Application Essay Excerpts

There I said it. Yes, that’s right, I, Ariel Leung, a runner on the Hinsdale Central Cross Country and Track team, hates to run. I hate every second of it- from start to finish. I hate when I have to keep moving forward when all I want to do is stop. I hate when every muscle in my body wants to tumble towards the ground. I hate when the clock sneers at me when I trip across the finish line. I hate when all I can think about is each step I will take and each breathe I will make...

I am half Canadian and half Peruvian. My father attended college at McGill University located in Canada, and my mother dropped out of college. The whole application process in the USA was all new for my family and I. I learned the process was timely but got a lot of help from a counselor...

The first words my tenth grade physics teacher spoke to my class offered me the chance to finally seize the opportunity I had been waiting for since I was a kid. Mr. Sobhani introduced his plan to have every physics student in school patent an invention by the end of school year. Unlike what he had expected, only one student demonstrated any enthusiasm...

We live in a world where sometimes it’s hard to be yourself. There are so many people who we think will judge, label, and stereotype us when we show an excitement or passion for something we love. So it’s not surprising that for a long while, my inner nerd was exactly that: inner.In ninth grade I attended my first international science fair...

I have always been proud of my Indian culture. I love our three-hour Bollywood movies, our food that we smell cooking a mile away, and the colorful saris that make us girls feel like princesses. It was my religion I was once embarrassed of, since it made me so different from everyone around me...

As co-founder and president of Pioneer Humanitarian Society, I planned school-wide projects that served local communities and beyond. One of these projects offered money and moral support to the children who were victims of violence and corruption in Somalia...

I was at school on a Saturday morning. Sitting at a lunch table, I glanced around the cafeteria. This week, about thirty teachers had given up three hours of their morning to help students like me. At first, I could never understand what motivated them to spend so much time with us...

It's Sunday morning here in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. My family and I are on our way to our favorite Vietnamese pho restaurant. My parents are chatting about a controversial topic in the media, the religion of a Christian TV hostess. When we get home, my aunt comes down from her first-level house to our ground-floor record label store/home to have a chat with my mother. They do what most family does, gossiping about other family members...

I slowly picked up one magazine after the other, meticulously sorting them into piles, deliberately focusing on the task in front of me. It was cleaning day, and this was my job. My eyes shifted back and forth. Now? I asked myself. The lump in my throat grew wider, constricting my breathless words. How could I possibly do this? Am I sure? Of course I am. "Daddy?" I began, and I spoke...

I honestly cannot find the perfect words to use on the woman I am about to describe. Nice or kind doesn’t even begin to describe her. African American or woman is a superficial method of defining her. No, she cannot be accurately defined, for she was above it all..