Application Essay Excerpts

My desire to pursue a higher education comes naturally. I come from a long line of family members who have all completed college. I have always been motivated by my internal instinct and desire to learn. I know furthering my education will open many doors and expose me to better opportunities and prepare me for what society has to offer...

Curiosity is part of being a child. The desire to look for more, to want to know more is something that never truly vanishes with time. However, this desire is fully awaken, when everything is new to us. And there I was, a five year old hungry for knowledge...

There are two types of losers in the world: the ones who believe that they themselves are losers and the ones whom everyone else believes are losers. I, for one, am the latter. Sixth grade marked the transition from ignorance to adolescence. As the oldest students in elementary school, we were suddenly the “cool kids.”..

Working part-time while trying to balance four AP classes and all the stresses of being an involved teenager is far from ideal, but in the wake of adversity you must do whatever it takes to keep moving forward. The summer before my junior year, I began looking for a part-time job in order to help my parents financially...

The earliest memory that I can clearly recall occurred when I was 5 years old. I was watching Saturday afternoon Spongebob episodes with my Grandpa. This was a weekly ritual and he would always bring Oreos as a snack for the both of us. On this particular day I remember watching my Grandpa take a bite of an Oreo, but I caught something out of the corner of my eye that I had never seen before...

During my sophomore year of school, I began to realize that we did not have very many service clubs on campus. My high school was fairly new and I wanted the community to see that we were more than just a new high school...

The clock ticked faster every passing minute, like tempo rising to build up tension before the drop. All hands in the room moved with an increased frenzy, losing their initial deft maneuvers. I sat in a corner, motionless...

Art has been a part of my life longer than I can recall. It began with an infant's guileless habit of scrawling crayons against kitchen walls and escalated to a point where every encounter with another affectionate aunt or uncle would result in a new portrait, albeit bent out-of-shape, thanks to a five-year-old's sense of proportion...

​"Never have I ever been out of the country," I said during a PG version of the classic ice breaker during a tennis team dinner. It was my junior year at Hill, a boarding school where 18% of our student body hails from foreign countries. The most exotic place I had been so far was West Virginia, which paled in comparison to the streets of Seoul or the rainforest of Nigeria...

Rarely has anyone heard of the activity that has changed my life. It's quite a depressing thought. Whenever I tell people about Bible Quizzing, they look at me with a confused look. I usually laugh because I remember the same look on my face before 7th grade. Many things have changed since then...