Washington and Lee University Undergraduate College Application Essays

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...

In a classroom occupied by thirty students, I am the only one of African descent. In a locker room of varsity basketball athletes, I am the only one under six feet tall, and during a first priority assembly hosted by a peer, I am the only one of...

I used to hate podiums so much that whenever I stepped up to one to deliver a speech or present a project, I would clutch the sides and tremble as my nerves reverberated in my stomach.

Now I love them.

After participating in public forum debate for...

I have always heard that it is best to be well-rounded. However, I like to think of myself as pointed. For me, all of my cumulative life experiences are simply the shaft that propels the arrow forward in my desire to build.

I think passion entails...

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...

I come from a culture where everything, from the language to the way one dances, is rhythmical. Everything flows freely in the mind, everything makes sense, and nothing is inhibited. I feel this sense of absolute free flow when I push the sole of...

Around the age of four, my mother became my first teacher. In the summer, she would spend her days exposing my brother and me to various topics we seemed interested in, covering subjects ranging from ancient Egyptian history to cooking. Each...