Application Essay Excerpts

Motivated by an interest in the world beyond the confines of my sheltered life, I participated in the CTD Civic Leadership Institute this summer. Perhaps ironically, I did not discover the true complexity of society in my encounters with social activists, economists, and the formerly homeless. Instead I learned about the real world each day on my way to class, as I passed by a homeless man...

When I first visited Northwestern University’s campus in Evanston, I was not looking at the gorgeous view of Lake Michigan silhouetted by autumn foliage or the gothic architecture of University Hall. No, I was captivated by my feet. I was not being shy, nor was I wearing particularly cute shoes that deserved my attention. Instead, I was awed by the mosaic of flyers that lined the pathway from Norris University Center to the University Library...

Every aspiring filmmaker knows that getting a job in the industry is about as difficult as catching a squirrel. It takes hard work, patience, creativity, and a little luck. However, the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science and the Arts provides the liberal arts education and offers the door-opening opportunities that I believe are essential to entering the industry. Plus, you guys have a lot of squirrels...

Answers do not intrigue me. I know how to find the derivative of a logarithmic function, I know how to conjugate French –er verbs in the future tense, I can explain the process of photosynthesis, and I can describe the primary causes of the Civil War. But these answers were calculated, invented, discovered, and explained by somebody else. These answers seem final. Questions intrigue me...

Exposition:My eyes are closed. Almost. My tiny fingers splay as I peek out from behind child’s hands covering child’s eyes. Light sneaks through the gaps, tantalizing me with partial images: a woman with a guitar, singing. “How many roads must a man walk down. . . .” My curiosity takes over. I lower my hands slowly so my mother doesn’t notice. Now I see the full scene: a naked woman holding a guitar and singing “Blowin’ in the Wind.”..

I stand at a crossroad, many paths before me. Some seem suspiciously clear, while others lead into the wilderness, the unknown. I ask a question, the same question posed by many aspiring filmmakers who are stuck at the same juncture: “Which way to Hollywood?”..

7:00 PM. Friday, June 8th. Crooked Pint Ale House—The downtown bar is crowded with representatives from the 68 teams competing in the annual “Minneapolis 48 Hour Film Project”; my friend Lily and I look out of place amidst the adults and professional filmmakers. There is no place for us to sit, so we stand on the stairs overlooking the small stage where the required elements for the films are to be chosen and announced: genre, character, line of dialogue, and prop. I tap my foot in anticipation...

Many consider cross country an individual sport because runners must rely solely on their own endurance and speed to succeed. These people are often discouraged from taking up the sport because they don’t want to run alone. However, after running cross country for three years, I know that cross country is a team sport to its very core...

A long wooden table stretched before me, with faceless adults and jumbled words at one end and me at the other. Sheets of paper and assorted pencils surrounded me as far as my seven year-old arms could reach, all with scrawled answers to math problems and fill-in-the-blank questions, with word definitions and passages to test my reading level. Only years later would I understand the meaning of the incessant testing during my single month of second grade...

After visiting Yale this summer, I fell in love with the more whimsical side of the towering Ivy League behemoth. I learned about class shopping, the time when every class is open to the insatiably curious, like me...