Wesleyan University Undergraduate College Application Essays

Like I said, I'm inept. I don't tie my shoelaces. I don't understand seat belts. I can't change tires. I can't cook or fish or dance or sing or act or lie. I don't see how a plane can stay in the air or how it can land. I don't know how to paint...

My father was born in a little village in the south of France called Le Chambon in 1944. In that village, 5,000 Christians saved 5,000 Jews, including my grandfather, my grandmother, and my father.

Last summer, I visited Le Chambon for the first...

I watched in admiration as the gentleman in front of me hoisted my fifty-three pound backpack onto his head and began nonchalantly hiking over jagged rock, leading me through the village of Dogbadzi, Togo, where I would live for the next two...

Fairness is a quality that I try hard to embody, and I admire those who demonstrate the impartiality necessary to be just. But people often mistake impartiality as the defining characteristic of someone who is fair. Empathy is more essential...

When my younger brother, James, was five years old, Jack Nierman bit him while they were playing in our favorite playground. I was sitting atop the monkey bars when I saw it happen. I swung down and pushed Jack away, then dragged my screaming...

As I was part of Chicago, I thought Chicago was a part of me. It seemed as though nothing could extricate my Chicagoan heart, any more than tame my native accent. So when shifting vocational winds drove my family to Bethesda, Maryland, I thought...

Please write a personal statement.

The day Kurt Vonnegut died my friend Becca called me crying. “So it goes,” I said, and we chuckled in spite of our sadness. We had become devotees of Vonnegut since our introduction to Cat’s Cradle two years ago,...

One hundred sixty-two days ago I was counting the days I had left to live. “Impression: Large right ovarian mass with cystic appearance periphery and solid tumor in the center…” I trembled as I heard every word of the MRI report that my mom had...

My fingers pirouetted up and down the fingerboard, spiraling faster than the notes running through my head. Every white callous and bloody blister had led up to this moment, as I could feel all those hours of repetition, struggle, and stumbling...

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...

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...

I am from the "Arab Spring generation": the generation that took the street in 2011 to fight for their dreams. I can no longer talk about a flourishing spring when I think about what is happening in Libya, Syria, Yemen and Egypt. However I am very...

I woke up at six that morning. My mom had left an hour earlier to work her two full-time jobs. It was a routine weekend; surrounding me was our ramshackle apartment decorated with sparse furniture, a Hindu temple in the corner, and a telephone I...

There is nothing quite as extraordinary as witnessing a Haitian sunset. Watching as the sky folds itself to form a dichotomy of colors that bleed into the horizon. If I climb a roof high enough, or stand on a hill tall enough, it looks like the...

Christopher Robin is the best movie in the world. Despite the poor acting and the animation that made the animals look sad and dreary, a movie is impressive if it can make the viewer feel an emotion, and Christopher Robin exceeds in that realm....

From a grade school classmate who mocked me by stretching out the corners of his eyelids (I’m Thai!), to people who thought it was okay to use Asian slurs because they didn’t include me (I’m not Thai!), to a middle school “friend” who texted me a...