Entangled in my blanket and tired of counting sheep, I looked at my alarm clock, eyelids half open. The digital hands read 2 A.M. in bold red letters, and I could still hear them yelling across the hall. My six year old brain could not begin to comprehend the fact that my parents could lie in bed together and still be worlds apart. Desperate to feel the comfort of well-worn paper between my fingers, I reached for the book in...

The little girl hopped through the cobbled streets of Bucharest, avoiding every other stone like it was made of lava. Her curly hair, bouncing up and down, reflected her father’s texture and her mother’s color. Her eyes, glinting green in the sunlight and brown in the shade, a mixture of both parent’s ethnic features. She paused suddenly, smelling mamaliga, and grabbed her father’s hand, pleading with him in English to buy her favorite food. Laughing, he...

(What does Freedom mean to you?): Lines wrapped around market corners as hungry Romanians waited for hours in the freezing cold. Among them were my mother and grandmother. Pre-1989 Communist Romania was a difficult place to live, with food shortages, censorship, and public transportation so terrible that commuters hung out of open doors and the backs of buses nearly touched the ground. Though I never experienced this for myself, I know that freedom is an important word to my family,...

I ultimately chose to attend Fordham because of the location, program, and value. The location of my school is quite possibly the best location of any school in the country. I live in a huge, beautiful dorm on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a block away from Central Park. As for the program, I was admitted into the Honors College at...

My favorite course so far is Theology. I go to a Jesuit University, so theology is a required class. I was initially...

Creative, Talented,...

I wish I had looked more carefully into the types of schools I was applying to. I got very caught up in names...

Get a teacher who really knows you well to recommend you. Make sure that this teacher has a positive opinion of who YOU are, not just your scores. A class in which you got the highest grade but never really raised your...