S-P-H-E-R-I-C-A-L," I declared. Flashing a grin to the 600-person audience, I glanced at the ink stains dotting my clasped hands. These hands had suffered for months practicing obscure words from the dictionary. One person away from winning the...

“$3.50, please.” I open up my worn wallet and fumble around for enough quarters, nickels, and dimes to pay for my Taco Bell burrito. I’m five cents short. A shake of my purse yields five lingering pennies, and my stomach and I sigh together in...

If I had a dollar for every time I heard, “Wait, you aren’t white?” I would probably be a millionaire. Unfortunately, dollars do not shoot at me whenever I hear that question. To clarify, I am half Puerto Rican, half Cuban, and half...

I think I was Canadian in a different life. Not because of my love of French, though strong, or my craving for maple syrup, though incessant; no, this Canadian lifestyle manifests itself through a kind of hockey mania. While my friends enjoy...

It was 2 AM. As my fingers moved across the keyboard, words sprang onto the surface of my laptop screen like drops of tar. Word count revealed that I had only written 500 words today. Unacceptable. Stephen King averaged 2000 words a day. I had to...

"One dollar." I smiled with satisfaction as I handed my friend a can of soda and hid the money he gave me in my shoe. It was at summer camp, when I was thirteen years old, that I discovered the "Law of Supply and Demand" and created a system that...

“So many emails say so little,” writes Norma Cone in her first letter to me. Her penmanship incorporates elaborate loops and smoothly conjoined letters from years of perfecting her cursive. In comparison, my script is poorly developed, a...

While rolling my clothes into the suitcase for the youth trip, I pondered new ways to persuade the school to accept my idea. I had used reasoning and humanitarian appeals, and nobody was signing on to my envisioned LGBTQ club. What more could I...

Splashing in the pool, I’m wearing my one-piece, per camp policy. My girls are holding hands with me, running around in a circle, attempting to create a whirlpool. It’s the summer of 2013, and I’m a Counselor-In-Training at YMCA Camp Cheerio.

I...

My hometown has been recently dubbed "The most segregated city in America." This past July, Baton Rouge made headlines after white policeman killed a black man. Two weeks later, an ambush on policemen left three officers dead, with the shooter...

It is Sunday afternoon and my friends and I are all making nonsense syllables. “Dim dims” and “Ooh bop bops” fill the room and flow out of the windows we have opened in the heat. We’re not crazy – we’re just having a cappella rehearsal.

...

In my temporary home in Edison, I often witness and must mitigate the tension that arises between my Hindu and Catholic relatives.

Whenever there is conflict, my mother and father, two people who I love the most and hold to the highest moral...

She runs so gracefully, her arms swinging back and forth, her legs flying, barely even touching the ground as she laps the girl in front of her. I am that girl—not the graceful one but the slow one who runs like a beanbag chair, hunched over and...

The clickety-clack of shoes hitting marble floor is a wonderfully chaotic symphony. I can imagine offering up the squeak on my Converse shoes to the cacophony of high heels, polished business oxfords, and fashionable flats inside Grand Central...